Boaventura Cardoso

Boaventura da Silva Cardoso , Boaventura Cardoso for short (born July 26, 1944 in Luanda , Portuguese West Africa ) is an Angolan writer , diplomat and politician of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA).

Life

Youth and education

Boaventura da Silva Cardoso was born on July 26, 1944 in the capital of the Portuguese colony Angola as the son of an "assimilated" Angolan family. He spent parts of his childhood in the northern Angolan city of Malanje before moving back to Luanda for his education.

Cardoso became politicized in the 1960s and, after finishing school, first attended a course in social sciences at the underground university of the Angolan liberation movement MPLA. A few years later Cardoso completed a degree in social sciences at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome, from which he graduated with a licentiate . After completing his studies, he first worked in the colonial finance and accounting administration ( Serviços de Fazenda e Contabilidade) .

Career in the Angolan state

After Angola's independence from Portugal on November 11, 1975, he became director of political information services in the Ministry of Information and was subsequently director of the National Institute for Books and Records (Instituto Nacional do Livro e do Disco) between 1977 and 1981 . He then served as State Secretary for Culture from 1981 to 1990 and as Minister of Information (Ministro da Informação) in the cabinet of President José Eduardo dos Santos between 1990 and 1991 .

As the successor to Luis José de Almeida , Cardoso took over the post of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to France in 1992 and remained in this position until 1999, whereupon Assunção dos Anjos became his successor in 2000. In addition, he was also from 1992 to 1992 as Permanent Representative at the UNESCO in Paris accredited . He himself then succeeded José Bernardo Domingos Quiosa as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Italy in 2000 and remained there until he was replaced by Armindo Fernandes do Espírito Santo Vieira in 2002. During this time he was also a permanent representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations (FAO), the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome . He also acted as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Malta between 2001 and 2002 .

Return to Angola and election to parliament

After his return, Boaventura Cardosa took over the post of Minister of Culture (Ministro da Cultura) in the government of President dos Santos in the cabinet of Prime Minister Fernando da Piedade Dias dos Santos , which he held until 2008. He then held the post of governor of the Malanje province between 2008 and 2012 . In the election of December 31, 2012 , he was elected to the national list of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) for the first time as a member of the National Assembly (Assembleia Nacional) . After his re-election in the election on August 23, 2017 , he became a member of the 3rd Parliamentary Commission (3ª Comissão: Relações Exteriores, Cooperação Internacional e Comunidades Angolanas no Estrangeiro) , which is responsible for foreign relations, international cooperation and Angolan communities abroad.

Literary work

In addition to his political and diplomatic career, Boaventura Cardoso is also a well-known writer in his country . Cardoso began publishing his first stories and poems in 1967. Before Angola gained independence, Cardoso was a member of the editorial team of Angola magazine , closely linked to the MPLA and published by the Liga Nacional Africa . In addition to Cardoso, Arnaldo Santos and Jorge Marcedo were also part of the editorial team; they are said to have had a considerable influence on Cardoso's literary work.

After independence, Cardoso and other authors founded the Angolan writers' association União dos Escritores Angolanos . In 1977 Cardoso published his first book with the title Dizanga Dia Menhu , a collective association with ten short stories, in which the Angolan traditions were highlighted and presented after they had been suppressed under Portuguese colonial rule.

The two later publications - O Fogo da Fala (1980) and A Morte do Velho Kipacaça (1987) - are collections of short stories related to Angolan traditions and folklore. In particular, the connection and tension between tradition and modernity play a major role at Cardoso. In 1992 Cardoso published his first novel, O Signo do Fogo , which was followed by two other novels, Maio Mês de Maria (1997) and Mãe Materno Mar (2001). For the latter, Cardoso won the national Angolan culture and art award . His last novel to date followed in 2012 - Noites da Vigília - in which he portrays the time between the Portuguese Carnation Revolution on April 25, 1974 and the day of Angolan independence, November 11, 1975.

In all of his publications Cardos makes extensive use of the vocabulary of the Portuguese-Angolan everyday language, some of which are significantly influenced by local languages ​​(including Kimbundu). His request is to create a vocabulary to better express Angolan reality.

Works

• Dizanga Dia Muenhu (1977)
• O Fogo da Fala (1980)
• A Morte do Velho Kipacaça (1987)
• O Signo do Fogo (1992)
• Maio Mês de Maria (1997)
• Mãe Materno Mar (2001)
• Noites de Vigília (2012)

Web links

• Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly (Assembleia Nacional) (accessed on January 24, 2019)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Livia Apa: Cardoso, Boaventura . In: Emmanuel K. Akyeampong and Henry Louis Gates, Jr (Eds.): Dictionary of African Biography . tape 2 . Oxford Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-538207-5 , pp. 35 f .