Return to Angola

Luanda, the capital of Angola, is currently the most expensive city in the world. Along the seafront, recently revamped at a cost of $350 million, Africa's most expensive one-bedroom apartment was snapped up for $9million, and a hamburger will set you back $30.
Yet forty years ago it was a war zone. Angola won its independence and hundreds of thousands of Portuguese colonialists fled in panic.
Now they're coming back and BBC Africa Editor Mary Harper finds out why. She meets some of the Portuguese who are leaving the economic crisis at home to cash in on Angola's oil-driven boom, and uncovers the tensions this reversal of fortunes is creating between the once-colonised and their former rulers. The migrant flood has been recent and rapid. In 2006, only 156 Portuguese emigrated to Angola. In 2012, there were 30,000.
Among the Portuguese returnees, is a scuba diving instructor from the Algarve, now earning double in Luanda, and a young family from Portugal raising their children as Angolans.
As well as providing jobs, and lucrative construction and engineering contracts, Angolans are also propping Portugal up by investing heavily on Portuguese soil - in the banking, energy and telecoms sectors. But just days before the Radio 4 team arrived in Luanda, the usually taciturn Angolan president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, gave an outspoken speech, saying all was not well with Portuguese relations.
Producer: Eve Streeter
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03m43g7

Angola. The government is afraid of assuming that it demolished mosques,

it is not necessary to lie in everything! Near this mosque in Luanda, neighborhood Zango angry is him an illegal Christian that was not left. 

"I never thought that a government can also lie. Look at siblings, in 2010, the Mosque in Huambo appeared the administrator and fiscal in one afternoon, they said the Muslims that didn't want to see your church there and in the morning in the prayer of the dawn they found the charred Mosque including several books of Koran and their rugs. In the province of the Lunda-north, three mosques were same destroyed with License of last construction for the government, the expenses were of three hundred thousand dollars whose local Administration promised to compensate and elapsed more than seven years said. In the province of Moxico, three times destroyed the Mosque, the first time in the silence of the night with the construction license. We never went compensated. In Cafunfo (province of Malanje) the Muslims bought a land to sixty thousand dollars, we built the mosque and the administrator offered the land to her lover and the community moved the Mr. governor and he appealed in writing and nothing there was and they vulgarized the case. In Malanje, three times destroyed the Mosque and nothing there was. In Luanda, four mosques were put the bass, the one of Sambizanga, Cacuaco, Catinto, and the one of the Zango in the municipality  district of Viana with three floors, we paid the fine of three thousand American dollars. That mosque destroyed with texts of Koran that were torn. The same mosque the government asked more than paid thirty five thousand dollars. He didn't go pay because the fine cannot be collected twice under same object soon it would be jest, in fact the temples have the constitutional protection and the Catholic church never paid taxes. Therefore as I can believe so many, in so many lies. Those cases all were complained and the community made him in writing and we have the correspondence. Today it daddy him Djakete says that it is lie, it was never true and that they were received well by the Angolan executive, as if Islam went a tribe or country. There were several pronouncements of some the government's entities besides the General Nunda, Chivukuvuku, Samacuva, minister of the Culture and to Catholic bishops that said that they had to banish Islam for not being of the Angolan cultural head office, and today the language is already other as of anything it had happened"  

Message of David Alberto. Facebook  

Luanda. In the newspaper it FOLHA 8 of this week: Angolan "Niet" to Islam

 

I believe that it supplies minister of the Culture confused combat to the religious sects with combat to one of the religions of the Books, as the three religions schoolmistresses are considered no Asians, referred in the two "sacred books", the Bible and Koran, supports of the Christianity, Judaism and Islam.  

 

António Setas 

 

The one that her no if fed up with explaining it is that, in her opinion, the proliferation of the sects is terribly noxious to the cultural collection of Angola, it disturbs the life of the Angolan ones and it diverts them of their uses and habits, in a word, it is not combined with her personality nor of being in the life. However, it is been without knowing what type of Angolan is that Doctor Rosa Cruz and Silva refers. We have to receive of her plowing, writing or spoken, a good explanation, because we are not in believing that her reasoning is it of an intellectual, resembling him to be much more it of an fundamentalist that is been to venture in a crusade anti Islam, contradicting like this the religion freedom consecrated in the Constitution. Besides, her explanation regarding the sects concerning the incompatibility between them and the characteristics of the Angolan ones, sins for being tendentious. Because, of the two a, or she refers to the animist bantus, or to the that hugged the Christianity and yours more than a thousand variants that officiate in Angola. If she refers to the animists, much more than Islam, that allows the polygamy, the Catholic religion came to disturb their collections deeply, cultural and religious person; if, on the contrary, she refers to the Christian bantus, then there it is really treated of that the one that mentioned already, Rosa Cruz and Silva left for a crusade anti-islam. We wished him good trip and a good exit (probably to run) of the confusion in that she will put. 

 

Angola. Leader Tocoísta satisfied with closing of illegal churches in the country

 

Madrid - The spiritual leader of the Church of Ours Mr. Jesus Cristo in the World, talent Afonso Nunes, manifested, in Madrid (Spain), her satisfaction for the combat actions to the illegal religious sects in the country promoted by the Angolan Executive, through the ministries of the Culture and of the Justice and Human Rights.  

  

Angop  

 

Second talent Afonso Nunes, that spoke on this Monday to the press, the Government's action will impose order purely in a "circus" where certain citizens take advantage to open sects for economic reasons, taking advantage of of the mental fragility of some people. 

 

The democracy doesn't mean libertinism, therefore it is necessary to create so that the people can navigate in the middle of these marks. Unhappily in the middle of the religion there is still an excessive libertinism that it deserves to be combatted to end with the one that if notes currently", said. 

 

In agreement with talent Afonso Nunes, the State should try to create mechanisms to control and to monitor what happens at the country, because to leave that everything happens it is to create a danger, "a gunpowder" barrel that one day can explode. 

 

It is "necessary that the people know which is the true paper of the religion in the growth and statement of a country", said. 

 

Talent Afonso Nunes affirmed to be necessary to end with the spirit certain adventurous opportunists that they sleep and the following day they create a church to satisfy their needs. 

 

Angola accused of 'banning' Islam as mosques closed

Human rights activists condemn crackdown though officials in largely Catholic nation insist reports of ban are exaggerated

Aristides Cabeche and David Smith in Johannesburg

theguardian.com

Angola accused of 'banning' Islam as mosques closed

Aristides Cabeche and David Smith in Johannesburg

The Guardian

Palestinians burn Angola's flag in a protest amid reports that the country has banned Islam and destroyed mosques. Photograph: APA/REX

Angola has been accused of "banning" Islam after shutting down most of the country's mosques amid reports of violence and intimidation against women who wear the veil.

The Islamic Community of Angola (ICA) claims that eight mosques have been destroyed in the past two years and anyone who practises Islam risks being found guilty of disobeying Angola's penal code.

Human rights activists have condemned the wide-ranging crackdown. "From what I have heard, Angola is the first country in the world that has decided to ban Islam," said Elias Isaac, country director of the Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa (Osisa). "This is a crazy madness. The government is intolerant of any difference."

Officials in the largely Catholic southern African nation insist that worldwide media reports of a "ban" on Islam are exaggerated and no places of worship are being targeted.

The UK has just named Angola as one of its five "high-level prosperity partners" in Africa and the two countries have a burgeoning trade relationship. The Angolan president, José Eduardo dos Santos, Africa's second-longest serving head of state at 34 years, has long been accused of corruption and human rights abuses.

Religious organisations are required to apply for legal recognition in Angola, which currently sanctions 83, all of them Christian. Last month the justice ministry rejected the applications of 194 organisations, including one from the Islamic community.

Under Angolan law, a religious group needs more than 100,000 members and to be present in 12 of the 18 provinces to gain legal status, giving them the right to construct schools and places of worship. There are only an estimated 90,000 Muslims among Angola's population of about 18 million.

David Já, president of the Islamic Community of Angola (ICA), said on Thursday: "We can say that Islam has been banned in Angola. You need 100,000 to be recognised as a religion or officially you cannot pray."

There are 78 mosques in the country, according to the ICA, and all have been closed except those in the capital, Luanda, because they are technically unlicensed. "The mosques in Luanda were supposed to be closed yesterday but because of an international furore about reports that Angola had banned Islam, the government decided not to," Já said.

"So, at the moment, mosques in Luanda are open and people are going for prayers."

Já said the government began shutting mosques in 2010, including one that was burned down in Huambo province, "a day after authorities had warned us that we should have not built the mosque where we had and that it had to be built somewhere else. The government justified by saying that it was an invasion of Angolan culture and a threat to Christian values."

Another mosque was destroyed in Luanda earlier this month, Já said, and 120 copies of the Koran burned.

Muslims have been instructed to dismantle mosques themselves, he added. "They usually issue a legal request for us to destroy the building and give us 73 hours to do so. Failure to do so results in government authorities doing it themselves."

Women who wear the traditional veil are also being targeted, Já said. "As things stand, most Muslim women are afraid to wear the veil. A woman was assaulted in hospital in Luanda for wearing a veil, and on another occasion, a young Muslim lady was beaten up and told to leave the country because she was wearing a veil.

"Most recently, young girls were prohibited from wearing the veil in Catholic schools and, when we went there to confront the nuns, they simply said they couldn't allow it. Although there is not an explicit written law prohibiting the use of veil in Angola, government has prohibited the practice of the faith and women are afraid to express their faith in that sense."

The ICA's complaints were supported by Rafael Marques de Morais, a political activist and leading investigative journalist in Angola. "I've seen an order that says Muslims must destroy the mosques themselves and clear away the debris, or they will be charged for the cost of the destruction."

He suggested the government was seeking to find a convenient diversion from growing public hostility towards Chinese and Portuguese workers in Angola. "The government need to deflect attention. They are trying to find a scapegoat for economic pressures and saying Islam is not common to Angolan values and culture.

"They believe a blanket law against Islam will get the sympathy of both Angolans and those in the international community who equate Islam with terrorism."

Asked about the potential for Muslims to protest, Marques replied: "If the Muslims try to show any anger, they will be deported the following day."

But the Angolan government denies any attempt to ban Islam. "There is no war in Angola against Islam or any other religion," Manuel Fernando, director of religious affairs at the culture ministry, . "There is no official position that targets the destruction or closure of places of worship, whichever they are."

A statement from the Angolan embassy in the US concurred: "The republic of Angola ... it's a country that does not interfere in religion. We have a lot of religions there. It is freedom of religion. We have Catholic, Protestants, Baptists, Muslims and evangelical people."

Image: Palestinians burn Angola's flag in a protest amid reports that the country has banned Islam and destroyed mosques. Photograph: APA/REX