Category: Politics

President Dos Santos Wants Dictatorial Control of the Net

Angola’s President for the past 36 years, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, has used his traditional end of year speech to announce legal measures to control social media and the internet, which he feels have been offending and humiliating him. Announcing his main projects for the New Year, the President ignored the famine currently affecting residents in the southern province of Cunene along with the many other challenges faced by the Angolan people.  Instead, he is prioritizing further ways to silence the growing criticism of his increasingly-dictatorial regime. This is equally the case with Angola’s ‘Marie Antoinette’, Isabel dos Santos, the President’s billionaire daughter.  This Christmas she had a  “Let them Eat Cake” moment, choosing to spend US $2 million on bringing the Anaconda rapper Nicki Minaj to Luanda rather visiting Cunene in her role as president of the Angolan Red Cross to assist local communities severely affected by the drought. Social […]

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Isabel dos Santos, the Princess-President?

I have never been taken in with fables. One such fairytale it that the current vice-president of Angola, Manuel Vicente, would succeed President José Eduardo dos Santos, who has been in power for 36 years. I always believed that the power would be eventually transferred to the son-prince José Filomeno dos Santos, whom the father appointed as head of Angola’s Sovereign Wealth Fund. What did I see recently? The daughter-princess Isabel dos Santos was posing next to Nicki Minaj the US rapper of Anaconda fame. What business does this billionaire egg vendor, as Isabel once claimed to have been, have to do there? This is a kind of exposure that does not benefit her image as a manager or businesswoman. In any case, President Dos Santos recently appointed his billionaire daughter to lead the Luanda Metropolitan Master Plan, to revamp the capital city. The father gave a seat to the […]

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Welcome to Angola, Nicki Minaj

Dear Nicki, I welcome you to Angola. I am a journalist and human rights defender who has been at the forefront of exposing the dictatorial ills of the regime, whose first daughter and princess of state-looting, Isabel dos Santos, is your host. Moments ago I received a message on my cell phone, from an UNITEL operator  offering me a ticket to your concert tomorrow with the purchase of a 900 kwanzas (US $4.50) phone credit. That is for your concert “for the people” in the Coqueiros Stadium, with a capacity of 20,000 people.  UNITEL is the company jointly owned by Isabel dos Santos and the Angolan state, which is paying your fees. In spite of all the advertising campaigns undertaken by UNITEL to promote your concert “for the people”, sales have been in a slump. At 900 kwanzas per ticket, the concert is basically free, yet people are still not […]

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President Dos Santos Illegally Inflates Daughter’s Fortune

Recently, Maka Angola published an article about Isabel dos Santos’ purchase of 65% of Portuguese power solutions company Efacec, for 200 million Euros. In reaction, the Portuguese weekly, Expresso, published a front-page article saying a large part of the money used by Winterfell to buy Efacec was financed by a Portuguese bank. This article was an attempt to dispel suspicions about the dubious source of the money.  The article raised more doubts as it became clear that the Angolan government financed the other part of takeover. The interested parties rushed the deal, and settled it on October 23. The banks that financed this “large part” are Caixa Geral de Depositos, the BCP, BPI, Montepio and BIC, according to an official press release. BCP, BPI, Montepio and BIC are dominated by Angolan capital; that is, Isabel dos Santos and Sonangol.  Therefore, this is a situation in which banks lend money to […]

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After Dos Santos: More of the Same?

  In Angola’s only open and free election in 1992, the question on the minds of most voters was: Should I vote for the “Killers” or the “Thieves?” The former rebel movement UNITA of today bears no resemblance to the killers of old, but the ruling MPLA has taken stealing to a new and unprecedented level. Once MPLA leaders got a green light and carte blanches from their boss that they could steal with impunity, they plundered the national treasury without fear of punishment. President José Eduardo dos Santos made a famous speech in 2009 in which he said that he would have “zero tolerance for corruption!” The fact that no senior MPLA leader has been prosecuted suggests that either dos Santos’ campaign was successful in shutting down crime altogether or he has an acute case of myopia and is not able to see anything below his nose. The fact that […]

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Presidential Guard who Shot Dead Opposition Activist Acquitted

The Luanda Provincial Court yesterday acquitted the soldier from the Presidential Guard Unit who shot dead an opposition activist in November 2013.  After the judge pronounced the acquittal, there were protests outside the courtroom prompting the intervention of the police. The prosecution had charged the soldier Desidério Barros of murder, which would have been punishable by up to 20 years in prison.  The soldier had fired two shots that killed Manuel Hilberto Ganga, leader of the youth wing of CASA-CE [Electoral Coalition for the Salvation of Angola]. According to the Angolan police, the youth leader, then aged 32, was found violating the security perimeter of the presidency, to put up anti-regime posters, which the court found to be offensive to president José Eduardo dos Santos. The court concluded that the soldier, aged 30, had acted properly, taking into account the security perimeter wall around the president’s palace, and that the victim, after being […]

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Rapper MCK Forbidden to Leave Angola

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 […]

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Rememberance of the Activist Shot Dead by the Presidential Guard

Your Excellency, the president of Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos, By 23 November 2015, my brother Ganga will have been dead for two years. Your presidential security unit killed my brother. The National Police issued a statement the next day, in defense of my brother’s killer that read as follows: “The Police General Command would like also to inform that in the early hours of the [November] 23 [2013] , around 01.30, here was a violation of the presidential security cordon, at Rua do Povo, by eight elements of  CASA-CE, who were  unlawfully posting subversive propaganda against the state and it’s leaders, the same having been promptly neutralized by a patrol unit from the presidential palace guards, resulting in their detention. “Meantime, during the transfer of this group to the Presidential Security Unit, to be presented to the officer in charge, who would have forwarded them to the National Police, one of the group, […]

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The Comedians’ Justice

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 […]

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Writing on Prison Uniforms is as Bad as Plotting a Coup

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 […]

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