Category: Articles

Isabel dos Santos in Sonangol: Fox Put in Charge of the Henhouse

It doesn’t get any more blatant than this.  One of Africa’s worst kleptocrats (according to Forbes Magazine and Transparency International amongst others) demonstrates his unshakeable assurance that he does not expect to be called to account. No lessons learnt here from the trial of Hissene Habre. Barely a week after reports emerged that the ‘billionaire’ daughter of Angola’s President of 37 years (and counting) only amassed her fortune in stock acquisition thanks to a nifty diversion of funds from the state-owned oil company Sonangol, who does President José Eduardo dos Santos name to head the Angolan oil giant?  None other than his favoured heiress, Isabel.   Should Angola now expect Isabel to repay Sonangol the seed money funnelled through front companies Exem Africa and Esperaza Holdings for her shares in the Portuguese oil and gas company GALP?    Or is it more likely that she will organize a massive cover […]

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Just Call Him “General Toyota”

Maka Angola has learned that some 300 motor vehicles imported into Angola in 2008 for the use of officers serving in the Military Intelligence and Security Service, have instead been retained in a parking lot at the Morro Bento quarters in Luanda. Sources within Military Intelligence told Maka Angola that the vehicles, which include Toyota Land Cruiser, Hilux and Yaris models, were imported at a total cost of US $7  million to the public purse.  But they have yet to be distributed to their intended recipients, in spite of repeated complaints to the office of the President of the Republic. The sources allege that the head of the Military Intelligence and Security Service, General Zé Maria, has kept the vehicles as a private fleet: “Several of the vehicles have been diverted quite openly to the General’s family and friends.  It’s a blatant abuse of power, and it is jeopardizing vital […]

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Isabel dos Santos: Africa’s Richest Woman and the Lie of Her Assets

When Isabel dos Santos sits down to count her billions, as Africa’s richest woman, much of that fortune is in stocks and shares which she counts as her own. Forbes estimates her wealth at US $3.3 billion. The reality, however, is that a large proportion (almost two thirds of her fortune) estimated at 1.6 billion Euros (US $1.8 billion) according to the Diário Economico’s calculations, corresponds to stocks in the Portuguese oil and gas company, Galp, which legally belong to the Angolan National Oil Company, Sonangol. President José Eduardo dos Santos’s daughter told the Wall Street Journal last February: “I’m not financed by any state money or any public funds.” She insisted “I don’t do that.” Ever since the announcement that she had become a billionaire, Isabel has done her utmost to justify her fortune as “clean”, the result of entrepreneurial expertise which began with her selling eggs at the […]

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General Zé Maria Warns: The Devil Has Infiltrated Angola

The mental health of the head of the Military Intelligence and Security Services (SISM), General José António Maria, also known as “Zé Maria”, was called into question this week at a gathering of nearly one hundred of his subordinates, among them several generals. During a four-hour meeting held on Tuesday in commemoration of the Catholic holiday of the Pentecost, he repeatedly spoke about the presence of the Devil in Angola. On two large screens placed in the Officers’ Mess hall, General Zé Maria showed numerous images of Angolan investigative journalist Rafael Marques de Morais, with the heading “The Devil Paid By the CIA”. In his homily about the “devil”, the general argued that the journalist was Angola’s greatest enemy and must be treated as such. To demonstrate the “real” power of the enemy, he drew on various examples, accusing some of his senior officers, for instance, of erecting tall buildings […]

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The Emperor Has no Clothes and the Naked Hunger Strike

The only two females in the Luanda Book Club case, Rosa Conde (29) and Laurinda Gouveia (26), have been on hunger strike since May 8 in protest at their continued detention in Viana prison, pending their appeal against a verdict and prison sentence which have been widely condemned as unfair and part of a political show-trial. They are also protesting against the attacks they suffered on the same day at the hands of dozens of other inmates. “When we were attacked, one of the prison guards who watched the beatings said [to their colleagues] ‘Let them kill themselves’. We are running terrible risks here. We are not safe,” stated Rosa Conde who is serving a sentence of two years and three months. The two young women had also been refusing to wear prison clothing until Rosa Conde collapsed on Wednesday.  She suffers from pneumonia, and was admitted to the prison […]

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Tales from the Crypt: Angola’s Hidden Hospital Horrors

Morgue Tax “Sick people don’t have to pay.  Only the dead.” At face value, this remark from one of the administrators of the Regional Hospital in Cafunfo, in the province of Lunda Norte seems to make no sense.  Then clarity emerges: the town does not have electricity. The living have to put up with no electricity.  But the families of the recently deceased are forced to pay “for a day or two’s refrigeration in the morgue” or deal with the gruesome consequences of a decomposing corpse. Cecilia Matias was only sixteen when she died from yellow fever.  Her Aunt, Madalena Matias revealed that that the grieving family had to find the equivalent of nearly four hundred dollars for Cecilia’s body to be preserved while they arranged her funeral. “We bought two {200 litre) barrels of diesel at the pump, at a cost of 64.000 kwanzas, to keep Cecilia’s body preserved […]

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Angola Travel Warning

Foreign nationals in the Angolan capital, Luanda, are being advised to take extra precautions after a recent spate of kidnappings.  The crime wave has prompted the United States to issue a security warning, highlighting what its Embassy in Luanda calls “developing crime trends”. In the past two months alone, Chinese, French, and Belgian nationals have been kidnapped by gunmen who demanded a ransom.  The victims were released unharmed within a few days once the ransom was paid.  The Angolan authorities suspect these crimes were all carried out by the same group and they have speculated that the recent murders of two Portuguese citizens may be linked to the kidnappings. According to the US Embassy in Luanda, the incidents revealed so far include the March 30 interception of a Lebanese-Belgian citizen driving near his home in the city centre, forcibly abducted by armed men but later released on payment of an […]

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Pen Drive Lands Child in Viana Prison

Bastos Mateus Elias has been held in Viana Prison for nearly two months on suspicion of stealing a pen drive. He’s just been transferred to the tents, which serve as a makeshift infirmary and a cell for the sick among others. Conditions in the tents are no better than the two other areas he has already passed through since being detained. Initially he was in the holding pen, where prisoners say sexual assaults, or demands for sexual favours in exchange for food, are commonplace.  He was later transferred to Cell D6, where he shared it with nearly 50 other adult prisoners, some of them on remand, others already convicted and serving their sentences. But Bastos Mateus Elias was born on January 11, 2003 – he is only just thirteen years old. His mother, Samba Mateus told Maka Angola that she was away in Kwanza Sul province when her son was […]

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Witness to Slaughter: The Mount Sumi Massacre

Meet Raúl Xavier.  The 25-year-old was one of hundreds of followers of Pastor José Julino Kalupeteka, the Angolan founder of a breakaway Adventist sect called ‘Christian Church of the 7th Day – Light of the World’. Raúl Xavier was one of the first to run to Pastor Kalupeteka’s aid on April 16, 2015 when provincial police officers, backed by special units from the Angolan army, attacked the sect’s camp in the rural village of São Pedro de Sumé, in the central Angolan province of Huambo. Nursing a wound after a bullet went through his right ankle, he ended up witnessing what has become known as the ‘Mount Sumi Massacre’, from his hiding place on the rooftop of Kalupeteka’s house. On April 5, 2016 – just eleven days short of the first anniversary of the bloody events on Mount Sumi –  Pastor Kalupeteka was sentenced to 28 years in prison by […]

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Caluquembe Police Fire on Students

From Angola comes yet another report of out-of-control police officers shooting at demonstrators. Three students were wounded, one of them seriously, when police officers opened fire without warning as the youngsters were taking part in a protest march last week in the central Angolan town of Caluquembe, in the province of Huíla. The students were protesting over demands for extra money in connection with their studies, after a local authority meeting decreed that emoluments would be added to tuition fees.  They were also protesting at the summary dismissal of teachers who did not go along with the move. Two of the injured were named as 17-year-old Paulo Alfredo Cabral, a student of economics and law at the Novo Horizonte college and 21-year-old Cecília Camia Francisco, who is a student at the Teacher Training college. Both received gunshot wounds to their legs. “In all, three young people were shot.  Two were […]

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