Angola, central African country bigger than France and the United Kingdom combined and with oil reserves bigger than both, just held its last elections on the 23rd August 2017, and the ruling MPLA party announced victory with an absolute majority in Parliament before counting the votes despite winning the election ultimately winning the election according to results leaked to press by the own opposition. If you think this is absurd, lets start the story from the beginning to see why this is normal and expect from my country.
In 1974 Portuguese Military junior military officers toppled the Salazar Dictatorial Regime, but soon the country was divided between the Communist elements helped by Soviet agents and those wanting a Western style Democracy, with both sides heavily armed and composed of veterans of Portuguese colonial war, the civil war seemed inevitable as now the Soviet Union could mount a militarized version of the 1968 French revolution.
But instead of taking this opportunity to stir trouble in Europe, and probably weary of bad memories in Catalonia, Moscow directed its communist agents to work to ensure that Portuguese colonies were taken over by Communist groups. Before the inevitable pullout of Portuguese troops and the transition of Portugal to Democracy, Communists agents within the new Portuguese authorities transferred strategic military installations, facilitated the arrival of Cuban troops to support the MPLA, handed over weapons depots and even the crack Congolese mercenary Troops under Portuguese service were handed over to the communist group MPLA, in a sense Angola became the MPLA and the MPLA became Angola, despite having been defeated militarily by the Portuguese and Angolan Colonial forces, this is the first Miracle.
With this new found power, the MPLA ensured free and fair elections were organized in 1975 by massacring thousands of UNITA and FNLA members across Angolan cities, thousands of Cubans troops were airlifts to Luanda defend democracy with the best Soviet Weapons that Polish and Ukrainian blood can buy and ensure that foreign intervention could take place. For those that contend that Cuba was simply aiding Angola's people out of a romantic duty to spread communist, one can point to Venezuela current status as a Cuban satellite which is being pillaged by Havana in the same word were movies and the news rail against US Imperialism stealing Afghan oil. This is the second miracle.
Once it finished to deal with its rivals, in 1977 the MPLA solved the problem of internal dissent by killing MPLA Nito Alves, who ironically was active in the persecution of UNITA and FNLA members in 1974, purging its ranks of his sympathizers, killing upwards to 80.000 people across the country, dumping their corpses in mass graves and putting thousands more in concentration camps for years.
Having solved Angola's internal problems, the MPLA regime started to export its vision of a free and Democratic Africa to its neighbors by invading Congo Kinshasa in 1977 and 1978 using its Congolese mercenaries and sponsoring Communists guerrillas against Rhodesia and South Africa, which threatening hundreds of billions of dollars in mining interests prompted the United States authorize to South Africa to provide limited assistance to UNITA to challenge the MPLA hegemony in a war of Independence that culminated in a decisive victory against all odds over the MPLA and their Cubans, Soviet, East German and North Korean AlliesBattle of Cuito Cuannavale in 1988, the second biggest Battle on African Soil after El Alamein crushed the Totalitarian forces of Nazism, discovering the limit of its military power, as the Soviet Union was crumbling and Cuban conventional troops couldn't be maintained in country, the MPLA agreed to hold multiparty elections in 1992, renounce Communism and move Angola to a capitalist economy.
With the Iraq-Iran and Gulf wars presented to the USA and other western powers with the need of diversifying oil supplies and the loss of strategic values of mines in South Africa and Congo, UNITA found itself without friends to fight against an MPLA regime using billions in oil money to pay South African mercenaries using Russian Weapons, while it took another 10 years of brutal civil war, in the end UNITA was destroyed, its forced scattered in the wind, their spirit broken as their leader Jonas Savimbi was unceremoniously killed by treachery and his body buried in an unmarked grave denied.
It is indeed a major achievement to win a war while always having numerical and military superiority against your enemy, but the best seems that the MPLA did it while at the same time Blaming UNITA for the destruction every single economic legacy of the colonial period, which was done by sheer mismanagement and corruption, from railways to agriculture and industries, nowhere in Angola today could one found a hinted that anything importance existed in Angola before 1975. Mabor was once a great Company, today the name evoke a slump which turns into a mudpit in rainy season, GAMEK was once a big company, today it is the name of another slum where you get killed for walking alone at night, ABAMAT was creating by merging colonial companies and tasking to maintain the fleet of public buses across the country, today all the buses are broken down and the Buses operators are in millions of dollars in debt while workers have not received salaries for years, but at least ABAMAT has the best looking mechanic supplies store in whole of Angola, and so you catch my drift.
While some say that Angola is a former communist country turned in a crony capitalist system, the truth is that nothing has changed: before 1992 the MPLA used its used military power and has control over the country economic resources, after 1992 used its used military power and has control over the country economic resources. But without the trapping of the communist terminology, living in a world where Capitalism is apparently triumphant and where it is fashionable to be a Billionaire, the MPLA Elites have decided that it will hold economic power by the means of having its members being the owners of companies controlling every single strategic industries in the country, aside from already controlling the military, police and State administration.
Isabel dos Santos, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos daughter, is the epitome of this strategy, who claim to have started her career by selling eggs on her grandmother front door, is the owner of Countries biggest Cellphone Operator UNITEL which was created using state funds via the national oil company of which she is now the CEO by presidential decree and who doesn't have competitions for the Government refuse to grant licenses. She is also the own of the country biggest Bank BFA, also created using state funds, and somehow always manage to grab a share of the biggest lucrative contracts granted by the government, the latest being a 4.5 Billions dollars contract to build yet another on the Kwanza river. If you are getting ideas, desist, she is married … to the CEO of Angola National Cement Company.
The president oldest Male child, Zenu dos Santos, was given control of the country Sovereign funds … if you guessed it to be a major money laundering scheme were billions are lost, you take a short of wisky. The scheme is a case study on how you can spend $5 Billions to buy a logo.
Another president sons, Artistic Name Koreondu, fashion himself as the National Micheal Angelo and Patron of the arts, just like Gaddafi son was Libya Best Football Player and head of the national team, was granted a public contract to manage Angola Second Public channel and “Enrich its programs grid”, He also promotes music shows, sings, artists, and is a movie producers in his spare times whose Ginga Rainha de Angola was so good it was yanked from theaters after 2 weeks. If you guessed this is done with public money, take a shot.
The latest Presidential offspring to show his entrepreneurial fiber was Danilo dos Santos, who created the country first mobile banking platform by using funds from the National Post Office, under presidential decree. He also bought a $500.000 Watch at a charity event hosted by Will Smith,meaninglessly shaming all would be swaggers in Angola, I mean who can compete? How much pocket money does this guy have ? When the Angolans railed against him on social media, he claimed the purchase is a donation to AIDS research, in a country were thousands of children die of malaria each month, and will never have time to catch AIDS or know what is sex.
If you watch through the President sons social media Activity you have the impression these people just want to be normal people, with their hobbies and be recognized for their achievement, and supremely offended when someone questions them for using stolen money to run pet project, Koreondu summarized it well once when He went to Facebook to complain about being the victim of bullying at the American school He attended as a child for having a British Accent ... can someone tell this man his father is a Brutal dictator !
But from the President downwards to the lowest municipal mayor, passing by ministers and provincial governors, MPLA members use their power in government to create pet companies, here is a list of few examples:
Then you have Bento Kangamba, the Youth Entrepreneur, who took a Loan of 300.000.000 Dollars to run a sports club and whose biggest business success was bringing Brazilian prostitutes and TV personalities to Angola to be paid thousands of Dollars to have sex without condoms with Rich Angolans.
Some people will say that this is the evidence of “Corruption” that need to be tackled, and that the MPLA itself is promising to fight corruption, but the real problem is that the people who run the MPLA believes that they own the country, by no other reason that it was given to them in 1974 and that they damn well enjoy owning it, this is why they decided to steal the election elections of the 23rd of August, for had they accepted their own victory and formed a government which could run the country with all but minor concessions to the opposition parties and some well placed bribes, the MPLA would have conceded that the People is the ultimate owner of the country and that it doesn't hold absolute power. Such cannot stand, so the MPLA is going to steal all future elections, even if it wins them.
I was born under the MPLA government but was lucky to be able to travel and live abroad for some years, so that the mediocrity that is this country is so evident to me I cannot deny without resorting to drugs, alcohol and lobotomy … simultaneously, so I cannot but wonder by what miracle this oppression of my people is allowed to continue to this day, and all but wonder if my grandson is also going to be son on a land that know nothing but Oppression and theft.
Now the MPLA is claiming to have won 62 % of the votes despite all proofs available for all to see, awarding itself magically 75% of the seats in Parliament, while at the same time claiming that their candidate Joao Lourenço is the Country president while have used all legal and illegal means to make sure He will hold no real power, as dos Santos control the MPLA President and by law no changes can be made to the Military, Police and Internal security apparatus for 8 years.
They are not hiding, because they don't want to hide it, they are doing it brazenly because if you humiliate someone and force them to accept the humiliation, you have broken their spirit ... so that He may accept his status as your slave.
PS: ... Remember those Portuguese Military officers who helped create this Tropical Gulag, they went on to enjoy successful political and civil services in Portugal, as billions of dollars stolen from Angola are laundered in Portuguese financial institutions. No crime goes punished it seems.
In 1974 Portuguese Military junior military officers toppled the Salazar Dictatorial Regime, but soon the country was divided between the Communist elements helped by Soviet agents and those wanting a Western style Democracy, with both sides heavily armed and composed of veterans of Portuguese colonial war, the civil war seemed inevitable as now the Soviet Union could mount a militarized version of the 1968 French revolution.
But instead of taking this opportunity to stir trouble in Europe, and probably weary of bad memories in Catalonia, Moscow directed its communist agents to work to ensure that Portuguese colonies were taken over by Communist groups. Before the inevitable pullout of Portuguese troops and the transition of Portugal to Democracy, Communists agents within the new Portuguese authorities transferred strategic military installations, facilitated the arrival of Cuban troops to support the MPLA, handed over weapons depots and even the crack Congolese mercenary Troops under Portuguese service were handed over to the communist group MPLA, in a sense Angola became the MPLA and the MPLA became Angola, despite having been defeated militarily by the Portuguese and Angolan Colonial forces, this is the first Miracle.
With this new found power, the MPLA ensured free and fair elections were organized in 1975 by massacring thousands of UNITA and FNLA members across Angolan cities, thousands of Cubans troops were airlifts to Luanda defend democracy with the best Soviet Weapons that Polish and Ukrainian blood can buy and ensure that foreign intervention could take place. For those that contend that Cuba was simply aiding Angola's people out of a romantic duty to spread communist, one can point to Venezuela current status as a Cuban satellite which is being pillaged by Havana in the same word were movies and the news rail against US Imperialism stealing Afghan oil. This is the second miracle.
Once it finished to deal with its rivals, in 1977 the MPLA solved the problem of internal dissent by killing MPLA Nito Alves, who ironically was active in the persecution of UNITA and FNLA members in 1974, purging its ranks of his sympathizers, killing upwards to 80.000 people across the country, dumping their corpses in mass graves and putting thousands more in concentration camps for years.
Having solved Angola's internal problems, the MPLA regime started to export its vision of a free and Democratic Africa to its neighbors by invading Congo Kinshasa in 1977 and 1978 using its Congolese mercenaries and sponsoring Communists guerrillas against Rhodesia and South Africa, which threatening hundreds of billions of dollars in mining interests prompted the United States authorize to South Africa to provide limited assistance to UNITA to challenge the MPLA hegemony in a war of Independence that culminated in a decisive victory against all odds over the MPLA and their Cubans, Soviet, East German and North Korean AlliesBattle of Cuito Cuannavale in 1988, the second biggest Battle on African Soil after El Alamein crushed the Totalitarian forces of Nazism, discovering the limit of its military power, as the Soviet Union was crumbling and Cuban conventional troops couldn't be maintained in country, the MPLA agreed to hold multiparty elections in 1992, renounce Communism and move Angola to a capitalist economy.
With the Iraq-Iran and Gulf wars presented to the USA and other western powers with the need of diversifying oil supplies and the loss of strategic values of mines in South Africa and Congo, UNITA found itself without friends to fight against an MPLA regime using billions in oil money to pay South African mercenaries using Russian Weapons, while it took another 10 years of brutal civil war, in the end UNITA was destroyed, its forced scattered in the wind, their spirit broken as their leader Jonas Savimbi was unceremoniously killed by treachery and his body buried in an unmarked grave denied.
It is indeed a major achievement to win a war while always having numerical and military superiority against your enemy, but the best seems that the MPLA did it while at the same time Blaming UNITA for the destruction every single economic legacy of the colonial period, which was done by sheer mismanagement and corruption, from railways to agriculture and industries, nowhere in Angola today could one found a hinted that anything importance existed in Angola before 1975. Mabor was once a great Company, today the name evoke a slump which turns into a mudpit in rainy season, GAMEK was once a big company, today it is the name of another slum where you get killed for walking alone at night, ABAMAT was creating by merging colonial companies and tasking to maintain the fleet of public buses across the country, today all the buses are broken down and the Buses operators are in millions of dollars in debt while workers have not received salaries for years, but at least ABAMAT has the best looking mechanic supplies store in whole of Angola, and so you catch my drift.
While some say that Angola is a former communist country turned in a crony capitalist system, the truth is that nothing has changed: before 1992 the MPLA used its used military power and has control over the country economic resources, after 1992 used its used military power and has control over the country economic resources. But without the trapping of the communist terminology, living in a world where Capitalism is apparently triumphant and where it is fashionable to be a Billionaire, the MPLA Elites have decided that it will hold economic power by the means of having its members being the owners of companies controlling every single strategic industries in the country, aside from already controlling the military, police and State administration.
Isabel dos Santos, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos daughter, is the epitome of this strategy, who claim to have started her career by selling eggs on her grandmother front door, is the owner of Countries biggest Cellphone Operator UNITEL which was created using state funds via the national oil company of which she is now the CEO by presidential decree and who doesn't have competitions for the Government refuse to grant licenses. She is also the own of the country biggest Bank BFA, also created using state funds, and somehow always manage to grab a share of the biggest lucrative contracts granted by the government, the latest being a 4.5 Billions dollars contract to build yet another on the Kwanza river. If you are getting ideas, desist, she is married … to the CEO of Angola National Cement Company.
The president oldest Male child, Zenu dos Santos, was given control of the country Sovereign funds … if you guessed it to be a major money laundering scheme were billions are lost, you take a short of wisky. The scheme is a case study on how you can spend $5 Billions to buy a logo.
Another president sons, Artistic Name Koreondu, fashion himself as the National Micheal Angelo and Patron of the arts, just like Gaddafi son was Libya Best Football Player and head of the national team, was granted a public contract to manage Angola Second Public channel and “Enrich its programs grid”, He also promotes music shows, sings, artists, and is a movie producers in his spare times whose Ginga Rainha de Angola was so good it was yanked from theaters after 2 weeks. If you guessed this is done with public money, take a shot.
The latest Presidential offspring to show his entrepreneurial fiber was Danilo dos Santos, who created the country first mobile banking platform by using funds from the National Post Office, under presidential decree. He also bought a $500.000 Watch at a charity event hosted by Will Smith,meaninglessly shaming all would be swaggers in Angola, I mean who can compete? How much pocket money does this guy have ? When the Angolans railed against him on social media, he claimed the purchase is a donation to AIDS research, in a country were thousands of children die of malaria each month, and will never have time to catch AIDS or know what is sex.
If you watch through the President sons social media Activity you have the impression these people just want to be normal people, with their hobbies and be recognized for their achievement, and supremely offended when someone questions them for using stolen money to run pet project, Koreondu summarized it well once when He went to Facebook to complain about being the victim of bullying at the American school He attended as a child for having a British Accent ... can someone tell this man his father is a Brutal dictator !
But from the President downwards to the lowest municipal mayor, passing by ministers and provincial governors, MPLA members use their power in government to create pet companies, here is a list of few examples:
- One of luanda major private schools, Eliada, is the property of Luanda Province top School authority, which uses state funds to pay the salary of his teachers while state schools teachers go without salary and are punished for complaining.
- Municipal Waste management companies are almost always the property of the president of the municipal authority where it operates.
- Most of Luanda infamous Candogueiro private taxis are property of MPLA members who can afford to buy replacement cars each time their drivers break them for driving like crazies, free them from prison each time they cause a major wreck, even if they kill score of people in the process.
Then you have Bento Kangamba, the Youth Entrepreneur, who took a Loan of 300.000.000 Dollars to run a sports club and whose biggest business success was bringing Brazilian prostitutes and TV personalities to Angola to be paid thousands of Dollars to have sex without condoms with Rich Angolans.
Some people will say that this is the evidence of “Corruption” that need to be tackled, and that the MPLA itself is promising to fight corruption, but the real problem is that the people who run the MPLA believes that they own the country, by no other reason that it was given to them in 1974 and that they damn well enjoy owning it, this is why they decided to steal the election elections of the 23rd of August, for had they accepted their own victory and formed a government which could run the country with all but minor concessions to the opposition parties and some well placed bribes, the MPLA would have conceded that the People is the ultimate owner of the country and that it doesn't hold absolute power. Such cannot stand, so the MPLA is going to steal all future elections, even if it wins them.
I was born under the MPLA government but was lucky to be able to travel and live abroad for some years, so that the mediocrity that is this country is so evident to me I cannot deny without resorting to drugs, alcohol and lobotomy … simultaneously, so I cannot but wonder by what miracle this oppression of my people is allowed to continue to this day, and all but wonder if my grandson is also going to be son on a land that know nothing but Oppression and theft.
Now the MPLA is claiming to have won 62 % of the votes despite all proofs available for all to see, awarding itself magically 75% of the seats in Parliament, while at the same time claiming that their candidate Joao Lourenço is the Country president while have used all legal and illegal means to make sure He will hold no real power, as dos Santos control the MPLA President and by law no changes can be made to the Military, Police and Internal security apparatus for 8 years.
They are not hiding, because they don't want to hide it, they are doing it brazenly because if you humiliate someone and force them to accept the humiliation, you have broken their spirit ... so that He may accept his status as your slave.
PS: ... Remember those Portuguese Military officers who helped create this Tropical Gulag, they went on to enjoy successful political and civil services in Portugal, as billions of dollars stolen from Angola are laundered in Portuguese financial institutions. No crime goes punished it seems.