Today, the 24 August, civil society in Angola and in the diaspora will cast their vote to elect the next president, vice president and members of parliament. The election contest between the Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the party in power since the country’s independence from Portugal in 1975, and a collation led by long-time opposition The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), is predicted to be the closest in the country’s democratic history.
The election falls under a new context where the youth, who now represent most of the voting population, are committed to challenging the status quo using non-conventional forms of political participation such as social media.
The aspirational voter
More than sixty per cent of the Angolan population is under the age of 24. The number of voters registered to participate in today’s election is over 14 million, with young people between 15 and 35 representing more than half of this figure. A new generation of Angolans, while representing the biggest segment of electorate, are facing a totally different reality from that of the youth in the nineteen nineties and early twenty first century when the country’s long civil war came to an end. Despite decades of repeated promises of a prosperous life from the ruling MPLA party, unemployment, economic crisis and corruption remain ever present in the country, and opportunities for many Angolan youth are limited.
Young Angolans, to whom the memories of the war are inert, have become extremely vocal in their opposition to the MPLA due to the current dire state of everyday life experienced by many in the country. Furthermore, young Angolans living abroad are now able to directly participate in the electoral process for the first time are echoing and maximising the voices of the Angolan youth at home, putting into check powerful strictures of the state and speaking out against a system created by the ruling MPLA.
Regardless of this week’s result, this electoral process has demonstrated how young people in Angola are committed to challenging the status quo, while playing an active role in creating their own identities. They continue to demonstrate an incredible capacity to expand their voices and make a living for themselves within a constrained economic, political and social environment. Contrary to previous analogies of youth political apathy in Angola, the electoral process for these elections has emphasized the idea that young people in Angola are not waning in political participation. Rather they are using non-conventional forms of participation to express themselves, create new spaces of resistance and challenge a powerful political system embedded within the structures of the state.
Youth resistance in the digital space
The recent youth boom, combined with an economic crisis and wider digital connectivity in Angola has been the context for unfolding first-hand social and political transformation in the country. Today’s elections represent the solidification of the digital space within Angola’s political realm and as the de facto instrument of defence against the state from the point of view of the youth. New digital trends led by the young Angolans are demonstrating an evolution of social resistance in a country where youth represent the main social voice. An example of such reality are the memes frequently used to fight government’s disinformation and create an online check and balance dynamic between those who govern and those who are governed.
These online forms of resistance are not only demonstrating the power of the digital space, but also illustrate how the country is undergoing an unprecedented time of social transformation and political disruption, especially in times of election. The benchmark of prosperity for the youth in Angola is no longer the end of the civil war or the continuous promises of change from political parties, but rather the direct improvement and investment into areas that affect their lives such as unemployment, education and healthcare.
Non-conventional forms of political participation such as social media have been used to from the biggest online public disapproval moment in the history of MPLA rule. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are becoming leading channels of communication, disinformation, counter-disinformation and mobilisation among the two main parties in Angola. What is more, they have also become key instruments of effective citizenship and resistance among a new generation of voters that are pressuring the ruling party while causing a social change within civil society.
For example, the hashtag #JáEstá (it’s done), was created by the ruling party in 2021 to convey the message that the coming election was already won. This was quickly responded to by a counter hashtag #In2022YouWillLikeIt (Vais Gostar) created by the youth to showcase the power that lies in their hands to decide and to rebuke the idea of any anticipated outcome, demonstrating the power of the digital space in Angola’s current political sphere.
Social media are duplicating and overtaking direct forms of traditional participation in Angola as they represent a safer and more effective instrument for young people to participate and resist power and violence. There seems to be a slow adaptation and capacity to operate new digital spaces from the ruling party in a way that hinders the ability of the system to respond to this digital phenomenon coming from the youth. What is more, such limited understanding and adaption to social media by the structures of the MPLA has resulted in the practice of youth digital resistance being regarded, often on national television, as synonymy for disrespectful youth behaviour against the executive power.
To that end, today’s general elections in Angola may serve as an example of how powerful political systems in Africa are being challenged by the youth through new spaces of resistance and participation. In new online spaces, aspirational voters are putting into check a powerful system in a way never seen before in the history of the country. Regardless of the outcome of these elections, a new page of state-citizen relation in Angola has been turned which is set to mark a change in all future political engagement, party politics and elections to come in the country.
