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ANGOLA: Wealth for Just a Few

Analysis by Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Jan 15 2004 (IPS) - Corruption, a lack of transparency, a weak democracy and a population that barely scrapes by while watching the country’s leaders get richer and richer – these are some of the things said to describe the Angola ruled by President José Eduardo dos Santos.

Corruption, a lack of transparency, a weak democracy and a population that barely scrapes by while watching the country’s leaders get richer and richer – these are some of the things said to describe the Angola ruled by President José Eduardo dos Santos.

Nearly two years after the end of four decades of war that almost completely destroyed the country’s infrastructure, and with the former rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) playing the role of the main opposition party in parliament, analysts say that little to nothing has changed in the former Portuguese colony in southern Africa.

After the death in combat of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi in February 2002, the international community glowingly predicted the start of an era of prosperity in Angola, a country of enormous wealth in natural resources that was devastated first by the anti-colonial struggle against Portugal from 1961 to 1975, and then by 27 years of civil war.

However, the optimistic predictions of international observers, diplomats and officials found no basis in reality, and it became increasingly clear that the creation of a more just, democratic society did not merely depend on whether Savimbi was dead or alive.

Angola’s statistics of poverty and wealth remain unchanged. Just as many children are dying today as in the last decade, which was the worst decade in 41 years of armed conflict.

The latest figures revealed by the United Nations show that one-third of all children in the country of 13.6 million die before the age of five, and three and a half million children under 18 are malnourished.

Angola remains one of the poorest nations in Africa, and its life expectancy is among the lowest on the continent. Some 900,000 people are still internally displaced, and millions more have virtually no access to hospitals or schools.

But Angola is one of the potentially richest countries in Africa, boasting some of the world’s biggest oil reserves, and is the continent’s second-largest exporter of oil, after Nigeria.

Oil, which contributed 17.8 billion dollars to the state coffers between 1997 and 2002, accounts for 85 percent of public revenue in Angola, whose Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is estimated at 6.5 billion dollars.

Despite that wealth, 68 percent of the population survives on less than a dollar a day.

In Angola, which is also rich in diamonds, spending on health and education between 1997 and 2002 averaged just half of the amount spent in nearby nations like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon and Mozambique.

Angola shot into the international headlines this week when the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report Tuesday stating that 4.2 billion dollars had disappeared from the state coffers between 1997 and 2002 – an amount ”roughly equal to the entire sum the government spent on all social programmes in the same period”.

”In addition to decades of war and humanitarian crisis, the Angolan public has had to bear the brunt of government mismanagement of billions of dollars in public funds,” said the 93-page report.

But Luanda issued a statement Wednesday dismissing the rights group’s allegations as ”groundless”.

”The government of the Republic of Angola cannot be held responsible for estimates of its revenues which are based on non-credible sources,” said the communique issued by Angola’s Finance Ministry.

”There has never been, at any time, an independent probe which could prove these accusations,” it stated, adding that Angola’s public finances are submitted to audits by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Antonio Charuto, a former Angolan army soldier who survived 10 years of war against UNITA and is now a leading representative of the Angolan community in Portugal, told IPS that ”what is happening is a disgrace – not only for Luanda, but for all of the countries that are accomplices in what is happening there.”

Charuto pointed out that the business deals ”that are enriching the country’s leaders also involve partners in democratic nations – including Portugal, the biggest foreign investor in Angola – who unscrupulously turn a blind eye to the evidence that the country is being pillaged and looted.”

The head of the opposition Front For Democracy (FPD), Filomeno Vieira Lopes, said the HRW report would have little impact. ”There will be no reaction at the international level,” since ”people in those circles have known about what’s going on for a long time.”

The foreign companies drilling for oil in Angola ”should be pressured to put an end to the obscurity surrounding public finances, to which the HRW report refers,” said Vieira Lopes.

Ana Dias Cordeiro, a Portuguese analyst who specialises in Angolan affairs, said the oil companies themselves are the biggest obstacle standing in the way of an in-depth audit of Luanda’s public finances.

Of the four transnational corporations drilling for oil in Angola – the U.S.-based ChevronTexaco and Exxon Mobil, France’s Total, and British Petroleum – only the latter ”expressed a willingness to declare the payments it had made to the Angolan state, but Luanda kept it from doing so,” said Dias Cordeiro.

Nor will the HRW report have major repercussions internally, according to Joao da Graça Campos, the director of the independent Semanario Angolense magazine.

”There was no immediate reaction to the report from the opposition, and it is not even a sure thing that the issue will be brought up for debate in parliament,” said Campos.

He added, however, that ”the government cannot emerge totally unscathed from a situation like this, and it may feel some discomfort from the external pressure.”

But he also noted that ”civil society organisations have frequently asked the attorney-general’s office to investigate similar cases, and that has never occurred.”

Ten years ago, Portuguese politicians and academics were divided over the Angolan conflict, between leftists, who supported the government, and right-wing sectors, as well as the most conservative wing of the Socialist Party, which defended UNITA.

But that has changed radically.

Prominent leftist intellectuals like Nuno Pacheco, the assistant director of the independent Lisbon daily Publico, now criticise the Angolan government, denouncing shady business deals and the ostentatious lifestyles of senior officials who buy mansions in southern Portugal and apartments in exclusive districts in Lisbon for their sons and daughters who are studying in Portuguese universities.

”Is there any reason that Angola, where the president’s daughter had a fancy ceremony of state wedding, should rank last on the U.N. Human Development Index for the past seven years, now that Savimbi’s dead and the war is over?” asked Pacheco.