Category: Articles

The Angolan immigration services have barred the well-known rapper MCK, from leaving Luanda’s International Airport, to perform at a Rap Festival in Brazil on November 26. MCK told Maka Angola that the immigration officials told him that they had “superior orders” to prevent him from leaving the country. According to the rapper, he asked the immigration authorities “whether this order was based on some legal procedures, whether there was a problem with his passport or visa.” ” They only told me that these were ‘superior orders’ and that the instructions were that they should return my passport only after the TAAG [Angolan airliner]  flight for Rio de Janeiro had left,” said MCK. Once the plane had taken off, the immigration officials returned the passports and the boarding passes of MCK and his back up singer, Toy Fox. Maka Angola tried repeatedly to speak to the immigration services authorities but none […]

Over two days (Thursday and Friday), the clerk of the court read out some 90 pages of the 187-page manuscript of the “Tools to Destroy a Dictatorship and Avoiding a New Dictatorship – Political Philosophy for the Liberation of Angola,” written by political prisoner Domingos da Cruz, during his trial in which he and 16 other youth activists are charged with plotting a rebellion to overthrow the government and attempting to assassinate the president. The manuscript, which served as a manual for the youths’ debates on peaceful means of protest, is being used as the primary evidence of the youths’ intentions to seize power through violent means. Last June, the police arrested 15 of them. The attorney general, army general João Maria de Sousa, and President dos Santos, publicly accused the youth of plotting a coup. Two young female activists were later charged with the same crimes, but remain free while […]

The Office of the Attorney General intends to charge the 17 activists currently on trial in Luanda  with criminal (damage) rebellion for  having written slogans on their  prison uniforms. Defense lawyer David Mendes confirmed the information to Lusa. He is part of the team of four defending the 15 detainees, since June, charged with plotting a rebellion and to assassinate President Dos Santos, while discussing literature on nonviolence. At the beginning of the trial on Monday, the only day the press had access to the court, several of the accused turned up with various phrases, defying president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, written on their uniforms. “Five of them have been charged with having written on their prison uniforms.  The Prosecutor General’s office maintains that the uniforms are government property. They will soon come up with the charge sheets,” said David Mendes with the information that the court has given out on […]

No novelist could ever make this up. We have a trial. Inside, a number of the available seats are filled with supposed relatives of the accused that the very accused have never seen before. There are a large number of law students present who when asked about the law do not say anything and do not want to be photographed. There are also a large number of security personnel — some trying very hard to stay awake. One of the prosecutors, who refuses to provide her name, turns up wearing dark glasses and a wig which covers half of her face. The defense protests that they are not able to see her properly. She insists that she has the right to wear the wig in the style she likes. Outside, the police harass several members of the public protesting in favour of the accused. Diplomats are also harassed to move […]

In the last several weeks, the Angolan government has engaged in an international propaganda campaign to counter what it has called a coordinated effort to smear its alleged good reputation. Indeed, the newly-appointed Ambassador-at-large, Luvualu de Carvalho, has been in Portugal pointing accusatory fingers at supposed ill-meaning interest groups that were misrepresenting the country’s political leaders. The issue gaining the most exposure currently — and the one causing Luanda the biggest headache — is the prolonged detention of the young political prisoners.  One of them, Luaty Beirão, recently concluded a 36-day hunger strike to protest his unjust treatment.  Ambassador Luvualu argued that matters were being blown out of proportion, that the state had a solid case against him and the so-called Angola 15, and that there would be a free, fair, and openly transparent trial. Supporters of the Angola’s 15 insist that, firstly, their prolonged detention contravenes Angolan Law.  Secondly, […]

The young Angolan activists, on trial on charges of rebellion, used the courtroom to continue with their protest against the regime; yesterday they walked barefoot and had messages on their prison uniforms. The public applauded when the young “Revus” [revolutionaries] as they are known, were brought in, and one of them, Benedito Jeremias, had a prison t-shirt with the following inscription on the back “In dubio pro reo” (The principle that one is innocent until found guilty.) Like his 14 detained fellows — and two young females accused of the same crime but who have waited for trial under conditional freedom — Benedito has been detained since June on charges of preparing for rebellion, and making an attempt on the president’s life. The charges are punishable by up to three years — and allow for the accused to be free on bail while waiting for trial. Dressed in the usual […]