Abstract
The first two decades of the 2000s were characterized by what has been termed Africa's " Third Wave " of protest, which highlighted grievances with the workings of multi-party democracy and neoliberal economic policies on the African continent. Angola was no exception to this trend. Beginning in 2011, small groups of mostly young people began protesting in Luanda, Angola's capital, calling for President José Eduardo dos Santos to step down and questioning the democratic mandate of the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Based on the analysis of public statements and actions by protestors and state representatives recorded the media, as well as interviews with Angolans living in Luanda in 2011 and 2012, this paper shows how Angola's third wave protests generated debate about what constituted legitimate political engagement. As such, protest generated a public debate about what forms of political representation could be considered to embody a democratic mandate. Protestors argued that the ruling party's historically authoritarian actions had rendered defunct the laws and democratic rituals on which it based its legitimacy. In contrast, MPLA representatives appealed to official institutions and processes to suggest that not only the protesters' concerns, but the very act of protest, were anti-democratic. By showing how appeals to democracy could be mobilized for both liberatory and repressive ends, protests in Angola, and perhaps the Third Wave of protest more generally, revealed the internal contradictions of and need to reassess the workings of democracy on the African continent.