Author: Maka Angola

Angola’s Sovereign Wealth Fund – the US $5 billion logo

The Angolan Sovereign Wealth Fund (FSDEA) was launched in October to great fanfare, receiving global media coverage from the likes of the New York Times, CNN and Euromoney. Local and international journalists packed into the shiny new offices by Sagrada Família upmarket area in Luanda to admire the glass and steel spiral staircase, lacquered furniture and raw silk wallpaper. They were given stylish press packs featuring black and white photographs of smiling Angolan children and told how the FSDEA would change Angola for the better and preserve the country’s great oil wealth for the use of future generations. After a lavish lunch buffet complete with drinks served by a suited barman, there was a film shown by a South African production team who had collated clips of “ordinary” Angolans saying how much they loved their country, and a mumbled speech and Powerpoint presentation from Board Chairman Armando Manuel. In the […]

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Bonfire for Censored Angolan Newspaper

This weekend’s edition of the weekly newspaper Semanário Angolense ended up in a bonfire. Last Saturday morning, Media Investe, the company that owns the Angolan weekly Semanário Angolense, decided to censor the edition, of October 27, because it included an almost full version of the speech of the National Union’s for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) leader, Isaías Samakuva, on the State of the Nation. Journalists from Semanário Angolense told Maka Angola that Media Investe, a company controlled by high-ranking officers of the State Security and Intelligence Services (SINSE), ordered the burning of the copies of the newspaper that had already been printed. Maka Angola obtained a digital copy of the censored newspaper edition, which includes the speech of Samakuva on pages 8, 9 and 10. The October 23 speech of the leader of the main opposition party, was in response to president Dos Santos’ refusal to address the […]

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Oil Workers in Prison for Striking

The 15 Angolan oil workers who went on strike aboard the oil vessel FPSO Gimboa, on October 3, to demand better working conditions, were questioned yesterday and today by the public prosecution in the oil-rich coastal town of Soyo, in the north of Angola. The workers are under arrest and are yet to be charged. The vessel, a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit, has been producing and storing crude from Bloc 4/05. This block is a joint-venture between Sonangol Pesquisa & Produção (50 percent), the Norwegian multinational Statoil (20 percent), and private Angolan companies belonging to government officials and Sonangol executives, Somoil (15 percent) and ACREP (15 percent). A special operation comprising members of the Rapid Intervention Police, Anti-Riot Unit, state security and the investigation police landed, last Sunday, on the oil vessel to put down the strike, and arrested the workers. The strikers’ union representative, Joaquim Domingos, […]

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Presidential Guards’ Trial to Resume

The trial of 15 soldiers of the Angola’s Presidential Guard will resume in the Luanda Regional Military Tribunal on Friday, September 28. The members of the Central Protection and Security Unit (DCPS) in the Military Bureau of the Angolan Presidency are accused of the crime of making “demands in a group”, for claiming fair wages and better working conditions. During the September 21 hearing, the judge heard three witnesses to try to establish whether the accused had made group demands in an unruly or riotous manner, as they are accused of doing. The witnesses confirmed only that the soldiers had delivered a petition without any provocative or aggressive behaviour. At an earlier session on September 18, the military judge suspended the session in order to assess whether the law in terms of which the men were accused was in line with the Angolan Constitution. The Law on Military Crimes of […]

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Presidential Guards at the Service of Private Business

The trial of 15 Angolan presidential guards, accused in connection with a petition in which they demanded better salaries and working conditions, has drawn attention to a web of corrupt practices in which military officers set up private business with state funds as their capital, and using soldiers as their labourers. The guards on trial are members of the Central Protection and Security Unit (DCPS), a unit that was set up in 2004 under the auspices of the Military Bureau of the Angolan Presidency. Its supposed function was to protect infrastructure rehabilitation projects throughout Angola, as part of the National Reconstruction Office (GRN) that was attached to the Military Bureau under the leadership of General Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias “Kopelipa”. The DCPS was meant to protect the Chinese companies and workers who were involved in the projects. These projects have been worth more than US$10 billion, financed by the Chinese […]

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Diamond Digger Shot Dead in Cafunfo

Nelson Miguel Muatxicungo, a diamond digger, was shot dead on Friday evening by guards working for the private security company Bicuar in the Lunda Norte province, Angola. Muatxicungo worked in the informal sector of the diamond industry in the Tchimango area of Cafunfo, part of Cuango municipality. He died after being shot in the chest around 8pm. Bicuar was hired six months ago by the mining company Sociedade Mineira do Cuango, which controls the diamond sector in that region. The largest private security company in the country, Teleservice, previously provided security services there. The informal diggers, known in Angola as garimpeiros, often have no choice but to bribe the guards in order to be allowed to continue digging. “On Monday [September 10] we paid US$150 to four Bicuar guards at the Tchimango post in order to be able to dig diamonds together with them,” explained Monteiro Joaquim, 51, who organised […]

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Electoral Fraud Allegations and Detentions in Bié

By António Capalandanda: UNITA is accusing the Provincial Electoral Commssion (CPE) in Bié of falsifying the consolidated results lists from polling stations and is contesting the provisional electoral results that give the MPLA a victory in the province, with 69.79 percent of votes. According to the provisional results, UNITA has 36.2 percent of the votes and CASA-CE has 0.98 percent. The UNITA spokesman in Bié, Kanjomba Leite, told Maka Angola that five false results statements had been found at polling station 029 (Helena de Almeida neighbourhood), polling station 11 (Boa Vista neighbourhood) and in one of the polling stations in Kunje in the Kuito municipality. In a letter to the Bié CPE, UNITA’s provincial secretary Elioty Ekolelo said that the statements of results from polling stations in Liwema, Njimba Silili, Ekovongo, Kamundongo and Tchikala, in the Kuito municipality, where UNITA has strong support, were not handed to the Municipal Electoral Commission. […]

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CASA-CE Candidate Detained

Dimacha da Conceição André, a CASA-CE parliamentary candidate in Friday’s election in Angola, has been under detention since Thursday, August 30, after being arrested at a demonstration outside the National Electoral Commission (CNE) headquarters in Maianga, Luanda. She was one of eight demonstrators detained by police, along with six passersby. Of the 14 detainees, 13 were still in custody on Saturday night. About 20 demonstrators marched on Thursday afternoon to demand that the party’s electoral observers receive accreditation. Just over 100 metres from the CNE building, police officers fired live ammunition to disperse the demonstrators and then began beating them with batons. The demonstrators tied their hands together with yellow ribbons, the party colour. “In order to avoid them accusing us of acts of violence, to make it impossible for us to be accused of throwing stones at the authorities, we tied up our hands and marched like that,” explained […]

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Land Rush End in Summary Trials

A rumour that the municipal administration of Cacuaco, Luanda, was to distribute land in the farming area known as Kilometre 30, resulted in almost 100 detentions and summary convictions by the Cacuaco municipal court on Monday, August 13. Maka Angola has confirmed that more than 40 people, 22 of them women, were sentenced individually to a suspended prison sentence of three months, converted to a 49,000 kwanza fine (US $490). The news that plots of land were to be allocated prompted multitudes of people to the area. But for no apparent reason, members of the National Police at the scene started arresting people at random. Roque Augusto, one of those present, explained that his family went to the site and claimed a plot in the zone that was supposedly being distributed. According to him, his family didn’t even occupy the plot. “Last Saturday, a large team from the National Police […]

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Low Batteries for Manuel Vicente in Malanje

By Ezequiel Fragoso   The campaign speech in Malanje August 11 by the MPLA’s vice-presidential candidate, Manuel Vicente, bore little relation to reality and found little favour with local MPLA activists. For several days, Angolan National Radio’s provincial outlet announced that more than 100,000 MPLA activists and friends of the party had been mobilised to attend Manuel Vicente’s rally on Saturday, at the former party’s fair in the Catepa neighbourhood of Malanje city. To accommodate the large crowd, the Malanje municipal administration demolished, last week, ten classrooms attached to the Feira Primary School. The provincial director of Education, Gabriel Alexandre Boaventura, told the press that the demolition was part of a previous project that “is in line with our plans since the beginning of the year”. The pupils are currently having a break from school because of the electoral period. Boaventura promised that another school, Patrice Lumumba, would be renovated […]

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