Neide dos Santos, 24, was sitting in a bus parked near UNITA’s provincial headquarters in Uíge at about 2pm when stones began striking the vehicle. Another activist and the driver were with her.

“The driver ran to close the windows,” she recalls. As the attack intensified, he escaped. Neide remained behind. “The police threw tear-gas grenades inside the bus and I passed out.”

An ambulance took her to the local hospital, where, she says, a doctor described her condition as “critical”. Officers tried to question her while she was receiving treatment, but fellow activists stopped them.

Dina Diangue, 19, was the other passenger. She says she awoke on a seat with her chest burning, got off the bus coughing and collapsed. People carried her to a yard and poured water over her to revive her. She then went back to look for Neide, found her unconscious inside the vehicle and accompanied her to Uíge General Hospital because her condition was so serious. “I still have breathing problems,” Dina says.

They are among 32 UNITA activists named on an injured list obtained by Maka Angola; roughly a third are women. Testimony and records gathered by Maka Angola describe police use of tear gas and rubber projectiles, the alleged firing of live ammunition and one detention.

The provincial government and police say organisers ignored instructions to use an alternative venue and gathered outside the District Court. UNITA says the authorities rejected its proposed sites less than 24 hours before the event and proposed another site, Praça da Independência, which the party described as “unsanitary”. The court was installed about 20 metres from UNITA’s provincial headquarters only two years ago, long after the party established itself at the site. The crucial point is not that UNITA chose to hold a gathering outside a court, but that a sovereign state body was placed where the party already had a legitimate expectation of holding political activities. That changes the legal and political context.

From notice to stalemate

In a letter dated 27 July, seen by Maka Angola, UNITA informed governor José Carvalho da Rocha of the main event marking the anniversary of the birth of its late founder, Jonas Savimbi, and of a national camp organised by its youth wing, JURA, in Negage from 5 to 8 August.

On 3 August it proposed the square outside Cine Moreno, or alternatively the municipal-market square, for the mass rally.

Replying on the governor’s behalf on 6 August, deputy governor Sónia Arlete Fernandes Domingos Cahombo said José Carvalho da Rocha had agreed to a courtesy meeting with UNITA leader Adalberto da Costa Júnior, but rejected both proposed venues as unsuitable because of their location. “As for the venues suggested for the central mass rally, since they do not offer suitable conditions for that purpose, given their location, we inform you that the event should be held in Praça da Independência, with the necessary security,” the letter said. Although the local government did not ban the activity outright, it identified no concrete risk at either proposed venue and did not explain why it considered them unsuitable.

Provincial UNITA secretary Damião Adolfo José Culengana says the letter arrived at about 1.30pm on 7 August, fewer than 24 hours before the rally. Praça da Independência was too unsanitary to receive the crowd, he says, and the late reply left no time to arrange equipment to clean it. A courtesy meeting half an hour later did not resolve the dispute. At 3pm, provincial police commander Commissioner Ernesto Haiyamunye met Culengana and the deputy governor and reportedly urged UNITA, on government instructions, not to use its proposed sites or the area outside its headquarters.

UNITA nevertheless assembled at its headquarters. Videos show that, the previous day, the party had erected a stage outside the building and welcomed a sizeable crowd addressed by its leader. The headquarters and court stand on opposite sides of Rua Comandante Bula, about 20 metres apart. UNITA says it has used the building since 1975 and reoccupied it after the 1991 Bicesse Peace Accords.

The day of the intervention

Salvador dos Santos, the Democratic Bloc’s provincial secretary, says police blocked the city’s main roads from 2am, ordered shops and the municipal market to close, and halted taxi services. He called it “a state of siege”. Restrictions covered Rua do Comércio near Cine Ginásio and Rua Comandante Bula, where the clashes occurred.

According to information gathered by Maka Angola, Paulo Figueiredo Daniel, hired to transport 30 activists from Bembe municipality, was detained while entering the city. His Toyota Dyna was seized and his passengers dispersed.

Culengana says the intervention lasted from 10.30am to 5pm and the police deployment remained in place until 10pm. “It was as if we were at war,” he says, accusing police of using tear gas and live ammunition and attacking UNITA’s premises as people sought shelter.

Witnesses told Maka Angola that a Rapid Intervention Police officer emerged behind the platform and fired into the crowd. A projectile reportedly struck Lussukamo Henriques, 63, in the left leg; a photograph shows an open wound near his knee. Domingos Duarte, 30, was reportedly hit in the left foot. Valentim Moma, 38, says rubber projectiles injured his abdomen and right leg during a second wave after 1pm, as JURA members arrived from Negage. He was seven metres from the headquarters, he says, and three members of the organisation collapsed after inhaling tear gas. “The police had weapons of war. The atmosphere was one of terror. What happened in Uíge, in peacetime, is inexplicable and repugnant,” Moma says.

The official response

Uíge’s provincial police command said it intervened because the activity was outside the District Court, a sovereign state body. Chief Superintendent Freitas Zama, provincial police spokesman and head of institutional communications, told state broadcaster TPA that UNITA had been directed elsewhere. “The forces were immediately deployed to prevent the event from taking place at that location,” he said. He added that it was “also not right to close streets”, calling such conduct “reprehensible”.

In a longer account in the state-owned Jornal de Angola, police said UNITA rejected an alternative venue, blamed the clashes on disorder and attempted vandalism, and described officers’ shots as “warning shots”. The authorities disclosed neither how many injuries or detentions police had recorded nor what ammunition officers used. Nor did they explain why a disagreement over the venue justified force.

Article 4(3) of Law 16/91 on the Right of Assembly and Demonstration permits authorities, for security reasons, to prevent gatherings within 100 metres of the premises of sovereign state bodies, military facilities, prisons, diplomatic missions and party headquarters. Proximity to both the court and UNITA offices could therefore support a venue restriction. But the provision grants discretion on security grounds; it is not an automatic ban. Any prohibition required reasons and an explanation. None was provided. The public police account reviewed by Maka Angola identified no present unlawful threat, did not show why less harmful measures would have been insufficient and did not clarify whether live ammunition had been used. A possible legal basis for restricting the site, which the authorities did not properly establish, does not settle the separate question of force. Venue restrictions and coercive force are separate decisions, each requiring its own lawful basis and a proportionate police response.

What the law requires

Article 47(1) and (2) of the Constitution guarantees peaceful, unarmed assembly and demonstration without authorisation, requiring only prior notice for events in public places.

Law 16/91 requires notice specifying time, place and purpose at least three working days in advance. If authorities prohibit an activity under the law’s restrictions, they must give reasons and notify organisers in writing within 24 hours of receiving the notice; silence amounts to no objection. Uíge’s provincial government missed that deadline.

The law permits a meeting to be stopped only if it departs from its purpose through unlawful acts or seriously and effectively disturbs public order, public tranquillity or citizens’ exercise of their rights. The decision must be recorded in a reasoned report, with a copy delivered to organisers within 12 hours. Police should say whether such a report exists.

In Judgment 1056/2025, issued in the Constitutional Court’s review of the Vandalism Crimes Law, the court held that the right to demonstrate includes public places and roads and the freedom to determine place, time, manner and content. It also recognised that the right is not absolute: restrictions must protect other rights and meet tests of necessity, suitability and proportionality without emptying the right of its essential content.

Law 6/20 on the National Police requires legality, equality, impartiality and neutrality. Article 60 requires coercive measures to meet standards of prudence, moderation, necessity, suitability and proportionality, balancing a present unlawful threat against the force used. The gaps in the police explanation demand an independent investigation. Law 16/91 also provides for the liability of authorities who obstruct the right outside lawful cases.

On this analysis, the venue ban was void for lack of reasons and failure to meet statutory deadlines. That procedural illegality did not, in turn, justify coercive action whose necessity and proportionality the authorities have failed to demonstrate. The National Police’s conduct was therefore unlawful on two counts.

Two parties, two standards

That same day, the MPLA held a local conference to renew party mandates at Cine Ginásio ahead of its ninth congress. Witnesses, photographs and other records gathered by Maka Angola show police blocked Rua do Comércio during the ruling party’s event.

On the same day and at the same time, the MPLA held recreational events, under police protection, in the two squares UNITA had proposed, the very sites the government’s letter deemed unsuitable for the opposition. Although Angola was not in an election campaign, ruling-party flags and symbols covered the city.

The question is no longer simply proximity to a court. It is why two squares deemed unsuitable for the opposition hosted ruling-party activities, and why police protected one party but coerced the other. The government letter does not answer that contradiction.

Speaking anonymously, a long-standing MPLA member and academic told Maka Angola: “If we want an Angola in which Angolans are free, our party must change. In Angola, disagreements are still settled through the barrel of a gun. All Angolans lose.”

The Constitution defines the National Police as non-partisan. When a force under that duty protects the ruling party’s activities and represses those of its opponents under opposite standards, it becomes, in practice, a political police force.

The Uíge events were not isolated. In late July 2025, during a taxi drivers’ stoppage, police violence left at least 29 people dead, hundreds injured and more than 1,200 detained. The authorities have yet to disclose the results of the investigations they announced.

As Angola approaches the 2027 general election, Uíge is a warning. If this becomes the model for managing political contest, electoral competition risks giving way to intimidation and police violence.

The National Police does not exist to defend one party from its opponents. It exists to uphold the democratic rule of law and every citizen’s fundamental rights. Democracy is not measured by the ruling party’s freedom to fill streets with flags under police protection. It is measured by its opponents’ freedom to assemble without roadblocks, tear gas, arrests and gunfire capable of injuring and killing.

On that measure, the events in Uíge were not only unlawful on two counts. They were a test that Angolan democracy failed.

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