Search Results for: Benguela

Crashing Oil Prices, Propaganda and the Angolan Recipe for Disaster

Throughout the Angolan capital, Luanda, strategically located billboards announce a country being happily stewarded through development by the government. “Building a prosperous Angola based on solidarity”, is the boastful slogan across all ads celebrating the government’s achievements in all spheres of life. One such billboard celebrates “more electricity, more development”, in spite of the regular power outages. Such a massive propaganda exercise outside the electoral period has a precedent only in the early 1970s, when the Portuguese colonial authorities desperately tried to sell the idea that their rule was making people very happy, and independence could ruin all such great achievements. Nonetheless, this propaganda is in full swing at a time when the steady drop in the oil price on international markets could be good news for the Angolan people and a bad omen for their rulers. As a major countermeasure, last December the presidency decreed a 20 percent rise […]

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The MPLA’s election plan

The action plan for the electoral campaign of the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which formally starts on July 31, contains strategies that need to be made plain for all to see, in the interests of peace, political stability, and the distinction between party and state. For the first phase of the campaign, MPLA defines the need to pay special attention “critical areas to ensure order and tranquillity among voters”. To this end, MPLA envisages to “instruct activists, sympathizers and friends of the MPLA and other voters not to take part in any actions that may suggest electoral impropriety, and to refrain from practising any kind of violence against other political parties or their activists.” It also underscores the need to “denounce political parties, civil society organizations and citizens who incite voters to violence, disturbance or electoral fraud.” The communications and security committee of MPLA’s electoral […]

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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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Angola’s Scrapyard Arms Deals

Angola recently became the biggest African customer for arms purchases from Russia, with contracts valued at one billion dollars. Nevertheless, while weapons are being stock-piled, the Angolan Armed Forces experience a lack of basic resources at the majority of army bases.   According to the Russian newspaper Vedomosti http://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/news/17540901/oruzhie-dlya-starogo-druga, the contracts include the supply of 18 Sukhoi-30 fighter planes, as well as Mi-17 transport helicopters, light arms, munitions, tanks, pieces of artillery and the construction of an arms factory in Angola. “The Su-30 fighters will be form the backbone of the Angolan Air Force’s fighting power,” the newspaper said. But the aircraft mentioned in the contract were manufactured in the 1990’s, and delivered to the Indian Air Force while it was awaiting the manufacture of the more advanced Su-30MKI. The planes were returned to Russia in 2007, and since then they have been stored at a maintenance facility in Belarus. […]

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Rafael Marques Placed Under Investigation in Angola

Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais was interrogated and charged of defamation by on Wednesday by the Department for Combating Organised Crime of the National Criminal Investigation Directorate  (DNIC). It was only during questioning that Mr. Marques de Morais was formally notified that he was under investigation, and was offered the services of a public defender, which he refused. The journalist had not made arrangements to be accompanied by a lawyer as he did not know the content of the DNIC notification, which was only conveyed to him over the phone. In January, three shareholders and managers of the company ITM-Mining accused Mr. Marques de Morais of having defamed them in his book “Blood Diamonds: Torture and Corruption in Angola” (“Diamantes de Sangue: Tortura e Corrupção em Angola”), published in September 2011 in Portugal. The three men – Mozambican Hermínio Teixeira, Briton Andrew Paul Machin, and Angolan Jorge Gonçalves – […]

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Blood Diamonds: Letter to President Dos Santos

Human rights defender Rafael Marques de Morais sent a letter to president Dos Santos, in his capacity as the highest magistrate in the country, on February 15, urging him to take action on human rights abuses. In the letter, the author denounced the failure of the Attorney General’s office in investigating cases of assassination and torture in the diamond-rich provinces of Lundas, in northeastern Angola. The Office of the Attorney General is, by law, a branch of the Presidency. Last November, the attorney-general’s office notified Rafael Marques de Morais that it had shelved the criminal complaint he had lodged a year earlier against nine generals, after a preliminary hearing. As body of evidence, Rafael Marques de Morais filed his book Blood Diamonds: Torture and Corruption in Angola, published in Portugal in 2011. The book detailed cases involving the murder of more than 100 people, and more than 500 tortured. The […]

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Blood Diamonds: Letter to President Dos Santos

Human rights defender Rafael Marques de Morais sent a letter to president Dos Santos, in his capacity as the highest magistrate in the country, on February 15, urging him to take action on human rights abuses. In the letter, the author denounced the failure of the Attorney General’s office in investigating cases of assassination and torture in the diamond-rich provinces of Lundas, in northeastern Angola. The Office of the Attorney General is, by law, a branch of the Presidency. Last November, the attorney general’s office notified Rafael Marques de Morais that it had shelved the criminal complaint he had lodged a year earlier against nine generals, after a preliminary hearing. As body of evidence, Rafael Marques de Morais filed his book Blood Diamonds: Torture and Corruption in Angola, published in Portugal in 2011. The book detailed cases involving the murder of more than 100 people, and more than 500 tortured. […]

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Angolan Presidential Guards on Trial for ‘Insubordination’

Fourteen soldiers for the Central Protection and Security Unit (DCPS) in the Military Bureau of the Angolan Presidency are to stand trial in the Luanda Regional Military Court starting September 18, charged with the crime of “making collective demands” (exigência em grupo). On September 7 last year, 224 soldiers from the unit in question signed a petition addressed to the commander of the Presidential Guard Unit (UGP), Lieutenant General Alfredo Tyaunda, complaining of poor working conditions and salaries. The soldiers sent copies of the petition to the Military Judicial Police, the Military Prosecutor and the Chief of Staff of the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA). The soldiers expressed dissatisfaction with the unequal salaries accorded to the different military units associated with the Presidency. They reminded General Tyaunda that they were not beggars but graduates of the fourth UGP training course in 2005, which the general himself had described as “the best […]

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General Paihama: the Regime’s Firebrand

By Nelson Sul d’Angola   As a member of the MPLA’s Political Bureau, General Kundi Paihama, presided over an electoral rally held in the Ombaka National Stadium in the province of Benguela on August 4. Since the first multi-party elections were held in 1992, it has always been General Paihama’s role to coordinate the MPLA’s election campaign in Benguela, due particularly to his inflammatory rhetoric. General Paihama, who is the minister for Former Combatants and War Veterans, incited an audience of over 30,000 people. He employed the type of language used in the civil war, and that of a constructive MPLA in contrast to a destructive UNITA. In his speech, the general made reference to the incident which took place last Friday, and which culminated in acts of physical violence by UNITA militants against the MPLA provincial delegate for Education, in a dispute over the placement of campaign banners and posters. […]

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Fatal Victims in Clashes Between UNITA and MPLA

By António Capalandanda and Rafael Marques de Morais: Over the last few months there has been an increase in the level of violence between the ruling MPLA and UNITA supporters in Huambo and Benguela. These two provinces are electoral battlegrounds of extreme political symbolism for the two largest national political parties. Sparse coverage in the media and a lack of dialogue across society regarding this increasing tension foreshadows a climate of mistrust amongst citizens and growing fear with regard to the upcoming elections on August 31, as well as its aftermath. Maka Angola brings to light some recent incidents so that the public can be better informed about current focal points of tension. Supporters from both the MPLA and UNITA, and especially their leaderships, share a burden of increased responsibility in promoting political stability and maintaining peace. Three serious incidents took place in the province of Huambo in just two days. […]

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