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Antonio Agostinho Neto was born on September 17, 1922, in the village of Kaxicane, Icolo e Bengo, in the province of Bengo, Angola.
His father was a pastor and teacher at the Protestant church and his mother was also a teacher. Surrounded by an enlightened environment, Neto graduated high school and entered the health services.
This took him to Portugal since there were no institutions training medicine in Angola at that time. Soon Neto engaged in political activism, being arrested the first time for gathering signatures for a petition at the World Peace Conference in 1951.
This was the beginning of his journey as a revolutionary. Soon after his release he became a member of several youth organisations that had anti-colonial sentiments.
At one of the student rallies he facilitated, Neto was again arrested for addressing workers and peasants. Incarceration became an artistic retreat for him as his prison cell became an inspiration room where he found words from the Muses.
During his imprisonment a booklet of his poems was published. The work expressed the bitter conditions and hardships Angolan people faced under the yoke of the Portuguese colonial masters.
Soon the incarceration of this great poet sparked protests. Letters were written, meetings were held and petitions were signed by ascending voices such as Jean Paul Sartre, Aragon, Andre Mauriac and Simone de Beauvoir who were all French intelligentsia.
There was also support from the Cuban poet Nicolas Gullen and the Mexican painter Diego Rivera. In 1957, Amnesty International bestowed Neto with the honour of Political Prisoner of the Year for this he was worthy, a man behind bars for the love of his land and with the cause to free his people.
The poet and the politician moved towards war. His words prolifically describing the enlightenment of the desire of his people to be free, regardless of the danger that lay in wait for all those involved; . . . “soon the whole country, Would be on fire, Burning from shore to shore, In a destructive war, That would leave its people shattered, In poverty and starvation,With legs shot off by landmines”.
This wise man, who understood the benefits of war was Angola’s nominal president, becoming what Leopold Senghor was to Francophone Africa, a sage figure sent to enlighten Lusophone Africa.
The National Gallery of Zimbabwe hosted in conjunction with the Embassy of Angola, a Cultural Day celebrating the legacy set by Agostinho Neto.
An artistic achievement at the Venice Biennale is part of the legacy left by Neto. Angola won the Golden Bear Award for the Best Pavilion, running under the theme Luanda, Encyclopedic City.
The pavilion was centred on works by the artist Edson Chagas’ photographic detailing of Luanda. The Angolan Pavilion is curated by Paula Nascimento and Stefano Rabolli Pansera.
The energy of the commemorations tells of Angola’s bright future across all sectors be it culture, finance and scientific development.
The event was like a tale of two cities, both having seen revolutions that brought freedom to the masses and both having a luminous future ahead of them, all owed to the struggles of men like Agostinho Neto.
The Angolan Pavilion Luanda, Encyclopedic City; runs at the 55th Venice Biennale until November 24, 2013.
“Dudziro: Interrogating the Visions of religious Belief” curated by Raphael Chikukwa runs until November 24, 2013 at the 55th Venice Biennale.
Online Reporter