President José Eduardo dos Santos’ Regime is Afraid of Books
A Maka Angola reader has raised a pertinent question concerning the detention on 21 June of 13 activists who were busy discussing methods of peaceful protest against what they consider to be a dictatorship. Two more activists were detained in the following days, and all fifteen were accused of plotting a coup d’etat. Most of these activists are known for their ill-fated attempts to organize anti-government demonstrations, which have been brutally suppressed. But how is it possible, the reader asks, that people who cannot manage even the most basic protest without being violently clamped down and detained, could have the means to organize a coup d’etat? Tired, perhaps, of being the punching bag for the authorities and of being accused by a part of civil society of being disorganized, the young people decided to form a study group. They armed themselves with books on peaceful forms of protest in order […]
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