The Angolan Dilemma

( Size 24" x 34" Oils )

If this man was nurtured, fed and watered
he would be as beautiful as the rose beneath him.

Subjects in the painting:

The Blackman

This is a gruesome sight resulting from the politically controlled hunger of civil war. His face emaciated, tightly drawn with a morbid drowsiness, in an apathetic state of lethargy. Bodily and mental anguish make him devoid of all his earthly interests. The delirious mind and body stems from a human controlled terror - by use of a deliberate stranglehold over the food chain.

The Rose

Hypothetically I have given the rose symbolic status as the figurehead of Christianity, that being the Christian belief in an hyper-physical God. The rose in the painting forms an extension of the monks robe, via the harsh looking thorny stem, the stem becoming the elongated neck, depicting the long road Christianity has travelled conveying its beliefs. The stem rounding the three buildings, as if gathering, I have painted to represent the crucifixion, Jesus being central, tall and above his two counterparts.

Painting the rose regal, delicate, colourful, full of life with a touch of light, portrays a sharp contrast to the emaciated body of the Negro above.

Where do we draw the line, as the western (mainly Christian) civilization with all its strength and resource, sends token gestures of money and food aid ? Surely they, the so called 'super powers' (that in my view instigate these situations to suit their own ends) could at a stroke eliminate and eradicate the civil war and the controlled genocide within these Third World countries ?

In my view every religion and belief, whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu or whatever should stop taking a political back seat in this carnage, and maybe, through the super-rich and all powerful Vatican as spokesman, they could bring these terrible events to the forefront of all governmental issues...

The Monk's Habit

The basis and foundations of early Christian teachings, the anchor if you will.

The Insect

Where there is famine and disease, pestilence runs rife, like the early plagues. Insects seem to thrive in these conditions.

The Tree

Depicts longevity, a place to shelter from the Sun, Wind, and Rain. The limp branches represent the drought and arid conditions, ripe for famine.

The Clenched Fist

The ubiquitous clenched fist of Africa, the sign for the struggle for freedom and equality. The right to self-determination and self-governing of its peoples.

Hangman's Noose & Gallows

Depicts justice. The people's enemies will pay the ultimate price, and within the law they will be judged.

Face on Shadow

The face floating at the end of the shadow of the monk's habit depicts the detachment of the ordinary people and their problems, and the hierarchy within the higher echelon of the Christian fraternity. I see the Vatican, for instance, totally worlds apart from the needs of its followers. This could foretell it's decline.

History

Angola was founded by Portuguese navigators in 1482, being called Portuguese West Africa. until 1951 when it became an overseas province of Portugal (apart from a brief period of Dutch occupation from 1641 to 1648). Due to a rise in nationalism in the 1950s and 60s three main independence movements emerged, the MPLA - Soviet Union and Cuban backed with it's capital in Luanda; the FNLA - backed by the USA and a number of Western European Countries; with the third party UNITA in a coalition with the FNLA.

The MPLA gained control in 1976, but as history has shown the opposition continues with a bloody and costly civil war. The population comprises mainly blacks, Negros of Bantu origin. Portugal washed its hands of Angola, granting independence not to any one group, but to the "Angolan People" in 1975, thus planting the seed for another aimless blood bath, maiming and murdering its own people in futile civil war. This action deprived Angolan people of their basic human rights and decency, which they fought for against the Portuguese prior to 1975.

Early exports under the Portuguese were mainly slaves and ivory, progressing to rubber, coffee, diamonds, wax, vegetable oil and maize, but also having a considerable oil production offshore from Kabinda. At least the ban on ivory saved one species in Africa - the Elephant. Between 1974 and 1976 Portuguese technicians withdrew, this combined with the civil war severely disrupted the economy. Cuban authorities took the initiative by filling the deficiency with their technicians.

This war takes on similar characteristics to the ageing civil war in Ethiopia, a regression in the economy, a fall in the standards of human rights, and the starvation of the people on political grounds. Until these waring factions get together around a negotiating table and peacefully work out a solution, Angola will tread a path along a downward spiral, its people moving ever onward into oblivion and inevitable self-destruction.

An invisible destroyer is at work also, in which AFRICA is at the forefront:- AIDS

Eddie William Powell, 1/3/90.

Complexity comment:
Progress requires change, and change requires resources. Can we really afford to destroy those we have ? Many of the greatest innovations throughout history have come from unknown sources. Yet these potential sources (the Third World people and culture) are daily squandered by people clinging to the past, trying to revamp a static society of tribal conflicts and social ignorance. Complex ecologies show us that nothing can remain static without disintegrating, all systems and societies must adapt to the present environment and cannot re-enact history and expect past sucesses to persist and past ideas to suffice.

The environment in which we live is constantly evolving. People learn, animals adapt, bacteria mutate, nature fluctuates. The effect of all these changes is to alter the fitness ratings of the options available to us. In complexity terms, they distort the fitness landscape, creating new hills (niches), lowering or removing old ones. Our previous choices may have been optimum for the conditions at that time, we successfully moved to the top of the fitness hill. Yet the changes around us have now altered those conditions, and if we fail to learn anew we will degenerate over time, as our relative fitness reduces in comparison to the options now available. Until, eventually, our behaviour becomes maladaptive...