makaangola.org
The recent
violence against the youth, who have been organizing anti-government protests,
is just the most prominent aspect of the political campaign the regime has set
in motion. The end game is to entrench itself in power. Yet, a more sinister
operation has been unfolding, in which kidnappings and torture have become the
main tools to squelch any form of dissent in Angola.
On
September 3, 2011, up to six armed men surrounded youth protest leader ‘Pandita
Nehru’ nearby Independence Square, in Luanda, where he and several others
planned to hold a protest that morning. The assailants took him south, on a
trip out of the city, to a deserted coastline, known as Palmeirinhas, where, in
1977, the dominant faction of MPLA held summary executions of hundreds of
dissenters and innocents, burned their bodies with petrol, and buried them on
sight.
The
captors interrogated ‘Pandita Nehru’ on who was behind the protests, beat him
up and taunted him with an argument, among themselves, on the wisdom to execute
him right there. Ever since, he has been mostly off the radar screen.
On March
7, 2012, at around 4 PM, Mário Domingos, aged 27, and Kimbamba, aged 30, were
on their way to meet other fellow protest organizers to sort out the logistics
of a protest they had called for March 10. A few hundred meters from the
meeting point, up to 10 armed and masked individuals rounded them at gunpoint,
in front of police officers. “I grabbed a bar of the mobile police station, the
assailants discharged electric shocks on us, beat us up, stripped us of our
cell phones and documents in front of the police officers, who just watched
unmoved,” said Mário Domingos.
The victim
said they were hauled into two vehicles without license plates and driven off a
few meters to the premises of the state-owned Provincial Water Company (EPAL),
which has high walls, as people were assembling in the street. In the company’s
yard, as told by Mário Domingos, the abductors beat them up and fired at them
with teasers (electrified darts) to immobilize them, and drove off. The victims
were presented before the vice-president of Kabuscorp Football Club, Mr. Raúl.
“Mr. Raúl
promised us money to stop organizing protests against president José Eduardo
dos Santos,” explained Mário Domingos. Kabuscorp, in which former Brazilian
world champion Rivaldo plays, is owned by general Bento Kangamba, who is also
the president of the club. The general, a member of MPLA Central Committee, is
also part of the presidential family, by marriage to Dos Santos’ niece.
He has
been accused on several occasions of being behind the pro-dos Santos militias who
have been targeting protest leaders with vicious attacks and abductions. On
June 4, general Kangamba denied, on the Catholic-run FM broadcaster Rádio
Ecclésia, any involvement with the militias. “Have I been promoted to the rank
of three-star general to command militias? This [accusation] is lack of
respect. It is envy,” he said.
However,
Mário Domingos and Kimbamba witnessed Mr. Raúl issuing orders to his club
thugs. “He said that we were stubborn elements who wanted to be heroes and die
for the people. So, he told his men to get rid of us.’” The abductors took the
victims to a landfill.
Mário
Domingos added: “There we were tortured with electric shocks, beaten up as they
pleased. But there were some people around who heard our screams and came
forth. They [assailants] took us to the cars again, and drove us to a quieter
landfill where they continued with the torture, but there were scavengers there
too who heard us screaming.”
His story
is also a case study on how president José Eduardo dos Santos and his close
associates dispose of incalculable sums of money and other resources to corrupt
people in order to maintain the status quo.
Last year,
on August 27, the day before celebrating his birthday, president Dos Santos met
with Mário Domingos, Luís Bernardo and Fernando Yannick, all leaders of the
informal youth gathering called Movimento Revolucionário de Intervenção Social
– MIRS (Revolutionary Movement for Social Intervention). The meeting was part
of a deal negotiated with the president of the Executive Commission of Luanda
City, general José Tavares Ferreira, who is part of the presidential inner
circle.
According
to Domingos, the deal was part of a strategy, “to transform our movement into a
satellite organization of MPLA, for us to do solidarity work on their behalf,
and hold counter-demonstrations to support president Dos Santos.” By the time
of the meeting with the president, the movement had already received US $4
million in an escrow account, six pickup trucks Mitshubishi L200, and six
apartments in the Chinese-built town of Kilamba. “The governor of Luanda at the
time, José Maria, sent his driver to the bank with us, where we cashed in the
equivalent of US $700 thousand in cash. Then the governor’s driver took us
home,” Mário Domingos.
“From the
association Akwasambila, in which the president is an honorary member, we
received six truckloads of food and other goods for us to give away. The trucks
belong to the municipal administration of Sambizanga, which was ran by general
Tavares,” he further explained.
Some of
the leaders of the movement happily switched sides and went ahead with
“donating” the food and goods given to them by general Tavares in some social
centers, always in the presence of members of the municipality and of the state
security. But Mário Domingos decided to use the pick up trucks and some of the
petty cash given by the governor to support the logistics of a demonstration
set for September 3, by another loose group led by rappers.
As Mário
Domingos insisted in leading a double political life, the authorities troubled
him on September 9. At 7 AM, the police raided his house, seized the gifts he
had received, and jailed him for 45 days without due process. “The police
planted drugs behind a new TV set I had bought for my mother in-law, and
justified my imprisonment as a drug dealer,” he said. He also revealed that he
received various death threats while in jail.
One of the
recurrent strategies the regime has used to bribe activists is to offer them
houses, cars and other material incentives but without the proper paperwork, to
facilitate the retrieval of the gifts, once the corrupted fails to be loyal or
simply becomes irrelevant.
Mário
Domingos claims that Luís Bernardo and Fernando Yannick, who remain sided with
the regime, were only allowed to keep the pickup trucks. The apartments and the
money simply vanished. He also said the previous governor of Luanda, José
Maria, had personally offered him one of the most recent Range-Rover models,
which he just drove from the car stand.
Now, the
authorities are threatening to close the garage he inherited from his father,
in which he makes a living as an auto-painter, besides extended threats and
“advice” to his family for him to toe the line.
On March
10, police officers and plain clothed officers, who had been monitoring youth
protest leader Gaspar Luamba, a law student, stopped the taxi he was traveling
him, and hauled him off to the 10th Police Station, in Cazenga, Luanda’s
largest slum. They tortured him in the cell, and released him after three
hours, as news was already out on the police’s involvement in his abduction.
These events and all manners of harassment have led many youngsters, identified
as potential leaders, to flee their homes and to seek safe houses.
But,
rather than deterring the anti-regime sentiment and subdue people, this
strategy only keeps stocking public anger.
Ironically,
the scattering of these emerging youth groups and their leaders, as well as
their lack of structural organization, has rendered the regime’s strategies of
violence and corruption ineffective. Such strategies only give cannon fodder
for Angolans to come to terms with the intractable wickedness of president Dos
Santos and his regime.
http://makaangola.org/2012/06/english-violence-the-way-of-politics-in-angola/?lang=en
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