Category: Articles

Attacks Against Activists Increase

Activist Adolfo Campos André, aged 32, survived an attack yesterday, June 15, when he was on his way home at about 11P.M. Two Toyota Landcruisers blocked his car, a Chevrolet Spark, in Petrangol Road in Luanda. Adolfo André, who is currently unemployed, told Maka Angola that four unknown individuals, armed with AK47s, got out of the vehicles and surrounding him, pointing their guns at him. “I got out of the car with my hands in the air,” he said. According to his statement, two of the individuals struck him on the face with the ends of their guns at the same time, leaving him with injuries next to his right eye. “I fell to the ground bleeding, and one of the men got ready to shoot at me but the other told him not to. They left straight away and I shouted for help,” Adolfo André said. A family member […]

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A Routine of Kidnappings

Five unidentified individuals abducted youth protest organizer Gaspar Luamba on June 14, in Luanda. For six hours and a half, they interrogated and harassed him. At around 10 A.M., as the activist finished a class on political sociology, at the Angolan Institute for International Politics (ISA), two classmates informed him that two individuals would like to speak to him downstairs. According to his narrative, when he went down, from the first floor, he saw no such individuals in the yard, and walked out of the premises. Mr. Luamba, aged 25, is a first-year student of international relations and political sciences at ISA. In the street, some hundred meters from the institute, two men approached him, and politely asked him to get into a car without any resistance to avoid alerting the passersby. As he hesitated, a pickup truck Mitsubishi L200 sped to cut his retreat, two men pulled out, one […]

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The Presidency’s Military Bureau and the Kidnappings

It is now two weeks since Alves Kamulingue, 30, was abducted while walking around downtown Luanda at midday on May 27. Kamulingue was on his way to a demonstration that had been scheduled to bring together former members of the Presidential Guard Unit (UGP) and war veterans to demand the payment of their pensions. On May 29, his friend Isaías Cassule, 34, one of the organisers of the protest, was also seized at dusk in the Cazenga district of Luanda. Kamulingue’s wife, Isa Rodrigues, has received anonymous phone calls that have claimed the missing men are in a police unit somewhere on the outskirts of Luanda. These rumours have started to circulate, including among journalists, contradicting other rumours that have spread on the internet claiming that the men have been executed. The calls come from unknown numbers and are then switched off so that the families cannot call back and […]

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BAI: The Regime’s Banking Laundromat

In recent years, the Angolan financial market has been led by Banco Africano de Investimentos – BAI (African Investment Bank), a banking institution previously named Banco Angolano de Investimentos (Angolan Investment Bank). To a certain extent, the shareholding structure of the bank reflects its success as well as the institutionalization of public assets’ transfer to public officials, for their illicit enrichment. Praised at US $8 billion, BAI currently holds a portfolio of deposits and credits estimated, by the Angolan National Bank, at US $10.4 billion and US $3.2 billion, respectively. At its inception, in 1996, Sonangol was BAI’s main investor, with 18.5 percent of its shares. Over the years, Sonangol quietly transferred 10 percent of its shares to the private ownership of high-ranking officials, besides the ones who, from the start, already owned considerable shares of the banks stock. By way of illustration, the table below shows only the list […]

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Political Kidnappings in Angola

A group of former presidential guards had planned to march towards the presidential palace, on May 27, in protest against the social and economic conditions in which they were living. The date is filled with symbolism. In 1977, a march towards the presidential palace was used to justify the massacre of tens of thousands of people by the late president Agostinho Neto and his supporters, as a purported measure against a coup attempt. The tragedy of May 27 is still an open wound in Angolan society and a traumatizing event for many families who never recovered the bodies of their loved ones or knew what happen to them. The protest of last week did not materialize as the Military Bureau of the Presidency (Casa Militar) and the Presidencial Guard Unit (UGP) met with the leaders to address their concerns. But, on the same day, a local FM broadcaster, Radio Despertar, […]

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Manuel Vicente: Transparently Corrupt

By Ana Silva   The scheduling of Election Day on August 31 casts a new light on the recent press conference that presented the Performance Report on Executive Activity for the first quarter of 2012. Manuel Vicente, Minister of State for Economic Coordination, lavished detailed praise on the government’s economic advances during his presentation to the media. He referred to newly constructed factories, schools and social housing, as well as investments in transportation infrastructure, and highlighted the launch of provincial radio broadcasters and regional television stations. The minister’s account may have led casual observers to believe that Angola is enjoying a period of true social and economic progress. The country’s economic growth is unequalled, thanks above all to the rise in oil production and prices on the international market. Yet the scene that Vicente described left out the vast majority of Angola’s population, which continues to live in abject misery, […]

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A Day in Court to Remember

Today I had a memorable court experience. I went to witness the trial of a fellow journalist, Ramiro Aleixo, and found myself stealing away moments of his day in court. The judge and the public prosecutor spent a brief but distracting time expressing their displeasure with an article I wrote on the first day of the proceedings, on May 11. Ramiro Aleixo stands vaguely accused of defaming and slandering the “military justice” for two articles he wrote nearly five years ago on the trial and conviction of the former director of the Angolan Intelligence Service (Serviços de Inteligência Externa), General Fernando Garcia Miala. The former spymaster had initially been under investigation for an attempted coup, but was later charged and convicted for disobedience. For calling the trial a farce, the journalist was put on the dock. Upon realizing my presence in the courtroom, judge Alfredo Lourenço Martins had quite a […]

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Forced Evictions in Samba in the Dead of Night

A group of more than 150 officers of the Luanda Provincial Government’s Auxiliary Police, supported by heavily armed members of the National Police, demolished more than 80 makeshift houses on the seashore in the Mabunda area of Samba municipality, in Luanda. Some of the demolished dwellings were storehouses for fish and fishing equipment. At about 3.00 am on the night of May 24, the police knocked on the doors of the shacks to get the residents out, then immediately used wheel loaders to destroy the structures and everything inside them, and loaded the debris onto trucks. Luciano Macala, a fisherman, lost eight freezers that he used to store fish, as well as fishing equipment and other items that were in his storehouse. His case is typical. On 10 April 2012, he had paid 25,520 kwanzas (US $250) in taxes, plus 8,510 kwanzas (US $85) to the Luanda Port Captaincy for […]

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Pro-Dos Santos Militias Attack Activists at Home

A group of about 15 people attached to Angolan pro-government militias, armed with pistols, machetes and iron rods, have attacked the group of young people who have been co-ordinating demonstrations against President José Eduardo dos Santos since March 2011. President Dos Santos’ 32 year rule is tied for the longest in Africa. Shortly after 10pm on Tuesday night the attackers burst into the home of rap artist Casimiro Carbono in Luanda’s Nelito Soares neighbourhood, where ten youths had gathered. With pistols in their hands, the attackers violently beat Gaspar Luamba, Américo Vaz, Mbanza Hamza, Tukayano Rosalino, Alexandre Dias dos Santos, Jang Nómada, Massilon Chindombe, Mabiala Kianda, and Jeremias Manuel Augusto “Explosivo Mental”. Their host, Casimiro Carbono, avoided the attacks as he had gone outside a few moments earlier to take a telephone call. Afonso Mayanda, known as “Mbanza Hamza”, 26, said the attackers carried out the attacks in a quick […]

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Hotel Talatona and the Scavangeing of Sonangol

The Talatona Convention Centre (CCTA) is one example of the large-scale investments that Sonangol, the state oil company, has been making in Angola in order to diversify its activity beyond the petroleum sector. At a cost of $149.1 million, the centre includes a five-star hotel called the Tatalona Convention Hotel (HCTA), which was opened on 18 December 2009 by president José Eduardo dos Santos. Sonangol’s investments outside of the oil sector have served as the most effective mean to divert hundreds of millions in public funds to an inner circle of senior government officials and company directors. CCTA is only one of these schemes. On 8 November 2006, Sonangol set up CCTA in partnership with the Angolan private companies Simaroco and Oil International Supply Services S.A. (OISS). This happened six months after the opening of the $60 million convention centre by the then vice-president Fernando Dias dos Santos. On the […]

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