Fernando Joaquim points to a row of corrugated iron shacks at the feet of one of Angola’s luxurious new neighbourhoods and despairs: ”Look at the misery that the government has forced on us!”
Joaquim’s was one of nearly 400 families living in a hilltop settlement known as Kambamba II who were left destitute overnight when their homes were demolished to make way for upmarket housing three years ago.
Similar stories can be heard across Luanda from people who have had to pay the price for the Angola capital’s population explosion in the five years since the end of the country’s long-running civil war.
According to figures compiled by the non-government organisations SOS Habitat and the United States-based Human Rights Watch, more than 3 000 houses have been destroyed in Luanda since the 2002 ceasefire and 20 000 people left homeless.
The modest dwellings had mainly been built by Angolans who fled to the relative tranquility of the capital from their homes on the frontlines of the civil war which erupted a year after independence in 1975.
Another former resident of Kambamba II, Quartim Bimbe, recalled how a large column of police appeared out of nowhere one morning in September 2004.
”Behind them, there were the bulldozers. They destroyed everything. Everyone fled,” said the 41-year-old.
In their place, the government has built luxury housing, not only for the emerging upper and middle classes but also to meet the demands from foreign workers employed by multinational corporations.
Kambamba II has since been renamed Nova Vida (New Life), housing top civil servants and former soldiers.
With nothing else to fall back on, 207 out of the 368 families who were kicked out of Kambamba II have rehoused themselves, often using the same scraps of corrugated iron, in the shadow of their former homes.
Angola last year enjoyed the highest levels of growth in the whole of Africa at 17,6%, fuelled mainly by increased exports from what is already the second biggest producer of oil in sub-Saharan Africa.
But as Angola prepares to hold landmark legislative elections next year, much of the country remains mired in poverty.
The gap between rich and poor is most marked in Luanda whose population, which stood at around 750 000 at the end of the 1970s, reached more than three million in 2000.
While there have been no official figures compiled since the end of the war, SOS Habitat estimates the number living in Luanda is now around five million.
Eight out of 10 live in suburban areas, 90% in properties whose ownership status is uncertain — often lacking in paperwork and sometimes based on the premise that occupation is the only thing that matters.
As ownership has not been established, inhabitants have no right to compensation if the bulldozers move in, acknowledged a government official on condition of anonymity.
The main problem, explained Pacheco Ilinga, who works for the Canadian NGO Development Workshop, is that the authorities have yet to draw up any clear policy for urban development.
”There is neither the capacity nor even the will to develop such a policy, even though it’s five years since the war ended,” says Ilinga.
No government official was prepared to provide an official comment on the matter.
Although some families are rehoused, they are all too often shunted dozens of kilometres away from the city centre to live in areas which lack proper roads, sewerage, water and electricity.
The houses which have been destroyed are ”often the only thing the family has been investing in for the last five or six years,” said Ilinga.
”So these people, who are already poor, end up even poorer.”
Joaquim Lucas, an army veteran, said that the MPLA government was abandoning people it should be looking out for.
”I served in the army so why are others getting a house and not me?” asked the 41-year-old.
Lucas accused the authorities of having a high-handed attitude that was just like that during colonial times under the Portuguese.
”The colonial master has changed colour. Nowadays he’s black.” – Sapa-AFP