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ABSTRACT
This article addresses how African states respond to climate crisis, arguing that, beyond the agency and impact of climate phenomena such as drought and cyclones, they are active participants in the production of climate disasters and emergencies, mostly through infrastructural processes that affect land and resource use, and subsequently livelihoods. To demonstrate this, it uses the cases of the drought in southwestern Angola and cyclones in northern and central Mozambique, where such climate phenomena have exposed 'fatal architectures' that have dramatically raised the toll of climate victims and refugees. Both extractivist, agro-industrial and hydroelectric projects, as well as other, more deferred infrastructural designs (roads, communication networks, etc.) have challenged the traditional agency and resilience of local communities. Such new infrastructural projects also illustrate how certain perceived long-term solutions to address the climate crisis with industrial and energy reconversion towards greener energies can still become fatal architectures in the context of climate emergencies.

Angola is one of the few countries in the world that boasts a dedicated Ministry of Justice and Human Rights. But does this translate into a wider implementation of these rights? This article provides a historical overview of the trajectory of Human Rights in Angola through the analysis of different moments and iterations of the performance of (in)justice since the country's independence in November 1975 – from the political trials of the mercenaries in 1976-1977 and the events surrounding 27 May 1977 to the post-electoral massacres and persecutions in 1992 and 1993, the persecution of human rights activists in the post-Arab Spring period and, since 2019, the implementation of a public reconciliation commission (CIVICOP). Through this longitudinal approach, which highlights continuities in the trajectory of Human Rights in Angola in the transition from the 20th to the 21st centuries, I argue that the case of Angola illustrates the paradox of how a governance-based implementation of a Human Rights agenda can actually prevent its enactment and implementation. This is explained through the incorporation and subsumption of Human Rights into political agendas as a performative display.

In this article I explore the contemporary relevance of Émile Durkheim's classic theory of anomie with respect to both the discipline of social anthropology and the study of politics in Africa. I take as a case study present-day, post-war Angola, where an activist mobilisation (the Revolutionary Movement) has engaged in what I call 'anomic diagnostics' in opposing the country's current regime. Through a political reading of Durkheim's theory, I suggest that, while the French author situates anomie and suicide as cause and consequence respectively within a conservative view of society, Angolan activists instead see anomie as the starting point for a progressive political proposition productive of rupture.

Uma das teorias mais marcantes na antropologia africanista das últimas décadas foi a proposta de Georges Balandier sobre a "situação colonial" e, nomeadamente, o seu retrato do surgimento de movimentos religiosos de carácter messiânico ou profético na região do Congo no contexto de reivindicações anti-coloniais mais ou menos politizadas. Neste artigo pretendo revisitar as principais teorias de Balandier a partir do estudo de caso de duas igrejas cristãs proféticas da mesma região - o Kimbanguismo e o Tocoismo – onde desenvolvi, junto com o meu colega Ramon Sarró, trabalho de terreno em Portugal e Angola. Este exercício de reflexão sobre o papel do profetismo contemporâneo no Congo e em África será igualmente uma reivindicação da pertinência e actualidade da produção científica de Balandier, um dos grandes nomes das ciências sociais francesas do século XX.

Abstract
This dispatch examines contemporary activist movements in Angola and their political utopias, namely their relevance to citizenship and governance, and their increasing importance in the political landscape. The authors describe the civic mobilization toward the implementation of a municipal electoral system (autarquia) and argue that it poses an Afro-utopian challenge: the issue of autarky, or the recognition of self-organization and self-sufficiency vis-à-vis postcolonial autocratic rule.