The Cash-Strapped Kleptocracy Seeks an IMF Bailout

11 de April de 2016 Rui Verde, MakaAngola Legal Analyst

Angolan Finance Ministry officials seem to have learned nothing from the past. With low oil prices dragging the economy into crisis, the Ministry has had to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout. But Angolan officials are so desperate to conceal the extent of their troubles, that their official statement pretends this is a ‘normal’ IMF intervention, not at all like the rescue that Portugal needed just a few years ago. In fact, it’s exactly the same type of financial aid programme that Portugal got in 2011, just as the IMF reported at the time. Portugal was given a three-year aid plan. Angola too is now negotiating a three-year aid plan. According to Min Zhu, the IMF Deputy Managing Director: “We have received a formal request from the Angolan authorities to initiate discussions on an economic program that could be supported by financial assistance from the IMF.” […]

Nuno Dala: A Spirit Unbowed

9 de April de 2016 Rafael Marques de Morais

Nuno Álvaro Dala, one of the imprisoned Angolan dissidents, has been on hunger strike for the past 31 days. So far that’s one day for each of his 31 years of age and almost as many as the number of years that José Eduardo dos Santos has ruled over Angola (37, come September). In another five days, Nuno Dala will overtake his fellow prisoner Luaty Beirão’s record hunger strike of last year. Nuno Dala’s courage is admirable. He is not refusing food because he wishes to be set free. In some respects he is already free. He still has free will – and however brutal or stupid the regime’s behaviour towards him, by his self-denial he shows he is undefeated. Nuno Dala stopped eating because those who serve José Eduardo dos Santos’s mindlessly brutal regime have denied him the means to provide for his ten-month-old baby daughter, his wife Raquel […]

United States Raises Concerns About the 17 Jailed Activists

5 de April de 2016 Maka Angola

Angolan human rights defenders, Rafael Marques de Morais, has given an interview to the Portuguese news agency Lusa about his latest meetings with Obama Administration officials to brief them on the situation in Angola. One of the main concerns underlined in his conversations with US officials was the state of health of two jailed political dissidents, Nito Alves and Nuno Dala, both of whom are gravely ill. Nuno Dala has been on hunger strike for 26 days. “The United States has expressed grave concern over the treatment of these two men who are being held in inhumane conditions in prison and have not received adequate medical attention,” said the rights defender. Briefing Angolan human rights defender Rafael Marques de Morais was in Washington DC this week to brief Obama Administration officials on the fate of the 17 political dissidents recently given long jail terms after a show trial in the […]

General Zé Maria: The Puppet Master

4 de April de 2016 Rafael Marques de Morais

One of the most powerful men in Angola is a septuagenarian soldier accustomed to operating in the shadows. A career military man whose name is feared across the nation. Yet outside Angola his role and legendary status is little known, and even less understood. General António José Maria “Zé Maria” is an interesting character, to say the least. During the ‘War of National Liberation’ (against Portuguese colonial rule) he served in the colonial army. Yet since Independence he has been a key figure behind the scenes, prodigiously rooting out palace intrigues and imaginary coups d’état and purging suspected malcontents. His actions are purposefully directed to reinforcing and consolidating the position of the person who occupies the highest office in the land. As President, José Eduardo dos Santos (familiarly known as Zedú) is the titular Commander-in- Chief. But it’s the man who has his ear, the man who has been his […]

Portugal Supports Impunity in Angola

1 de April de 2016 Mário Crespo

An unholy alliance of three political parties in the Portuguese parliament resulted on March 31 in their voting down the Left Block’s motion to repudiate the verdicts and sentences handed down against Domingos da Cruz, Luaty Beirão, Nito Alves and a further 14 young Angolans, condemned for peacefully manifesting their disagreement with the looting of their homeland by the dictatorial oligarchy led by José Eduardo dos Santos. The PSD (Social Democratic Party) led by Passos Coelho, the CDS (Social Democratic Centre Peoples Party) led by Paulo Portas and the PCP (Portuguese Communist Party) led by Jerónimo de Sousa, have shown themselves to be accomplices of the public servants bought and paid for by the Dos Santos regime for their work in perpetuating the disgusting banality of evil which has become the daily experience of millions of Angolans. Portas, Passos and the Communists are today partners in this repellent neo-colonial expedition […]

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