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The spectacle of corruption in Angola

The current furore about the wealth of ‘Africa’s richest woman’, Isabel dos Santos, and how she acquired it, is only the latest part of a long-running saga of corruption and oligarchy in Angola.

In a very real way, Angola is one side of a trans-Atlantic sphere of inequality. Brazil is the other. Both countries were Portuguese colonies and Portuguese remains the official language of both, and both countries uphold propaganda language to communicate to the people. As a result, Angolan elections have television advertising campaigns almost entirely crafted by Brazilian agencies. They are slick and psychologically astute, always appealing in a soap-like fashion to the everyman and the underdog. The idea is that the chasm between rich and poor can be bridged – although it never is, as Angola’s wealth disparity is a mirror of Brazil’s.

This does not mean the country is not rich. It is. So much so that, during the 2008-9 banking crisis that almost crippled the West, Angola offered to bail out Portugal. And it had the means to do so. The schadenfreude, if the offer had been accepted, would have been immense. How ‘the worm has turned.’ So there is pride in Angola, but this does not mean there is any attempt realistically to uplift the condition of the poor. To the contrary, the emphasis on the part of the ruling elite – which dovetails with the business elite – and which intersects with a knowing but cynical international corporate elite, is on acquisition and reinvestment for more acquisition.

This state of affairs is to a large extent a result of the war of independence from Portugal. It was messy, and it was divided among three rebel armies, enemies of one another as much as enemies of the occupying Portuguese forces and settlers. When independence finally was won in 1975, with the pro-Soviet faction controlling Luanda, the capitol, Apartheid South African forces invaded the country to stem what they thought was the start of a flood southwards of militant and militarised Marxist government. They were met and repulsed by a Cuban army that had flown over the Atlantic precisely for this purpose. The Cubans stayed and, in the civil war that ensued between the new government and its chief liberation antagonist led by Jonas Savimbi, South Africa actively supported Savimbi. When, in 1988, at the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, the Cubans defeated the South Africans, two things happened.

Shaken by the defeat, there was a palace coup in the Apartheid government, and the securocrats were overthrown. The new President F.W. de Klerk promptly opened talks in 1989 in Zambia on the release of Nelson Mandela – and this happened in early 1990.

But the Angolan government, with its ruling party, the MPLA, secured its position against all comers. It could paint itself as the victor over Apartheid, its rival liberation faction was reduced to a rump, and what had begun in the chaos of constant war – informal politics by patronage, networking, and clandestine operations under conditions of emergency – became the peacetime norm. Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who served as President from 1979 to 2017, presided over a corrupt system and the MPLA Central Committee ensured it continued after war ended – and also ensured that a huge centre of wealth acquisition was distributed within its own family.

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