The Return of the Water Spirit by Pepetela

This book breaks the traditional notion of colonisation as the oppression of the coloured group by the white. Set after the independence of Angola, the novel imagines the re-colonisation of the state. After the colonisers retreated, the state collapses into a wrestling of various political parties, some of which are corrupted organisations consuming the civilians. Behind such debased morality is the bare fact of reality: the consequence of decolonisation only results in a re-colonialisation, something the force or movement initially fought against. Or, corruption and barbarism is ubiquitous, regardless of one's political stance (left or right), religion (Catholic or Protestant). People use an opposite stance as a sign of moral superiority over another stance, perhaps not being aware that the stance is only a disguise to cover their corrupted core. We are living in a world of binary oppositions, where we think that a particular side is wrong then the other side o the extreme must be entirely correct. Carmina is a caricaturised embodiment of switching to binary sides in the name of political ideals. She claims to strongly adhere to Marxism, and is ready to criticise the right wing - USA, or she detests racism , but for her own convenience and benefit, she thinks it acceptable to tolerate it at home, or she is very quick to move to be a capitalist.

Despite Joao is right-minded to see the fallacy of Carmina (CAF)'s logic, that doesn't make him a necessarily better character. Feeling oppressed by his wife, he takes refuge in imagining himself the king of the Roman Empire. Both are obsessed with their imaginations of country building and dictatorship.

The final triumph of the Water Spirit is the final note of the history of Angola as a repeated claiming and reclaiming of land possessions among opposing sides. It is an imagined effort to demolish the western constructions of buildings (and even the mind) and restoration of original landscape.

A thought suddenly comes to my mind. This story adopts a magical realist tone, where the violence of war is not mentioned or is mystified. Could the collapse of buildings be read as the destruction during the civil war? Or punishments to Angolan for the destruction some of them bring to the country landscape.