Angola 2

Listen to Angola 2, a 40-year-old man from Luanda, Angola. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 40

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 30/10/1977

PLACE OF BIRTH: Luanda, Angola

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: black/Bakongo

OCCUPATION: business owner and travel consultant

EDUCATION: National higher education, Standard 9, certificates of further education

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject was born and raised in Luanda, Angola, but with his parents’ encouragement left his country of birth as an adolescent to avoid military conscription. He settled in Cape Town, South Africa, where he has lived and worked ever since his arrival, except for three years spent in Pretoria for training and employment.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

He describes his mother languages as Portuguese and Lingala.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Nadia Barnard

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 19/05/2018

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Er, I’m Angolan citizen. I came to South Africa in 1994; I was still a little kid. I left my parents’ home, in Angola. I was born and raised, obvious, for first couple years of life in Angola, and then – Luanda, capital, actually. Then, er, after the civil war, which was so intense in Angola, which I understood that was a business, er, between the politicians, and so on. My parents used to say: “Those politicians: When they have differences, they make people suffer.” And there we couldn’t access, er, education easily, though it was for free. So, er, things was a little bit tough for me. So I had to go on the street, coming to South Africa: no language, like English language and so on. So, ja, we, er, battled, uhm, life as a man, but I said I won’t give up! I picked up my English on the streets because I had to speak to survive.

Cape Town feels like home to me. I learned something. Er, question is shorter, but I wanna explain something in the sense that, er, I learned something. Er, I came to Cape Town; er, then I start listening to people saying, er, that person is a European, and then this is African, and this is white, and this is coloured. With me, that – those things have never been there, and there’s some white people in Angola, there are coloured – those are families are all mixed – er, and I’ve never — what comes first to me: It’s a human being, what I see. A human being, and then the next, is those other kind of things. So I don’t make enemies because of that person — they had their own problems, so, ja.

Er, Apartheid ended, and if you wanna hear the story? Er, when I arrived, I lived under the bridge, er, of Woodstock. There were my first home, under the bridge. Under the bridge, if I go walk around with my bag, and when I come back, use it as my pillow, I stay there, but I knew I had to stand up and look, and so that’s wh- how I left it. And then I went to stay in Bishop Leviss. Uhm, Bishop Leviss, with, er, the way South Africa put things, and so on, they said it’s a “coloured” area. I believed that human beings: They were living there; then I went there, and I stayed there.

That gentleman: He’s a businessman; he has opened, uhm, er, funeral parlor, became undertaker. But his wish: He is praying for people to die in the area, at least ten a week! So that he’s an honest man, working. So as he work, if people are dying and then are buying the, the, the, the caskets and, er, those things, and then he can pay his debts. Now the others: They were saying he must go away; he is a Satan, er, ‘s a devil, and so on. How can me – how can you come in this area wishing people to die? You die yourself and get in those se- er, caskets yourself!

What singing? What song is that? [Subject continues to sing in Lingala.]

It’s just: “Lord, it’s our creator, he created the heaven, earth, and all in it.”

TRANSCRIBED BY: Nadia Barnard

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 27/05/2018

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

The archive provides:

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• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.

• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.

• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

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