Although João Lourenço has been the subject of media attention due to accusations of high-level corruption against the network sponsored by José Eduardo dos Santos’s family, Angola’s authoritarian political system remains largely unchanged.
After José Eduardo dos Santos left the presidency of Angola after 40 years in power, his successor, ex-general João Lourenço, took office with promises of reform. The eradication of corruption in the government and in the dominant Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) was declared as its first priority, “even if the first to fall are militants or even high party officials who committed the crimes”.Since taking office in 2017, João Lourenço has reformulated the MPLA’s political commission, acquiring control of the party and, through it, control of the executive, armed forces, and intelligence services. In its anti-corruption effort, more than $ 5 billion in looted goods were recovered. Does this signal a new beginning for Angola and a decisive departure from the corruption and authoritarianism of the past? Or are these reforms just a facade in the sense of guaranteeing João Lourenço’s dominion over power? In order to gain a broader understanding of this issue, the Center for African Strategic Studies conducts an analysis of the situation, having consulted several independent personalities with knowledge of the Angolan reality.
Gigantic Challenges
Angola’s GDP per capita of $ 4,422 classifies it as a middle-income economy. However, Angola remains a country of paradoxes. Despite its wealth, Angola is among the countries with the highest level of inequality in the world. Although 75% of the country’s population lives on less than $ 2 a day, Luanda was considered the most expensive city in the world to live in in 2017.
It is also no coincidence that Angola is also considered to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world, ranking 146th out of 180 countries in the Transparency International’s [NGO] Corruption Perception Index (IPC). Oil revenue represents 95% of the economy. The oil and gas boom of the 1990s financed an extensive sponsorship network that included prominent figures from the MPLA, the government, and the armed forces, lasting during the time that José Eduardo dos Santos was in the presidency. Local elites and individuals linked to José Eduardo dos Santos’ family also held stakes in the mining, real estate, services, and banking sectors.
“THE CAPTURE OF THE STATE INVOLVES UNDUE INFLUENCES BY INDIVIDUALS AND PRIVATE COMPANIES ON POLICIES, REGULATIONS AND LEGISLATION WITH THE SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE OF APPROPRIATING PUBLIC RESOURCES FOR PRIVATE GAIN”.
The problem of corruption in Angola is also rooted in the capture of the state. Notwithstanding “common” corruption generally depends on the selective application of existing laws, the capture of the State involves undue influences by individuals and private companies on policies, regulations, and legislation with the specific objective of appropriating public resources for private gain. The plundering of the public purse has become an integral part of the functioning of the government machine.
South African lawyer Andre Thomassen, who specializes in constitutional law, the main editor of the constitutions of Angola and Mozambique and a long-time adviser to both countries, said that the capture of key sectors of the Angolan economy by private interests “is a systemic characteristic of the neo- one-party state, unreformed, and reconfigured during the 1990s into a dominant party state. There is no one who does business in Angola who can escape this “tenacity”.
This problem was exposed when the connection between Angola and the multimillionaire Brazilian business conglomerate, Odebrecht, was exposed. Angola’s largest private employer, Odebrecht is at the center of what has been called “the biggest multinational corruption scandal in history”. In 2017, a New York court imposed a fine of $ 2.6 billion after the company admitted that it made payments worth around $ 1 billion in bribes to politicians, regulators, and legislators in Angola. , Mozambique, and 10 Latin American countries for several years.
These bribes were offered to public officials in exchange for favorable laws, directives, and regulatory provisions, covering a wide range of highly regulated sectors, such as [the energy] and utility sector, which allowed millions of dollars to be channeled to Odebrecht and to its subsidiaries. According to court documents, in a specific case, a senior Angolan government official received the US $ 1.19 million from Odebrecht to create regulations that would direct business to the company. In return, Odebrecht obtained the US $ 261.7 million in contracts. In another case, Odebrecht paid the US $ 8 million to an Angolan regulator to establish public tender procedures that sent several construction projects to the company worth millions of dollars.
Angolan human rights activist Rafael Marques de Morais launched a campaign in 2017 demanding a public investigation into the capture of the state in Angola by Odebrecht, but no investigation has been opened to date. “There has been an absolute silence … The Angolan justice system wants this to disappear given the involvement of senior figures in the state,” said Marques de Morais.
In addition to collusion practices with foreign operators such as Odebrecht, the Angolan government has been heavily indebted over the years. Despite being one of the richest countries in Africa, Angola is at the same time one of its most indebted countries, with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 91 percent. Between 2005 and 2019, Angola borrowed $ 40 billion from China, representing about half of its total foreign debt, including $ 4.4 billion in support of work on the Chinese Silk Road initiative. The management of these debts will be fundamental for Angola’s long-term economic recovery.
Optimism and Uncertainty
Some of the anti-corruption promises made by João Lourenço have been kept, although their effectiveness is not very consistent. Under its rule, dozens of employees were accused of corruption. New public procurement laws abolished the requirement that foreign investors must have a local partner, a requirement that favored the receipt of bribes by local elites financed by foreign companies in exchange for market access. Between 50 and 300 public companies – the target of vast protection schemes under the José Eduardo dos Santos regime – have been identified to be privatized.
NEW PUBLIC PROCUREMENT LAWS [PUBLIC PROCUREMENT] ABOLISHED THE REQUIREMENT THAT FOREIGN INVESTORS HAVE A LOCAL PARTNER, A REQUIREMENT THAT FAVORED THE RECEIPT OF BRIBES FROM FOREIGN COMPANIES BY LOCAL ELITES IN EXCHANGE FOR MARKET ACCESS.
In addition, João Lourenço sought to replace some entrenched employees in key positions for the implementation of reforms, by constituting a younger and more diversified staff. “He took risks by appointing young female cadres to important positions in this reform,” commented Alex Vines of Chatham House. “Perhaps this will lead to good results, but these women, intelligent technocrats, will need to deliver concrete results quickly, as an older generation of the MPLA elite feels they have been outdated and are not satisfied.”
In an interview that took place in September 2018, Marques de Morais noted that he would give the president of Angola a rating of “8 out of 10, simply because he inherited a country where corruption was so ingrained, so institutionalized, that it became the institution itself ”.
But Thomashausen warns that anti-corruption campaigns could be just a simple means of “purging the old corrupt elite to make room for a new corrupt elite”. Jon Shubert, author of the study Working the System: A Political Ethnography of the New Angola (System Manipulation: A Political Ethnography of Nova Angola) suggested that Angola’s economic reforms had little impact and could, in fact, do more harm. than advantages for some. “The formulas prescribed by the International Monetary Fund, such as the introduction of value-added taxes in July 2018, could affect the lower and middle classes more intensely.”
The actions taken to hold employees accountable were also subject to different interpretations. The son of the previous president, José Filomeno dos Santos, who chaired the Angola Sovereign Fund, is on trial for money laundering. His sister Isabel, the richest woman in Africa, was removed from the position of chairman of the Board of Directors of Sonangol, the state’s multi-million dollar oil company. Valter Filipe da Silva, former head of the Central Bank of Angola, had the same fate. He is currently on trial in court for trying to explain the issue of the irregular transfer of $ 500 million from the Treasury to a private British account during the final weeks of José Eduardo dos Santos’ government.
However, Shubert questioned other decisions, such as the government’s insistence that it be Angola, instead of Portugal, to proceed to the trial of Manuel Vicente, Former Vice President of Angola and head of Sonangol. Manuel Vicente reportedly paid a bribe in the amount of $ 850,000 to a Portuguese magistrate to suspend the investigation into his business in Portugal. However, doubts remain as to whether Angolan courts will hold him responsible, as he and other members of José Eduardo dos Santos’ family continue to exert significant influence over government institutions “This proves the perpetuation of the influence of the old networks,” explained Shubert.
“INSTEAD OF BEING INSTITUTIONALIZED, POWER … WAS PERSONALIZED AROUND THE FIGURE OF JOSÉ EDUARDO DOS SANTOS, AND OPERATED THROUGH INFORMAL HIERARCHIES ESTABLISHED WITHIN PERSONAL LOYALTIES, SOME OF WHICH STILL PERSIST”.
Progressively, these targets are opposing what they consider “coordinated attacks” against themselves. In January 2020, Isabel dos Santos accused João Lourenço of orchestrating a purge of people linked to his father, suggesting that he would counterattack by running for president in 2022. This, in response to the government’s freezing of its assets in Angola and the announcement that he would use “all possible means” to return her to the country to account for her accumulated fortune estimated at $ 3 billion. Isabel’s sister, Welwitschia dos Santos, once an important MPLA MP, fled the country in May 2019 amid allegations of threats from Angola’s secret services, having been suspended from Parliament. Meanwhile, his brother, José Filomeno dos Santos,
Anti-corruption efforts in Angola are politically selective, says Vines, and sensitive to public opinion. “Cases of greater visibility, such as the case against the son of José Eduardo dos Santos, were popular with the middle class. The arrest of former Transport Minister Augusto Tomás was well regarded. But this process is political and the president’s allies, such as Manuel Vicente, have not been subjected to this scrutiny. Although these investigations are legitimate, an excessive emphasis on the pursuit of José Eduardo dos Santos’ allies can become counterproductive and be seen as a witch hunt ”.
Justin Pierce of the University of Cambridge said that the authoritarian political regime in Angola could compromise the sustainability of reforms in the long term. “It was precisely because power was so centralized in José Eduardo dos Santos, that João Lourenço has been able to do a lot and quickly…. However, this non-institutionalized power was personalized around the figure of José Eduardo dos Santos and operated through informal hierarchies within personal loyalties, some of which remain operational ”.
The Face and Content of Reforms
The government has advanced more slowly in political reforms. João Lourenço rejected requests for revision of the Constitution to limit presidential powers. Its criminal justice reforms are limited to the recovery of stolen goods and fall far short of expectations of making the judicial system independent from the executive branch, a fundamental requirement of Angolan civil society activists. However, the government does not give in to public pressure to dissolve the Angolan Social Communication Regulatory Entity, the MPLA branch – highly unpopular – that monitors all broadcasting.
Analyst Peter Fabricius questions whether the MPLA, one of Africa’s oldest liberation movements, will relinquish its tight control over Angolan politics and society. He warned that Angola may be following a trend followed by new leaders of liberation parties, such as John Magufuli from Tanzania, Emmerson Mnangagwa from Zimbabwe, and Filipe Nyusi from Mozambique, based on the launch of populist anti-corruption campaigns, but maintaining strong control of the democratic space.
Fabricius traces the origins of this emerging trend in the policies adopted by the MPLA and other dominant liberation movements at the Summit of Former Liberation Movements (FLMs) in South Africa in 2016. The summit report, entitled “ The war with the West “describes how rampant corruption” is seriously damaging the image of the FLMs “and urges members to” eradicate corruption to protect revolutionary parties “. Revealingly, the report also notes that the main threat facing Africa’s liberation movements it is “the change of an externally inspired regime that works with opposition parties and civil society”. Fabricius said, “Having said that, it is evident that the FLMs have been aware of the threat that corruption poses to their power for some time and have promised to eliminate it. It is difficult to say whether this explains the new breeze that is blowing in this region and constitutes a turning point for a true institution of democracy. ”
João Lourenço’s views on reform offer additional insights into the MPLA’s conjectures. He told Angolans that he “wants to be remembered as the person who performed an economic miracle” and often draws analogies between the Angolan development model and the “Chinese economic miracle”. After the 2017 elections, João Lourenço compared the MPLA reforms to China’s “political reform and openness” and compared himself personally to its architect, the former and prominent Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.
“This is revealing,” said Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, author of the book Magnifica e Miserável: Angola since the Civil War. The Chinese reform model and the anti-corruption purge continue, in his opinion, to give no glimpse of loosening the party’s control of power. At most, it is a “means to an end: a way to keep the party in power” , a strategy echoed in the FLM’s political document.
“We cannot exclude that, in the future, the government of João Lourenço may take a more authoritarian attitude if he considers it necessary”, warned Justin Pierce. Many members of Angolan civil society share their concerns. Human rights lawyer Zola Bambi warns that João Lourenço might be tempted to replace the so-called “kleptocracy of José Eduardo dos Santos” with a new one of his own.
How should Long Range Reforms be?
“Angola urgently needs responsible and more effective governance,” says Vines. “Institutions remain weak and vulnerable, and the concentration of power in the presidency makes them more susceptible to abuse, especially if reforms fail and the president embarks on a more authoritarian path.” Civil society leaders called for the depoliticization of the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, the Ombudsman’s Office, and the National Assembly.
Although the independence of these bodies is guaranteed by the constitution, they have been provided by elements loyal to the MPLA for decades. Angolan civil society organizations are also continuing to make efforts to open up the media space and to reform the highly politicized Angolan security services. “Younger and better-prepared officers should be given an opportunity,” said Thomashausen. “There may also be a need for a National Political Rehabilitation Commission, similar to the South African Truth Commission process, to instill a new philosophy of responsibility.” Looking to the future, many Angolans agree that there are truly no alternatives to serious reforms.
