Streams of stinking water run ceaselessly through the alleys that cut across the hillside of Margoso, Luanda. Generations of citizens have walked there and lived there, accustomed to the smell, and condemned to be forgotten.

It is on these alleys, in these slums on which politics has turned a blind eye, that a generation of young people, excluded and uprooted, have fomented a new political revolution through rap and through the repeated frustration that comes from having been robbed of their rights as citizens.

MCK, 22, has won notoriety. On 26 November 2003, José Eduardo dos Santos's presidential guard killed car-washer Arsénio Sebastião "Cherokee", 27, for singing MCK's rap "Technique, Causes and Consequences", a.k.a "I know what's up". Cherokee has in turn become a symbol of injustice in Angola.

Going down those alleys on the way to his house, MCK jokes about his social status, especially when, in the morning, he sets about fetching water in a drum which he carries on his back, on his shoulder or in his hands, whichever feels most convenient.

"I am the youngest in the family and I have to fetch water every day," he says.

His room is extremely cramped, even for one person. In the rainy season, prayer is the only thing that holds his house together – as well as his faith. Other rap activists cling to survival in the same way: Furacão and Keyta Mayanda, not to mention Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes, who was responsible for organising the thirtieth day memorial mass for Cherokee.

The outrage, evident on the faces and on the posters which line Marçal slum, where the deceased lived, is a sign of a mature understanding of the real relationship between the people and the regime.

The rappers managed, on their own initiative, to collect nearly one thousand dollars to give the victim's family: a sum that puts to shame the maize flour and beans the presidential guard left at the home of the deceased.

Moreover, MCK assumed responsibility for putting Cherokee's two children through school. He markets his CDs directly, and his meagre profits are put towards this cause. This is revolution.

"We have to promote a revolution of the mind in order to correct what happened in 1975. Colonialism ended, but the system remains the same. We count for nothing in our own country," argues Keyta Mayanda.

"You pressed 'play' and fell into a trench of ideas," goes the first track on MCK's CD: thirteen tracks with the suggestive name of "The trench of ideas".

This album, and others that are yet more radical in tone such as "Know the truth and the truth shall set you free" by Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes [Brigadier 10 packs], were recorded and produced in improvised studios.

The minibus taxi drivers who provide transport for the masses are willingly helping to arouse consciences, to politicise the masses. This controversial music, banned by the authorities, plays on the stereos in these overcrowded vehicles; music whose value lies in the content of its lyrics as well as in its beat.

"The government plays a different guitar" by Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes is the most controversial and also the most commonly heard song on this distribution circuit. It is a direct challenge to the Big Chief.

Frantz Fanon warned African politicians that the politicisation of the masses does not, and cannot, come through political speeches: "Politicisation means opening the spirit, awakening the spirit, enlightening the spirit."

In the slums, home to the masses - to an absolute majority - the silence of the people has become imprisoned by misery, paralysed by war and oppression. Track 11, "Echoes of rebellion," awakens a dormant spirit: balumuka. It looks at "a people suffering at the hands of the rulers". It examines the importing of western disguises by the political class, which has been looting the resources of the people and justifying it with "pretty speeches".

"Echoes of rebellion" calls on citizens to "be prepared / the people's silence speaks / the people's passivity is bursting the balloon". The verses take up the message about and for the people:

"We are politically tamed
Economically colonised
Culturally stagnated
Socially retarded … "

From where does this critical consciousness come? MCK says it comes from the life that he sees around himself. He has finished high school, but has neither access to the public university nor the funds to enter the private universities. Nevertheless, this consciousness is also the result of the gains made by press freedom. The singer keeps under his bed a large collection of press clippings, full of cases of corruption, misrule and whatever else. "We write our lyrics based on what we get from the press and from Rádio Ecclésia [the Angolan Catholic radio station]."

Despite its unimpressive circulation (on average 30 000 copies per week among Luanda's 3.5 million inhabitants), the independent press has been the driving force behind a growing democratic consciousness. And in a spontaneous reciprocal gesture, track six of "Trench of ideas", entitled "Topics for the article" is a tribute to the independent press which inspired it, as well as a parody of the dressed-up official version of events. With a forced, ironic optimism it explores what has changed and what remains the same: "The police beauty salon has new hairstyles … Parliament is just a sham / and whoever can do anything isn't part of it … the young are lost in a desert like camels."

And the chatter still continues at the scene of the crime, the Mussulo quayside, where the Dos Santo's guards tortured and killed Cherokee, by drowning him, in broad daylight in a public place. There where the elite go to relax and enjoy the kind of privileges which in Angola are reserved for a few. There, in truth's cemetery, where the people's silence is celebrated with mocking smiles. It is all part of the same process.

Music has no place in the grand scheme of politics in Angola. Especially not rap, invented in the 1970s by imaginative people living on the edge of society in the ghettos of New York's Bronx.

With neither change nor elections in sight, what consequences will this have for the abyss that separates the regime, the opposition, the city centres, the Luanda slums, the demobilized soldiers, the governors' palaces, and the rest of the country?

* Rafael Marques is a Angolan journalist