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POLITICS-ANGOLA: A Tradition of Strong Women

Louise Redvers

LUANDA, Nov 18 2008 (IPS) - She was orphaned by Angola's liberation struggle against Portugal, but through it she found a new family and a life-long inspiration.

"I was raised on politics, I grew up through the revolution," says Luzia Inglês Van-Dúnem, one of Angola's top women politicians.

Inglês was returned to Parliament in Angola's second-ever elections in September. She is also the secretary-general of OMA (Organização da Mulher Angolana), the women's wing of the ruling party MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola).

Her father, a Methodist pastor, was tortured to death by the colonial regime. Her mother died shortly afterwards – she says of a broken heart. Inglês, aged 13, joined the MPLA guerrillas in the bush near her home in Bengo, north of the capital Luanda.

Later she studied telecommunications in the former Soviet Union, did a stint in Tanzania with an MPLA cell, returned to Angola just before independence in 1974, and between 1976 and 1991 ran the presidential telecoms service.

Married for 38 years to former MPLA minister Afonso Van-Dúnem, with four children and several grandchildren, Inglês took the reins of OMA in 1999.

From laws to votes

Formed in 1962 to support MPLA fighters, OMA has evolved, through a 27-year civil war that ended in 2002, from struggle group into a campaigning tool. In the recent election, Inglês and her team toured the country, wooing the female vote.

Netfa Freeman, of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, links Angola's respect for powerful women to the legendary Queen Jinga Mbandi, who resisted the Portuguese invasion in the 17th century.

Tradition entwined with socialist ideas. "In the liberation movement, not just in Angola but all over Africa, you saw a new recognition of the need for equality between men and women," said Freeman.

During the one-party state of the 1980s, OMA lobbied for progressive laws that recognized non-married partnerships and children born out of wedlock.

"Many of the achievements we have today as women in Angola are the fruits of OMA," says Genoveva da Conceição Lino, minister for family and the promotion of women.

But is today's OMA any more than an MPLA campaign machine that allows a government flush with petrodollars, in Africa's fastest growing economy, to get away with slow progress on social issues?

Angola's appalling social statistics rank it 162 out of 177 countries in the United Nations Human Development Index. Life expectancy is 41 years. Only three out of ten rural women are literate. Infant and maternal mortality are among the world's worst. Angola has one of the lowest levels of health spending relative to GDP in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Eunice Inacio, a gender expert with the non-governmental group Development Workshop, is reserved in her assessment: "OMA is very much part of the MPLA."

Inacio praises OMA's work on literacy, micro-credit and domestic violence. "But they are funded by the party and have a lot of money to do these things, opposition women's groups don't have those opportunities," she adds.

Children to live

Petite, approaching 60, with a discreet hearing aid she inserted for the interview, Inglês speaks passionately about OMA's work.

"We need to increase the number of health posts in our communities so mothers don't spend whole days with their children waiting to see a doctor," she says.

Family planning is important here, where a woman has an average of six children.

"In extreme poverty, people think that if you have 10 children, four may die, so it's better to have more. But we shouldn't be having children to die; we should be having children to live. Bringing a child into the world when you know they will be hungry, this is a crime," she comments.

Regardless of contrasting views on the MPLA's performance, activists agree that Inglês has battled for Angolan women.

"She is assertive, with strong views. She is always the same, whomever she's talking to, you feel you can trust her," says Inacio.

Inglês's fellow parliamentarian Adélia Maria Pires da Conceição de Carvalho, describes her as "a very strong lady. Being an orphan definitely shaped her approach to life. She had to grow up very quickly."

Inglês is proud of the number of women in the new parliament, rising from 26 to 81 of a total of 220 MPs, and from two ministers to 10.

"Things have changed a lot," she said. "I believe we can reach the Southern African Development Community target of 50 percent representation by 2015."

Carvalho believes that Inglês should take credit for this: "She fought a lot at party level to get more women elected."

IPS met Inglês in her office, off one of the rabbit-warren corridors at the MPLA's headquarters in central Luanda. All round her desk are party symbols and pictures.

Asked if she's one of Angola's most powerful women, she laughs and says thankfully these days there are plenty powerful women in her country.