Angola’s ruling MPLA has started preparations for a landmark congress in December that will see the most comprehensive cleaning out of a revolutionary movement in Africa.
At a preparatory meeting for this congress, President José Eduardo dos Santos said 45% of the party’s leadership would be swept out to make way for new blood.
He is insisting that every position, including that of leader, be contested at what will be the MPLA’s fifth congress.
One third of the new leadership that emerges will be women, the president said. ”These are the challenges of modern times, in particular those on the Angolan horizon, which demand that our party be a politically modern, ideologically strong, united and democratic organisation that is capable of contributing in a decisive manner to the resolution of national problems.”
Dos Santos identified three macro-political trends:
The growing participation of citizens in politics and in the solution of their problems;
The end of socialism and its centralised economy; and
The failure of the social state and perspectives.
”Today the MPLA can no longer say it is a vanguard party, in the sense of having the slightest desire of commanding and imposing its political concepts on the whole Angola society.
”The MPLA exists in a … multiparty system on an equal footing with other political parties, which are also disputing the right to power,” said Dos Santos.
The president urged the party faithful to consolidate peace, reconciliation and reconstruction.
Other major priorities for his government, said Dos Santos, were good governance translating into efficiency and transparency, reducing state intervention in the economy and developing regional and international political and economic relations.
The president has indicated he will not stand for re-election when the country goes to the polls — which could be only a year away.
Angola’s new approach is reflected in a flurry of diplomatic activity, with at least half a dozen high-profile visitors a month to Luanda. Dos Santos was in Botswana last week firming up relations with that near-neighbour.
Luanda hosted 23 African ministers at the World Tourism Organisation conference on Africa last month.
Somewhat prematurely perhaps, there was talk of tourism becoming the number two foreign earner, next to oil. Angola indubitably has the natural attractions to draw an international market.
The Angolan capital hosted the African oil and gas conference last month.
The blessing that oil should be for Angola — it pulls in almost 90% of the country’s income — remains its curse as funds disappear abroad.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has estimated that of the annual $5-billion earned by Angola from oil, more than $1-billion goes straight into bank accounts abroad.
The government denies this. It is trying, among other things, to get money blocked in Switzerland with the assertion that it is public money and a promise that it will be spent on national projects.
Some of the money might be lost on bad accounting, says the IMF, in a report circulated among members but not published.
This is the first time an organisation of such status has referred so pointedly to the $4-billion worth of Angolan oil revenue unaccounted for over the past five years.
The NGO Christian Aid points out that Angola does not publish oil revenues in its national Budget, nor does it account for how the state oil company, Sonangol, spends its money.
Multinational oil companies are obliged only to reveal payments to individual industrialised nations.
Dealings with countries like Angola are lumped into a section called RoW (Rest of World). Researchers say that in cases like Angola the wealth serves to drive up inflation — Angola hopes to limit its rate to 65% by the end of the year — increase prices and reduce manufacturing in other sectors. The result is an even tougher environment for the poor and low-paid.
The missing money is three times the amount Angola had managed to draw from international aid and development assistance.
Fund-raisers are experiencing resistance from people reluctant to pour money into what they see as an oil-rich but corrupt state. Humanitarian conditions have stabilised in virtually all areas of Angola, the Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal (CAP) for that country reported last week.
It added, however, that levels of vulnerability remained some of the highest in the world.
CAP has managed to raise only a third of the $156-million it needs for food security. The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria has granted Angola $74-million to fight the ailments, which account for 70% of deaths in Angola.
The European Union donated â,¬5-million that will go towards resettling people displaced within the country by its protracted civil war.
Economic problems aside, the more than 500 000 refugees who fled the fighting in Angola are starting to stream back into the country from Botswana, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Whatever difficulties face the country, increasing numbers of Angolans appear determined to be at home to face the challenges.