José Eduardo dos Santos - who shares with Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema the infamy of being Africa's longest-ruling president - is becoming increasingly tyrannical as his regime faces growing popular resistance. In this open letter, Angolan ward-winning investigative journalist and human rights activist speaks out his mind about the political situation in the oil-rich southern African nation.

Angolan political activists exercising their constitutional right to peaceful protest face illegal arrest, torture and assassination in the hands of the security forces. The justice system has also been compromised to protect the government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

Violence against the youth, who have been organizing anti-government protests, is the most prominent aspect of the campaign by the regime to entrench itself in power. Yet, a more sinister operation has been unfolding: kidnappings and torture.

The puzzling question remains: Why would the two political activists be kidnapped when the protest they had planned had already been aborted?

Something fishy is definitely going on in the belated trial of journalist Ramiro Aleixo over articles he wrote nearly five years ago. It is an extraordinary opportunity to evaluate the Angolan judicial system.

'How can profitable diamond mining, in a peaceful country with such a fast-growing economy, become the source of so much violence?'

This is a brief narrative of the power struggles between the president and his own party since the establishment of a multiparty system in 1991. It features deployment of constitutional coups, patronage and legal measures to address such internal rifts, as well as the consequences that reverberate today.

The new hypermarket is one of many businesses belonging to a fast-growing empire owned by senior public officials, which over the last three years has become the biggest player in the national economy.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/568/Unknown.gifThe company contracted to market Angola overseas is owned by the president’s children. While two-thirds of the population survives on less than $2 a day, the president and his protégés plunder the country.

Last year, Angola’s president authorised the extension of a mining concession 'primarily to the benefit of his daughter', Tchizé dos Santos, making a mockery the government’s words on ‘good governance, transparency and public service’, writes Rafael Marques de Morais.

Details have emerged about how Angola’s national oil company incurred a puzzlingly huge bill for nine days of accommodation and expenses at a hotel in Luanda. Did Sonangol have trouble doing simple math or there was something else going on, wonders Rafael Marques de Morais.

Rafael Marques de Morais reports that vice-minister Pedro Sebastião Teta has broken Angolan law by committing an act of illicit enrichment. But he is still a free man holding high public office, despite clear proof of his multi-million-dollar theft of public money.

Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais has

The Angolan government has championed the Kilamba social housing development as evidence of how it is dealing with an acute housing shortage. But Rafael Marques de Morais provides an insight into some of the companies - and politicians - who are making money from the development.

‘Are we witnessing a new era of restricted media, or will Angolans find a way to report their news in an objective and truthful forum?’ asks Rafael Marques de Morais, as government strategies to silence investigative journalists kick into action.

Following investigations by Maka, Rafael Marques de Morais writes of the role of ‘foreign investment in broadening, consolidating and institutionalising corrupt dealings’ with Angola’s political leaders. Marques de Morais stresses that: ‘It has become normal for foreign investors to ignore anti-corruption laws thanks to the impunity that they enjoy through their association with the regime’s most corrupt and abusive figures.’

With Angola’s parliament spending over US$43 million on top-of-the-range BMWs, Rafael Marques de Morais discusses the government’s inability to properly represent its citizens and what the money might have bought if spent in the public interest.

Responding to Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos's call for a zero-tolerance policy on corruption on 21 November 2009, Rafael Marques de Morais reports on the business dealings of three figures representing a 'triumvirate that today dominates Angola’s political economy': General Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias Júnior “Kopelipa”, General Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento “Dino” and Manuel Vicente. Though government figures, these individuals make no distinction between public and private affairs and represent the apex of a state-business empire based on 'illegal self-enrichment for the top state officials', Marques de Morais writes.

Chair of the board and CEO of Angolan parastatal Sonangol, Manuel Vicente's 25 per cent shareholding in Grinaker LTA Angola – a company that was awarded two multi-million dollar construction contracts by Sonangol – involves ‘passive corruption and conflict of interest’, writes Rafael Marques de Morais. De Morais takes a look at Vicente's role in the murky relationship between the two organisations and the Banco Africano de Investimentos (BAI) in light of national and international anti-corruption legislation.

In the aftermath of the fatal attack on the Togolese football team on 8 January in Cabinda, Angola, the country's authorities moved to actively censor full and accurate coverage of what occurred, writes Rafael Marques de Morais.