Search Results for: Benguela

The Woman who ‘Invaded’ Military Barracks in Benguela

The Army Military Academy in Lobito municipality, Benguela province, is investigating Maria Alexandra de Vitória Pereira, a 48-year-old Angolan citizen who is accused of having invaded the academy’s premises on 22 December. Maria Alexandra is the daughter of the late MPLA parliamentarian Carlos Alberto de Vitória Pereira Mac-Mahon. She in turn has laid a complaint against the academy, saying she was beaten and subjected to racial abuse there. The case began with a parked car. Ms Pereira stopped her car in the street near the academy’s wall about 10 pm to attend to her seven-year-old daughter Ashanti, who was crying. She was on the way back from a dinner, accompanied by José Patrocínio, a civic activist and the director of the NGO Omunga. Some soldiers surrounded the driver, demanding that she remove the vehicle immediately. Ms Pereira says she asked for the soldiers’ understanding, and asked them to let her […]

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Scuffles and Arrests During Electoral Campaign in Benguela

By António Capalandanda,   The National Police, arrested Calisto Kavoli, the municipal secretary of UNITA for the province of Benguela, during a dispute which took place last Friday, between militants from his party and MPLA supporters, over the placement of election posters in Benguela. At around 2 PM, a group of over 20 members of Revolutionary Youth of Angola (JURA), the youth branch of UNITA, approached the Rotunda da Cruz Vermelha [Red Cross Roundabout], in the city of Benguela, and began tearing up MPLA pamphlets there. According to a report printed in the officious Jornal de Angola, the first secretary of the MPLA in Benguela, Armando da Cruz Neto, “deplored the attitude of UNITA leaders and militants.” In a public event which took place on August 4, the MPLA leader and governor of Benguela said, referring to the occurrence: “I cannot believe that after 10 years of peace, there are […]

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Political Violence in Benguela

By Nelson Sul D’Angola   Political intolerance forced seven families associated with UNITA to flee from Capupa commune on the night of Sunday, July 22. The families, totaling 31 people in all, arrived in the municipal town of Cubal, in Benguela province, around midday on Monday. According to Paulo Kananga, a member of UNITA who had to abandon his home at short notice with his wife and three children, “the [ruling] MPLA secretary in Cambulo village, Deolindo Dumbo, came to my house armed with a spear and arrows, while Felipe César from the local MPLA committee came with a machete in his hand to chase us out of the village”. “They came to the house with death threats, and told my family that the arrows were meant for us if we stayed in the area,” Kananga told Maka Angola. The MPLA members also visited the other influential local UNITA members, […]

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Angola Elections 2022: Trouble Ahead?

Angola’s 2022 election seemed to go well. International observers dubbed the poll ‘free and fair’ and the official election organizer, the Comissão Nacional Eleitoral (CNE), declared the MPLA the victor with just over 51% of total votes cast. This official result was immediately challenged by the main opposition party, UNITA, amid allegations of inconsistencies in the count and procedural irregularities by the CNE itself. The situation risks undermining the all-too-recent gains in democratic freedoms and civil liberties, with opposition supporters taking to the streets to express their anger, feeling cheated of the change they desperately wanted. ————— When on August 29th the CNE announced the official election result, awarding victory to the ruling MPLA, it was immediately challenged by UNITA on the grounds of alleged inconsistencies between the certified polling station tallies and the final count given by the CNE. Initially, the main opposition, UNITA seemed to suggest the numbers […]

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Angolan Elections 2022: Final Days of the Campaign

It was a hectic end to the campaign: observing MPLA rallies in Benguela and Luanda and, on the last day of the 2022 campaign, UNITA’s final rally in the district of Cazenga in the capital, Luanda. It was a spectacle of music, dance and speeches that was received enthusiastically by the thousands who flocked to the area behind the site of the Luanda International Fair. The atmosphere was buzzing; over-eager youth almost pushing over the barricades as they tried to get closer to the stage where the UNITA candidates would sit. There was little of the regimented wearing of party colours seen at the MPLA rallies. One of the party’s parliamentary candidates said they were thrilled that ordinary people were coming, not just the party members. And with a wink, “we didn’t have to hand out money to random motorcyclists to turn up, either”. That’s something the ruling MPLA is […]

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Angola Drought Emergency

Humanitarian organizations are warning of an impending food emergency in southern Angola as the region faces the aftermath of the worst recorded drought in nearly half a century.  Launching an urgent eight-million-dollar appeal, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said five consecutive years of severe drought had left more than 1.5 million people at risk of famine.  It’s not known how many may have died already as a result of drought and malnutrition but thousands of starving people braved crocodile-infested rivers to cross the border into Namibia to seek help and survivors reported many dying along the way.  Namibia is repatriating drought refugees who, given the ongoing conditions, are having to regroup in resettlement camps in Angola. The Angola Red Cross has begun delivering primary assistance to the worst-affected areas in the provinces of Huila, Cunene and Namibe.  But the situation is said to be […]

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Angolan Injustice: The Case of the ‘Kidnapped’ Pastor

The reported kidnap of an elderly pastor belonging to the Church of Seventh Day Adventists in Angola made for sensational headlines. Pastor Daniel Cem alleged church leaders had ordered his abduction in November 2015 and claimed his family had to pay a ransom of 30 million Kwanzas (US $220,000 at the time) to secure his release. Pastor Cem named the Adventist Church’s regional Executive Secretary as having organized the kidnap. He then accused the President and Chief Financial Officer of defamation for passing around the church hierarchy an anonymous letter purporting to confess that the kidnap was staged by Cem’s own family to extort money from the church. After a controversial trial in December 2017, six members of the Adventist church, including the three northern region leaders, were found guilty and sentenced to between one and five years in prison. They have been bailed, pending appeal, but are confined to […]

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Angolan Port Authority Seeks End to Sogester Contract

The Danish multinational giant, Maersk, stands accused of making obscene profits at the expense of Angolan dockworkers amid calls for the contract awarded to its subsidiary, Sogester, to be ripped up. The Port of Namibe says it is struggling to pay its workers because it is powerless to revoke a 2014 contract which gives 90% of income to the port’s commercial operator, Sogester, a joint partnership between the Maersk group’s APM Terminals and a company which is the commercial arm of Angola’s ruling MPLA party. According to the Port of Namibe board chairman, António Samuel, “it has been an enormous struggle to safeguard workers’ pay and keep going on the 10%”. The dockworkers’ union agrees – and says it is high time this contract was torn up. The port authority and union are hoping the government of President João Lourenço (elected in September 2017) will step in to review what […]

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The Half-a-Billion-Dollar Scam of Espírito Santo Bank in Angola

In the plunder that has been carried out in Angola, little has been said about the extraordinary role of Portuguese facilitators – especially bank executives, lawyers and intermediaries – in setting up related operations. Little is also said about the extremely harmful role they play in Angola, while pretending to be above reproach. Maka Angola brings to light the US $518.5 million operation orchestrated in 2013 by José Fernando Faria de Bastos, a Portuguese lawyer living in Angola, and Rui Guerra, a Portuguese citizen and then-CEO of Banco Espírito Santo Angola (BESA). Let us start on June 28, 2013. On that day, BESA carried out five credit operations to five shell companies totalling US $379 million. This operation financed the purchase of assets of Espírito Santo Commerce (Escom), 66 percent owned by the Espírito Santo Group (GES) of Portugal, and 30 percent by the Portuguese-Angolan citizen Hélder Bataglia. An addendum […]

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WHO Alarm: Zika Virus on the Rise in Angola

The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a health emergency alert about a possible Zika outbreak in Angola, urging the Angola Ministry of Health to immediately begin implementing its planned interventions to minimize the impact. The WHO’s alert is particularly alarming because it is issued in response to a growing number of cases of microcephaly among newborns in Angola particularly in Luanda. Microcephaly is a rare neurological condition in which an infant’s head is significantly smaller than the heads of other children of the same age and sex. Sometimes detected at birth, microcephaly is usually the result of the brain developing abnormally in the womb or not growing as it should after birth. An infected pregnant women can transmit Zika to her fetus, which can lead to brain abnormalities. As of 29 November 2017, a total of 42 cases of microcephaly had been reported, of which 39 occurred in live […]

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