Manuel Vicente, chair and director-general of Angolan state oil company Sonangol, had the distinction in 2008 of doing a business deal with himself in taking a percentage of Sonangol Holdings in his own name, writes Rafael Marques de Morais. This was an act in direct contravention of the country's 'Law on Public Probity', Marques de Morais stresses.

Foreign investors looking for a way into Angolan markets need to follow two fundamental rules, writes Rafael Marques de Morais – partner with powerful figures from the regime, and ignore the relevant legislation. Marques de Morais looks at the route taken by leading Portuguese beverage manufacturer, Unicer.

At an MPLA meeting in November 2009, Angola’s president José Eduardo dos Santos defined the challenges facing his party in terms of three issues: Keeping watch on government, the irresponsibility of government leaders, and fighting corruption with a policy of zero tolerance. Rafael Marques de Morais reveals the gap between dos Santos’ words and its deeds, through an investigation of the MPLA’s extensive business interests. The ‘concept of social solidarity and equal opportunity,’ writes de Morais, ‘applies only to select members of the ruling elite who have been given the task of looting the country.'

In a survey of the business activities of six Angolan MPs, Rafael Marques de Morais concludes that the blatant overlap of personal, commercial and governmental concerns 'makes a mockery of the supposed separation of powers between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary'. These six influential members of the country's National Assembly operate with complete disrespect for the rule of law, Marques de Morais stresses, as part of a broader pattern of institutionalised arrogance.

Having sought clarification from Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos over his involvement in business activities contravening state regulations, Rafael Marques de Morais discusses the broad culture of corruption and questionable practices normalised within the country's government. Considering why the president's dubious actions enjoy the total support of members of the government, Marques de Morais concludes that the answer lies in mutual benefit: 'they do as the president wishes so that they too may act with impunity'.

In an article examining the efforts of Angola’s ruling MPLA to harness the media as a tool of social control, Rafael Marques de Morais explores the isolation of alternative media outlets and the regime’s efforts to re-appropriate subversive coverage to its own ends.

Analysing the background to Angola’s legislative elections at the beginning of September, Rafael Marques de Morais considers the wide voting irregularities and social inequalities that allowed José Eduardo dos Santos’s MPLA to tighten its grip on political power. Reviewing the final results of the elections, the author argues that the central challenge for the Angolan electorate is to carve out a path of genuine representation and a new vision of genuine democratic power, all the while maintaining a commitment to non-violent action.

The seizure of farmland for the purposes of commercial diamond mining in Angola’s Lunda provinces is causing widespread hunger and deepening poverty, according to new research to be released on July 30 2008. The report, titled Harvesting Hunger in Angola’s Diamond Fields, focuses on the activities of the Sociedade Mineira do Cuango (SMC): a joint venture led and managed by a British-based mining enterprise, ITM Mining, in partnership with the Angolan diamond parastatal, Endiama, and Lumanhe, a private company owned by Angolan Army generals.

Research conducted by independent Angolan journalist Rafael Marques, in collaboration with a network of local activists in the Cuango municipality of Lunda Norte province, records how SMC usually arrives without warning at night and destroys fields where crops are cultivated. The company then takes arbitrary measurements of the affected areas in order to determine how much to pay the peasants. This practice is leaving thousands of people hungry while SMC expands its concessions. In 2007, SMC had a production turnover of 340,002 carats of diamonds, yet farmers are paid only US$0.25 for each square metre of land that is seized.

The report highlights how the legal framework that governs the diamond industry in the Lunda provinces effectively denies full rights of citizenship to the region’s farming population, putting the commercial interests of the companies ahead of the local people’s land rights. Yet even those aspects of the law which ought to provide some protection for farmers – demanding, for example, fair compensation for land expropriated – are routinely ignored by SMC, whose compensation payments in no way reflect the productive value of the land that is being seized. The company appears to enjoy impunity despite the illegality of its actions.

The report calls on the companies involved to start negotiations with the farming communities of the Lunda region with a view to establishing mechanisms to ensure fair compensation for people who lose access to their land as a result of the granting of diamond mining concessions. It calls on the Angolan government to enforce the laws that govern the diamond industry in the Lundas, and to ensure that the region’s farmers are accorded their full rights as citizens.

*For further information, please contact Rafael Marques at +244 929 419644; +244 912 331034; or by e-mail at: [email][email protected]

*Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at

The civil war in Angola ended in 2002. In this speech, given at Harvard University, Rafael Marques argues that the peace agreement signed in April 2002 has failed to promote democratic values or engage citizens in public affairs. Elections that the government promised the people since 1999 have not materialized. Instead, Angola is undergoing a process of commercialization as a substitute to democratization, writes Marques.

It is a privilege for me to be here at Harvard, a center of intellectual and scientific excellence. I am here simply as a student to have a conversation and share some ideas about Angola.

I am also in the US to learn from you about the merits of an open-minded and uncompromised debate about democracy, international relations and solidarity.

Currently, preparations are being made for the registration of voters in Angola, as a major leap forward towards the holding of elections in 2007, 2008 or 2009. There have been hints of elections ever since 1999.

These elections would be the second ever held in the country. The only other ones, the 1992 general elections, led to war breaking out again.

What is at stake at the moment is whether holding elections could be a measure of democratization for Angola or not? That is the first of several questions to be asked.

After a devastating 27-year conflict, a military peace deal signed in April 2002 has not been fostering the promotion of democratic values in society and engaging citizens in public affairs. Angola has been described as a “state without citizens.” Despite recent promises of increased transparency, accountability and democratization, little has yet been accomplished to bridge the gap between the rulers and the ruled. The underlying causes of this situation are many and interlinked. Political power is highly centralized and some would argue that historically this power was further consolidated through the control of resource flows by three institutions – the Presidency, the National Bank and SONANGOL, the national oil company.

The reality is of opportunity, but for whom? For those who hold power and sway, it means dividends from the privatization of the state, according to the hierarchy in the regime. For outsiders, it means a rush to promote their economic interests, cut new deals or explore new market opportunities.

This prompts the second question. What does the present situation mean for the majority of Angolans? Put in a different way, is the country just open for business or is there some scope for democracy as well?

What are the prospects of change, defining a new future for Angola? This is the third question I shall try to elaborate on as part of this conversation.

Electoral Democracy

The first indication of democracy in the country would be the establishment of checks and balances in the state institutions, as well as their openness to public scrutiny. This is essential for the process of nation-building,

To demonstrate the absurd contradictions of the system, justice is still administered through the former colonial Portuguese Penal Code of 1886. Portugal itself has reformed the Penal Code a number of times since then.

Many of the state institutions have not been altered to fit the new political system. For instance, the office of the Attorney-General is still governed by a one-party Marxist-Leninist law (cf Law 5/90, of 5 April) to safeguard not democracy but the “socialist legality”. This office is, by law, under the presidency and the President of the Republic gives direct instructions to the Attorney-General, which must be complied with in accordance with article 5, clause 2, of law 5/90.

Unfortunately, this situation, which is unconstitutional, cannot be challenged in court. The Constitutional Court, which is required to safeguard the Constitution, has not been established since 1992. Three members of the Constitutional Court are supposed to be elected by a two-thirds majority of Members of Parliament(article 135, clause 1b). The ruling MPLA does not have such a two-thirds majority and has found it risky to bring up the issue because it might wake up the opposition.

So far, the judges of the Supreme Court, appointed by the President of the Republic, perform the duties of the Constitutional Court in violation of the Constitution. The vice-president of the Supreme Court, Mr. Caetano de Sousa, is also currently the head of the National Electoral Commission, appointed by the President of the Republic.

On July 22, 2005, the Supreme Court decided that the President has been performing interim duties since 1992, the year he failed to win in the polls. Back then the second round of the presidential elections never took place because war broke out again. As such, none of his periods as President count. So, after 25 uninterrupted years in power, he can run again for three more consecutive periods.

Another important aspect to take into account is the effectively subordinate role of the National Electoral Commission, which also includes opposition members, in relation to the Inter-Ministerial Commission for Elections, all of whose members come from the MPLA government.

And why does the opposition not rally behind the issue? As I speak, the 220 parliamentarians, whose constitutional mandates expired 10 years ago, are lavishing upon themselves luxury cars of their own choice from a special budget of over US$16.5 million which they granted to themselves.

Moreover, some of the main opposition parties represented in Parliament, like UNITA, PRS and PLD, also hold ministerial portfolios in the government and the due privileges. That’s how the patronage system works. The political opposition becomes part of the problem and not of the solution.

Along with the control of the judicial power by the political powers comes control of the State media, which comprises the only radio and TV broadcasters with national coverage and the only daily newspaper in the country. The Minister of Information, from the MPLA, also heads the National Radio of Angola. I worked for the state media, and I can say from experience that there was more room for some innocuous criticism 12 years ago than there is today. These media outlets only reproduce the orders of the political establishment.

The six privately owned weekly newspapers, as critical as they are, remain ineffective in expressing the thoughts and wishes of the majority. They circulate almost exclusively in the capital, Luanda, at an average price of US$2.50 for a 24-page tabloid, which is too expensive for the average citizen. Altogether these papers only print up to 25,000 copies per week, while there are over four million people living in the capital alone.

Both the judiciary and the media are fundamental to the exercise of democracy, one by upholding the rule of the law and the other to serve as a vehicle for freedom of expression. But they are, in fact, instruments of partisanship.

Moreover, the regime has produced a state class, in which figures of the ruling MPLA accumulate wealth rapidly by robbing the state coffers. That’s how the President’s family, without a record of labour, has amassed a vast fortune and is a major shareholder in the telecommunications, banking, mining and other most profitable enterprises. Other high-ranking families of the regime are also entitled to such fortunes.

These brief examples illustrate that the time of peace is being used neither for serious institutional reform nor to establish a proper transitional platform to a fully fledged democracy. To put it simply, there are no functioning institutions for the formal democratic participation of citizens.

How can elections change this state of affairs? The absence of a transitional mechanism, to mitigate abuses of power, leaves little room for peaceful change and risks a showdown between the government and the people for lack of alternative and buffer institutions.

The Power of Oil

Any change will put at risk not just the ruling party, but the business interests of the state class, who are the partners for foreign governments and enterprises in oil, diamonds, construction, etc. Foreign interests fight for privileged access to the state class.

The interests of the Presidential family in remaining in power, to safeguard their business interests, coincide, for instance, with the US policy to ensure stability and safeguard a continuous flow of Angolan oil into the US. By 2007, Angola’s oil output is forecast to surpass 2 million barrels a day and continue to increase until 2010.

The international view of Angola has been narrowed down to business interests. Angola is undergoing a process of commercialization as a substitute to democratization.

International pressure has mainly been self-serving and the call for good governance has focused more on issues of transparency and an improved climate for foreign investment than on poverty alleviation and democratization. Countries with a strategic interest in Angolan oil, especially China, have been willing to provide Angola with concessional, oil-backed loans, which carry no conditions on improved governance.

In the past, the US led Western countries in fomenting guerrilla warfare in the country in the name of a global fight against communism while, at the same time, allowing Cuban soldiers to guard Chevron oil facilities. Then it switched sides to annihilate the guerrillas in the name of helping to achieve peace and democracy.

Such international leverage in the country’s affairs has robbed the people of external solidarity in the fight for change. Reality shows that it is all about access to the country’s natural resources and profitable dealings. In 2005 Angola could boast the highest rate of growth in Gross Domestic Product in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) area (if not all of Africa), according to IMF figures. In stark contrast, Angola has some of the worst poverty levels in Africa. Last year Angola was ranked 160 out of 177 countries on the UNDP Human Development Index. According to the statistics, 67% of the population lives below the poverty line. Of those living in rural areas, 90% are estimated to live below the poverty line. Illiteracy and infant and maternal mortality rates are very high. The shares of the government budget allocated to health (4.4% in 2006) and education (3.8%) are lower than average in the SADC area and have declined steadily since 2004. In general, there has been a bias against spending on initiatives to improve broad-based primary education and primary health care.

In principle, elections will not provide people with alternative choices because the political opposition is either incorporated into the system, tamed or too marginal to have the resources and the ability to make itself known to a wider audience. This explains why the pressure for elections from civic organizations and society at large has gone quiet.

Thus the holding of elections will by no means be a measure for democracy. The regime has already prepared itself for an eventual alternative, which it calls an agenda of national consensus. From time to time, when pressure mounts, it takes it out of its pocket to lure people into an idea of broad dialogue to give a new direction to the country.

For there to be a space for democracy, Angolans have to find a more balanced and sustainable way of dealing with the openness to foreign investors, which is used as an international public relations tool to re-legitimize the regime and dodge the pressing need for dialogue on the country’s situation.

We must be forceful in explaining that one issue must not obscure the other. We must have them both, and democracy should be a priority to establish the rule of law that turns the institutions of state into the safe keepers of transparency, fair competition and greater safety for foreign investments. Currently, businesses have to rely on powerful individuals for protection, but sooner or later this will come to an end.

Prospects of Change

As a citizen, I always wonder why my political leaders always prefer to take the most difficult and treacherous routes of war, violence, corruption and denial to govern the country?

My country is drifting towards a political dead end. The growing detachment between the rulers and the ruled, in the formation of the state class, can only lead to profound resentment and an unpredictable outcome.

Dialogue and compassion are not new ideas, but that’s what Angolans have always needed most from their rulers, and been denied.

There must be the political will by the regime to open up and allow the establishment of a “state of citizens” as the best option to avoid the perils of anarchy, for its own good and because time is running out.

Thank you to the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program and its co-sponsors. And thanks to the Northcote Parkinson Fund for sponsoring my trip here as part of the Civil Courage Prize.

• Rafael Marques de Morais, an Angolan journalist and a human rights activist, is the winner of the 2006 Civil Courage Prize.

• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

It has been four years of peace in Angola since the end of a decades-long civil war, but for the majority of Angolans the absence of fighting is the only benefit they enjoy, writes human rights activist Rafael Marques. Scheduled elections have been endlessly postponed, allowing the ruling elite to remain unaccountable to the population of the country while they maintain international legitimacy through corrupt use of Angola’s vast oil wealth.

For more than a decade, while the ruling class has focused on its own transformation into a bourgeois class by plundering the country’s riches, the majority of Angolans have been reviving their hopes for the future on empty promises in a vacuum.

Those in power are managing such a vacuum and selling it as a kind of stability pact. It is a pact similar to that established between a robber who points a gun at a citizen in broad daylight and in public, strips the victim of his belongings and then, civilly, requests the understanding, silence and quietness of the victim. The robbed person, in turn, thanks the perpetrator for the common sense shown in sparing his life. It is in this sense that Angolans are grateful for peace.

Four years have passed since the achievement of peace in 2002 after decades of civil war. Another legislative mandate has come to an end, since the first and last elections of 1992, without people casting their ballot – and, therefore, without the opportunity for them to hold to account and choose their political leaders as well as legitimize the rule of power.

Once again, the President of the Republic, in his much awaited state of the union address, disappointed people’s hopes for elections in 2006. Showing his normal political expediency, he now suggests voting might take place in 2007. In 2000 he announced the possibility of elections for 2001, whether the war stopped or not, and that he would retire. However, he has been pushing the prospect further into the future ever since.

Apart from the question of elections, the speech by President Dos Santos to the nation had two more key points, the setting up of the Bank for the Development of Angola (BDA) and the construction of housing for those in need.

For the President, the bank will be the catalyst for the reconstruction of the country. However, it is little more than another expedient for the redistribution of windfall profits from oil among the ruling families and their particular interests. Similar initiatives in the past, particularly the now defunct Caixa Agro-Pecuária (CAP), have suggested the final end of government-funded commercial banks. Once the ruling families and their associates borrow all the funds at a bank’s disposal, it is declared bankrupt, dismantled and privatized. As for the money lent, the trick is to write it off as bad loans and let the matter rest for good. The oil funds in question stem from rocketing prices in the international markets. This has generated a windfall, over and above the budgeted oil income, of a magnitude of which Angolans have no idea. Due to a lack of transparency and to the creative accounting practices in the Angolan public sector, the real sums the government has amassed are, at this point, anybody’s guess (The Angolan Ambassador to Brazil, General Alberto Neto, reaffirmed in an interview to the daily O Globo (21.11.2005) that “the country’s oil income does not pass through the Angolan financial institutions”, and such a procedure makes it even more difficult to track the real sums derived from the oil revenues, which officially account for more than 80% of the country’s income.)

Secondly, as far as building houses is concerned, the government should promote job creation, ensure the payment of real salaries and introduce policies for housing development that provide the incentives for the private sector to take up the task and for citizens to afford access to credit and to be able to pay for their accommodation out of their own salaries. Angolans need decent wages for decent jobs, not permanent government or international charity.

Electoral patriotism

As for the need for people to legitimize the exercise of power, society has been taking notice of the electoral mobilization the ruling Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA) has set in motion even though it remains silent on the setting of a date for elections. People have also been ready for elections to be called at three months’ notice (within the legal deadline). Nevertheless, Angolans still need to be registered to vote and there is no hint of when this will happen, along with other essential tasks to ensure a free and fair electoral process. These tactics could make it impossible for the opposition and public opinion to make any impression on the regime’s hold on power.

However, one fundamental question arises from this scenario of doubt and deceitfulness. What’s behind the regime’s postponement of elections for as long as it can? It has absolute control over the country’s riches, the media with a national outreach and the public administration. Furthermore, it uses the army and the national police as it pleases and as a means to achieve whatever ends it may pursue. It has support from the Western powerhouses in exchange for a large chunk of Angolan natural resources (oil and diamonds). There is also a Chinese bid for another slice of the country’s lucrative market with expensive loans, billions worth of construction contracts and so forth.

The factors mentioned above have been conspiring to eliminate the people as a fundamental factor for pressure and change. So the regime is afraid to hold elections because it is not sure whether it can control the emotions, anger and frustrations of the people. It is afraid of people’s reactions during an election campaign amid increased publicity.

Another element to take into account is the MPLA’s ideological problem or, more precisely, the lack of it. The end of socialism, or of the Marxism-Leninism it used to profess, led the MPLA to import, for its own survival, Western consumerism to provide a set of values required to regulate the dynamics of society.

Hence, the President’s appeal in his speech to patriotism is a mockery for he himself provides no example of it. Patriotism must be the sharing of a set of moral and national values which unite the citizens in the defence of their common interests, the country, and the dignity and the equality it reserves to each one of its children.

For its part, the government is hooked on corruption. It is unable to come up with a set of polices and the right course of action to effectively improve people’s lives and to develop the country. It is a regime with neither an ideology nor a nation-building project.

Corruption in Angola has taken on a life of its own. It serves the regime well to annihilate any signs of opposition, dissenting voices or alternative leaderships as well as to sabotage any action by the regime to deliver welfare to the people.

The absence of morals in the conduct of government officials and the gradual deletion of references to the people in public statements provides the necessary peace of mind for the very same government officials to pocket as they please the public funds assigned to them. The current Minister of Finances, Jose Pedro de Morais, and the Governor of the Central Bank, Amadeu Mauricio, are just the latest officials to present the country in recent months with financial scandals of an international dimension. The Brazilian daily O Globo (13.11.2005), in its coverage of a national corruption scandal (O Mensalao) that has shaken the presidency of Lula da Silva, exposed the Angolan connexion. A Brazilian businessman, Marcos V. de Souse, wire transferred around US$ 2.7 million to the personal bank accounts of the abovementioned Angolan officials. Days later, the newspaper, as a follow up to the same case, unearthed other remittances worth US$ 1,6 million to the personal account of the President of the Angolan Central Bank. In their defence, the Angolan ambassador to Brazil, Alberto Neto, told O Globo (21.11.2005), that “every man has a price, what matters is to know how much” The spokesperson for the Angolan Ministry of Finances stated that it was a duty for government officials to take 15% in commissions for the deals they close.

The Chinese Godfather

Once again the government, in its bid to re-legitimize itself, has turned abroad to seek credit and political protection. This time its port of call is China, after earlier docking at the White House (and its satellite Western allies) and, before that, mooring for a long time at the Kremlin and in Havana. In essence the government knows how to cuddle up to the permanent members of the UN Security Council, those with the power of veto.

The Dos Santos regime needs international legitimacy to keep in check its own people, its internal critics and its adversaries. The consequences of this extreme dependency upon foreign forces for the legitimization of power may be accounted for in terms of years of war, the slaughter of many Angolans and the never ending onslaught upon the country’s wealth. No less serious is the people’s feeling of a loss of dignity and self respect in its own household, humiliated and despised by the government’s friends of the hour. The example of the diamond rich territory of the Lundas is a point in case. The report ‘Lundas: The Stones of Death’ provides a detailed account of the complicity between the government, international diamond mining companies and dealers in spreading terror, destitution and misery in the region. The report is available at

For a long time shrewd foreigners have explored for their own benefit the political, economic, social and intellectual shortcomings of the ruling class and the vanity of its desire to mutate into an assimilated bourgeoisie – the elite. As a consequence, the MPLA is adrift. Its government has no influence over the Presidency. The President rules alone, under the influence of foreign interests. This tightens his grip on power, as well as being his major weakness, his Achilles, in his dealings with the society. Thus, in today’s Angola, the American lobbies, some Portuguese interests, the Chinese, and so on hold more true and meaningful power over the government than that collegial body holds itself, not to mention its forlorn individual members.

There is a power vacuum. The government, and especially the President, are held hostage by interests foreign to Angolan society. Individual members of the ruling class generally ponder that they are getting richer by the day and busy themselves with shopping sprees.

The Western government partners in these ransacking ventures settle their accounts among themselves. They only make a pretence of demanding some measure of respect for human rights, transparency and democracy whenever specific business projects with the government turn sour, or periodically, when their code of honour among thieves is violated. Only then do these Western governments choose to denounce the Angolan regime in international corridors as corrupt, incompetent and despicable. At the same time, their own countries welcome without any reservations the bank deposits, investments and profits from the looting of Angola.

The regime, represented by the MPLA, should reduce its propaganda efforts and goodwill-bolstering operations, like building dubious, cheap and short-lived housing projects. It must opt for a policy based on being near to the people and their problems. It must replace propaganda by respect for freedom of expression in the state media, which are the only ones with nationwide coverage. This would allow public debate to flourish and produce solutions as well as establishing a culture of checks and balances.

Freedom of expression and of the press is fundamental to curb corruption and create a public mindset to generate enough pressure on the government to punish corrupt officials. Corruption is the institution holding the government together. Reassuring initiatives to fight it might enable the authorities to postpone the holding of elections without causing public anger. By taking on corruption, President Dos Santos could find the peace and rest that he wants and the MPLA could find its way back to being a popular movement.

As for the patriotism called for by Dos Santos, his regime must be capable of defending Angolans from many an international partner which finds in Angola a land of promise in which to sow discord under official patronage and treat Angolans as replaceable, unserviceable, undignified and undeserving objects. The logic is simple: if the government does not treat its own citizens with respect and in a dignified way, who else will?

By preserving the interests, dignity and respect of the Angolan people, Angola could evolve towards an open market, a safe haven for foreign investment, a hospitable destiny for tourists from all over the world and a second home for those who may choose it in their quest for sun and prosperity. Otherwise, direct confrontation between the people and power (in the sense of a privileged minority aided and abetted by foreign interests) will only be a matter of time. In the showdown of what will be a class struggle between the very rich and the totally destitute, due to the lack of intermediate social structures, all will end up as losers. The MPLA’s battle cry used to be “Hail the People’s Power”. Many still recall this power and keep it inside themselves, for the benefit of the majority.

* Rafael Marques is an Angolan Human Rights Activist ([email protected])

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Rafael Marques remembers three encounters during his journeying through Angola. The first sketch tells the story of Pedro, who uses his truck to take pregnant women on a four-hour, pot-holed journey to the nearest maternity hospital. In the second sketch, Almeida makes it big as a diamond digger but blows his fortune on the pleasures of life. Lastly, a train-track market in Viana, Luanda is described. “Angolans,” writes Marques, “continue to wait for something to happen. People are struggling for immediate survival, without the luxury of medium or long-term perspectives.”

Inspired perhaps, by having survived war and misery, Pedro cheerfully shared his story on how his truck had turned into a maternity hospital on wheels.

I met Pedro by the roadside, between the municipality of Cacula and Lubango, the capital of the southern Angolan province of Huíla. I was touring the south of the country by car. He was stuck in the middle of nowhere, in the evening, with his car broken down, and so I gave him a ride.

The road seemed like a long net of small and huge potholes – so awful that it took more than four hours to drive the 60 km between the two towns.

Along the way, Pedro told me a lively story about the state of the road. As the only fellow with a car in his community, for years now he has been taking pregnant women to the Lubango Hospital to give birth. He said no woman has yet made it to the hospital. All have ended up giving birth in his car due to the tortuous journey, and without a single fatality.

“It eases the burden on the maternity hospital”, he said.

On another car journey, to the east of the country, I came across Almeida Gonçalves, a young man who worked as an informal diamond digger. A single lucky stone had earned him US$250,000. I asked him how he spent his money. He shrugged his shoulders and said: “I had to spend everything on clothes, food and drinks. I did not know how to spend it on other things.”

All he had left was a motorbike – until that was confiscated by the police in an act of extortion. Yet his eyes still light up when he imagines he might strike it lucky once again.

In other circumstance, Almeida Gonçalves might well be an Angolan government minister – provided he could upgrade his tastes from motorbikes to top luxury cars. As a minister, he would be entrusted with the mission of depositing, in his personal bank accounts, incalculable amounts of state funds, as it is a common government practice.

As for Pedro, he might fare well as a provincial governor. He has the virtue of finding advantages in total chaos, in the absence of management. The former governor of Kwanza-Norte province Manuel Pedro Pacavira managed to do the same; after more than a decade of misrule, he has been rewarded with la dolce vita as ambassador to Italy.

The train of indifference

The third and last example in my sketch of Angola as it is today has to do with the informal market set on the railway tracks in Viana, Luanda. The train passes through, whistling. People, unconcerned and in no rush, remove themselves and their goods from the tracks, just enough to make space for the locomotive to get past. As the train moves on, people reclaim their places on the tracks just inches behind it, and set their businesses once again. At times one can see the rusty train in the middle of the market. Once it has passed through, it is as though the train had never used those tracks.

Angolans continue to wait for something to happen. People are struggling for immediate survival, without the luxury of medium or long-term perspectives. There is no leadership to show a different way out, to share his or her vision of the future.

Notwithstanding three years of peace, society has simply given up the quest for common ground. Each person has become an island in search of individual peace and stability. To do so, one has to pledge allegiance to the families who control the chaos that we call the state.

The social and civic dynamics of 2001-2003, which seemed to have the potential to build common interests and ensure the fair participation of all sectors in bringing about changes, have crumbled.

Nowadays, war is no longer an argument to excuse people’s inertia. By the same token, the regime’s repression is also not a justification for inaction.

During the most violent and difficult years of our history, several names and values emerged out of the struggle for independence, for peace, for freedom of the press and of expression.

Repression has been replaced by corruption, by evil laughter at someone else's suffering, as the source of the real personal power in our society. Such a notion of power mirrors our own lack of purpose.

The regime, stretched in two directions between the ruling MPLA and its leader, José Eduardo dos Santos, has exhausted its ability to reinvent itself and to do better for the country. It has become a family feud that sustains itself on the apathy of the society at large. It survives by swallowing up the opposition. The regime also enjoys comfort in the belief it has secured itself through means of patronage rather than by its own merit or civic and political achievements.

For some time now, President dos Santos has been a little more than a chess player who entertains himself. He plays against himself. When it comes to addressing social problems, he has notoriously little authority over the executive that he supposedly leads.

Meanwhile, his prime minister, Nandó, may as well not exist, except when he becomes the laughing stock of the independent media for his gaffes, and for the regular public beatings that his sons inflict upon defenseless citizens.

I see peace and the opportunity for a serious and transparent democratization process in just the same way as I see the train making its way through the market. I note:

- The absence of social solidarity in the struggle for the common good and people’s indifference to the anomalies of the State;
- The collapse of forces such as opposition and organized civil society that ought to stand between the people and the regime;
- The stagnation and even backward movement in the development of the independent media outlets, which ought to be instrumental in the setting of a new culture of democracy, tolerance and transparency;
- The vast gulf between the ruling class (the plundering elite) and the proletariat and peasant classes (reclassified as simply "poor" or "the rest of society" and put at the mercy of the poverty reduction strategy programmes of the international community – World Bank, et al.)
- A political culture of postponing political and social problems to the extreme limit (e.g. civil disarmament, reducing unemployment, dealing with resource use, violence and social exclusion in the Lunda diamond fields, and the oil-rich Cabinda province, et al.)
- The potential for social upheaval, aggravated by the worsening of people’s living conditions, in times of peace. Even the alternative forms of survival such as street vending are being brutally crushed by the police.

As an Angolan, I feel defeated by my own weaknesses and limitations. I live in torment for not being able to do more for the society, for the country I love. In anguish, I seek refuge in my loneliness to digest the bitterness for a lost battle in the pursuit of human dignity in Angola.

I assume defeat. I face the reality and I prepare myself for the triumph of my own consciousness and that of the society, against the evil that inhabits in and destroys us.

Agostinho Neto once said, to Angolans, “we shall come back...”

So be it.

* Rafael Marques is an Angolan journalist.

* Please send comments to

Streams of stinking water run ceaselessly through the alleys that cut across the hillside of Margoso, Luanda. Generations of citizens have walked there and lived there, accustomed to the smell, and condemned to be forgotten.

It is on these alleys, in these slums on which politics has turned a blind eye, that a generation of young people, excluded and uprooted, have fomented a new political revolution through rap and through the repeated frustration that comes from having been robbed of their rights as citizens.

MCK, 22, has won notoriety. On 26 November 2003, José Eduardo dos Santos's presidential guard killed car-washer Arsénio Sebastião "Cherokee", 27, for singing MCK's rap "Technique, Causes and Consequences", a.k.a "I know what's up". Cherokee has in turn become a symbol of injustice in Angola.

Going down those alleys on the way to his house, MCK jokes about his social status, especially when, in the morning, he sets about fetching water in a drum which he carries on his back, on his shoulder or in his hands, whichever feels most convenient.

"I am the youngest in the family and I have to fetch water every day," he says.

His room is extremely cramped, even for one person. In the rainy season, prayer is the only thing that holds his house together – as well as his faith. Other rap activists cling to survival in the same way: Furacão and Keyta Mayanda, not to mention Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes, who was responsible for organising the thirtieth day memorial mass for Cherokee.

The outrage, evident on the faces and on the posters which line Marçal slum, where the deceased lived, is a sign of a mature understanding of the real relationship between the people and the regime.

The rappers managed, on their own initiative, to collect nearly one thousand dollars to give the victim's family: a sum that puts to shame the maize flour and beans the presidential guard left at the home of the deceased.

Moreover, MCK assumed responsibility for putting Cherokee's two children through school. He markets his CDs directly, and his meagre profits are put towards this cause. This is revolution.

"We have to promote a revolution of the mind in order to correct what happened in 1975. Colonialism ended, but the system remains the same. We count for nothing in our own country," argues Keyta Mayanda.

"You pressed 'play' and fell into a trench of ideas," goes the first track on MCK's CD: thirteen tracks with the suggestive name of "The trench of ideas".

This album, and others that are yet more radical in tone such as "Know the truth and the truth shall set you free" by Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes [Brigadier 10 packs], were recorded and produced in improvised studios.

The minibus taxi drivers who provide transport for the masses are willingly helping to arouse consciences, to politicise the masses. This controversial music, banned by the authorities, plays on the stereos in these overcrowded vehicles; music whose value lies in the content of its lyrics as well as in its beat.

"The government plays a different guitar" by Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes is the most controversial and also the most commonly heard song on this distribution circuit. It is a direct challenge to the Big Chief.

Frantz Fanon warned African politicians that the politicisation of the masses does not, and cannot, come through political speeches: "Politicisation means opening the spirit, awakening the spirit, enlightening the spirit."

In the slums, home to the masses - to an absolute majority - the silence of the people has become imprisoned by misery, paralysed by war and oppression. Track 11, "Echoes of rebellion," awakens a dormant spirit: balumuka. It looks at "a people suffering at the hands of the rulers". It examines the importing of western disguises by the political class, which has been looting the resources of the people and justifying it with "pretty speeches".

"Echoes of rebellion" calls on citizens to "be prepared / the people's silence speaks / the people's passivity is bursting the balloon". The verses take up the message about and for the people:

"We are politically tamed
Economically colonised
Culturally stagnated
Socially retarded … "

From where does this critical consciousness come? MCK says it comes from the life that he sees around himself. He has finished high school, but has neither access to the public university nor the funds to enter the private universities. Nevertheless, this consciousness is also the result of the gains made by press freedom. The singer keeps under his bed a large collection of press clippings, full of cases of corruption, misrule and whatever else. "We write our lyrics based on what we get from the press and from Rádio Ecclésia [the Angolan Catholic radio station]."

Despite its unimpressive circulation (on average 30 000 copies per week among Luanda's 3.5 million inhabitants), the independent press has been the driving force behind a growing democratic consciousness. And in a spontaneous reciprocal gesture, track six of "Trench of ideas", entitled "Topics for the article" is a tribute to the independent press which inspired it, as well as a parody of the dressed-up official version of events. With a forced, ironic optimism it explores what has changed and what remains the same: "The police beauty salon has new hairstyles … Parliament is just a sham / and whoever can do anything isn't part of it … the young are lost in a desert like camels."

And the chatter still continues at the scene of the crime, the Mussulo quayside, where the Dos Santo's guards tortured and killed Cherokee, by drowning him, in broad daylight in a public place. There where the elite go to relax and enjoy the kind of privileges which in Angola are reserved for a few. There, in truth's cemetery, where the people's silence is celebrated with mocking smiles. It is all part of the same process.

Music has no place in the grand scheme of politics in Angola. Especially not rap, invented in the 1970s by imaginative people living on the edge of society in the ghettos of New York's Bronx.

With neither change nor elections in sight, what consequences will this have for the abyss that separates the regime, the opposition, the city centres, the Luanda slums, the demobilized soldiers, the governors' palaces, and the rest of the country?

* Rafael Marques is a Angolan journalist

As another year came to an end, democracy in Angola was carefully folded like a handkerchief and prominently featured in the chest pocket of its ruler’s jacket. The folding took place at the ruling Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA) 5th party congress in December, where it was expected that the conclave would send a strong signal on the course of democracy in the country, given that the democratic mandate of the current government expired in 1996, and that due to the war between 1998 and 2002 elections were postponed until peaceful days arrived. But as 2004 begins and almost two years into peace, there are no signs of even a date for elections that will set the normalization of State institutions in motion.

On December 09 at the party congress, the president of MPLA and only candidate, José Eduardo dos Santos, was re-elected for another five-year term, unanimously and by acclamation not by vote. When it came to suggestions for a fair democratic process by secret ballot only the president voted in favour of such a procedure. The other delegates, more than 1400 of them, voted for acclamation. There was only a single abstention.

* Read the rest of this article by clicking on the link below.