Search Results for: housing

Land-Grabbing as a Path to Riches and Status in Angola

Angolan investigative journalist and human rights defender Rafael Marques de Morais has submitted a complaint to the Office of the Attorney General about the behaviour of notorious Kwanza-Sul Governor, General Eusébio de Brito Teixeira, for illegal land-grabbing. The complaint refers to yet more illegal appropriation of rural land, after having already grabbed more than 300 square kilometers to raise cattle and farming.  The Governor is suspected of three criminal offences:  the unlawful transfer of land from the State to an individual; unlawfully re-designating land for real estate development as rural land;  and  assigning  reduced value to these lands below their real commercial value (thus defrauding the State). Documentary evidence submitted with the complaint shows that on May 22nd, 2014, in his role as Governor of Kwanza Sul province,  the General made it known he had granted land surface rights to Ebrite Filhos Ltd., a company he formed with his children […]

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Mothers of Political Prisoners March for their Sons’ Freedom

The mothers and relatives of the 15 political prisoners are set to defy the authorities today, at 13.00, when they attempt to march in Luanda to demand the release of their sons. Yesterday, the Luanda Provincial Government notified the organizers that the march had been prohibited. It has become a routine for the police and security forces to disperse any attempt at anti-government protests with considerable pre-emptive violence, arrests and sometimes kidnapping. The provincial government has clearly changed its position on the march, as it had initially allowed it by citing the constitutional right of peaceful demonstrations. It is now impeding the realisation of the march, allegedly for legal reasons. Reacting to the ban, Leonor Odete João, mother of Afonso Matias “Mbanza Hamza” told Maka Angola “the march will go ahead”. “We will not get to the National Assembly, but we will reach the Largo da Mutamba and send a […]

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Crisis, What Crisis in Angola?

As Angola’s economic crisis deepens, the country’s president has given priority to the construction of a war memorial at an estimated cost of US $72 million, and a further US $73 million going to a phantom category of “non-specific religious affairs and services”.  These projects fall under the Office of Special Works of the Presidency of the Republic. Both expenditures are part of the revised 2015 budget, passed by the National Assembly on March 20, which was slashed by 25 percent (over US $17 billion) – including cuts in the salaries of civil servants. Despite the reduction of the budget due to the fall in oil prices, the president’s  set of priorities are baffling. Oil accounts for approximately 95 percent of Angola’s total exports, and its economy is mono-dependent on this commodity. For instance, the largest state-funded religious project, the construction of the Sanctuary of Muxima for the Catholic Church, […]

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The 2013 Budget Trickery and the Looting in the TB Sanatorium

As the current economic crisis in Angola has deepened, citizens are finally beginning to ask how tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues have been spent. In its report on the 2013 state budget spending, the Court of Accounts sheds light on how many members of the government engaged in squandering and pilfering  public funds. The court carried out fact-finding visits to the Ministries of Construction, Health, Education, Transport, Energy and Water, as well as Urbanisation and Housing. The report will be discussed by the National Assembly next June, but Maka Angola is providing an exclusive preview of some of the disturbing findings. At the top of the list is the Construction Ministry, which entered into contracts to the tune of US $2 billion without “prior authorisation from the CA [Court of Accounts], and which were not submitted to prior oversight” as required by law. The CA highlights the […]

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National Director of State Assets in Major Land-Grabbing Fraud

On June 5, 2014, the national director of State Assets at the Ministry of Finance, Sílvio Franco Burity, successfully petitioned the governor of Kwanza-Sul, General Eusébio de Brito Teixeira, for the legalization of 8,974 hectares of land, to be used for his own private agricultural and cattle rearing projects. The land in question is located in the commune of Quimbalanga, in the municipality of Mussende, and consists of two contiguous holdings. Sílvio Franco Burity applied for the title deeds of the first holding, of 4,751 hectares, as the representative of Grano Gado Lda, a private company. The director formally owns fifty per cent of the shares in Grano Gado, while his partner and managing director of the company, Manuel dos Santos da Silva Ferreira, owns the other half. Unconcerned with current legislation, whether due to impunity or arrogance, Angolan leaders ignore the constitutional principle that the land belongs to the […]

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From a CIA Conspiracy Theory to the Murdering of Activists

The trial regarding the 2012 killing of Angolan political activists Alves Kamulingue and Isaías Cassule, which resumed on November 18, continues today. The central question still concerns who, in the chain of command of the state and the ruling MPLA, ordered their deaths? What is known is that the two had been involved in organizing a demonstration on 27 May 2012, which was intended to involve former members of the Presidential Guard and demobilized soldiers. After negotiations with and pressure from the Presidential Intelligence Bureau, the former presidential guards pulled out of the protests. A further question is why the alleged killers of both men are being charged in a single case, although each death involved a different group of suspects. A total of seven suspects have been detained. In the Kamulingue case, two National Intelligence and State Security (SINSE) officials have been charged: António Gamboa Vieira Lopes and Paulo […]

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Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court Defends Land-Grabbing

A request for the acquisition of several thousand hectares of land in Kwanza-Sul province, in the name of the chief justice of the Angolan Constitutional Court, Rui Ferreira, has raised suspicions of illegal practice. In the documents, the judge appears as the representative of a private company. This is the story. On the remains of the crumbling wall of an overgrown colonial house, someone has written: “Welcome [poster printed with a photograph of President dos Santos] to Lonhe.” The commune, part of the Quibala municipality in Kwanza-Sul province, is a place where time has stood still for its inhabitants. The polite message on the wall is much appreciated by top Angolan public officials. According to documents obtained by Maka Angola, Chief Justice Rui Ferreira and two of his children have been fast-tracked in the process of acquiring a total of 24,812 hectares of land in Lonhe. The area is three […]

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Measures In Favor and Against Mosques in Angola

As an illustration of Maka Angola’s investigation into the treatment of Islam in Angola, here is a chronological list of measures taken by the government regarding Islamic practice in the provinces of Luanda, Lunda Norte, Zaire, Bié and Malanje. The last of these mechanisms were decreed on January 29, 2014 by the Luanda Provincial Court. With reference to Case no. 005713-C, the court ordered the temporary closure of the Nurr Al Islamia Mosque in the Mártires de Kifangondo area of Luanda, because of a dispute between two Imams: Diakité A’dama, a Malian, and Alhaji Fode, a Gambian. Created in 1995, the mosque is the second largest in Angola, large enough to accommodate over 1,500 worshippers. In his ruling, the judge emphasised that the Islamic Community of Angola (CISA) had a request for recognition under consideration by the Religious Affairs Department of the Ministry of Justice. This statement is incorrect. CISA […]

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President Dos Santos Clings on to the Old Guard

President José Eduardo dos Santos recently appointed General Kundi Paihama as governor of Huambo province, the second most geostrategically important province in Angola. Paihama, 70, is an important figure in the regime’s old guard. Neither his age nor his history of incompetence and of involvement in shady business dealings stood in the way of his appointment. Paihama was thought to be approaching retirement. In an interview with Radio LAC in August he declared “my dream is to live in the fields, in the countryside, and dedicate myself to farming. This is what I will doubtless do one day when I retire from government.” Will he be tilling his fields when he is 80 or 85 years old? There is an ever more urgent need for the government to respond to the expectations of a young population that is making increasing demands in the areas of education, employment and housing. Paihama, […]

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Margoso: Urban Development for the Rich, Eviction for the Poor

José Agostinho Quiteque, 31, represents his family’s third generation to be born in the neighbourhood of Margoso, in the Maianga district of Luanda. Nestled on the hillside between the neighbourhoods of Prenda and Bairro Azul, and Avenida Revolução de Outubro, Margoso is to be demolished to make way for a new housing development for the wealthy. The Quiteque family has lived in the area for more than fifty years. Family patriarch Agostinho Quiteque, born in Kwanza Sul, saw the birth of his first child in Margoso in the wooden house that he built on the site now occupied by Prenda Clinic. The colonial authorities granted him another site a little lower down the hill where he built a permanent house of bricks and mortar in which he lived until he died four months ago at the age of 81. All four of his children were born in Margoso, and when […]

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