Tag: impunity

A Journey for Rights and Dignity: A Participant’s Observation

Note: This text was initially delivered as the Hormuud Lecture of the African Studies Association, at its annual meeting in Chicago, on November 18, 2017.   Within days after delivering this lecture, I will be publishing the first report focused exclusively on extrajudicial killings in Angola. These executions were carried out in the past year by the Angolan Criminal Investigation Service operatives across the two most populated neighborhoods of the capital Luanda, namely Cacuaco and Viana. In the report there are more than 100 victims identified and additional unidentified individuals suspected of being delinquents or simply innocent. During my investigation I discovered the existence of an open field, next to a primary school in Viana (Escola Primária e do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Secundário nº 5113), that locals called the slaughterhouse or more commonly the death camp. The state operatives usually took their victims to this slaughterhouse in broad daylight. […]

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When Conflicts of Interest Go Unpunished

Why does the Angolan President’s Minister of State and Head of the Intelligence Bureau have a side job as a managing director in Macau, China, in direct contravention of the Angolan Constitution which specifically prohibits such conflict of interest? Documentary proof sent to Maka Angola shows that General Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias Júnior “Kopelipa”, and his wife Luísa de Fátima Geovetty, set up a private company named Baía Consulting Limited based on the 7th floor of the Lun Pong Building at No. 763 Avenida da Praia Grande, in Macau on January 26 this year. The couple are registered as equal partners in the business and also as managers. On the very same day that the company was registered, the General and his wife, issued a power of attorney to the Macau-based lawyer, Barry Shu Mun Cheong, who also happens to own the office where Baía is based. This power of […]

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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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