Three years after sanctions against ”conflict diamonds” helped end Angola’s civil war, the country’s diamond industry continues to thrive on violence and corruption, according to a report to be released next week by Angolan human-rights activists. Angola’s Deadly Diamonds details incidents of murder, beating, detention without trial, extortion and rape attributed to the Angolan police.
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/ 11 February 2005
New Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe could yet weather the political storm that surrounds his controversial appointment, thanks to his strong support from the army, analysts said this week. Decisive action by former colonial ruler France will be needed to reverse parliament’s decision to install Faure as president following the death of his father Gnassingbe Eyadema.
"It is dark. We have taken five days to get here from Johannesburg, and our arrival in Cuito Cuanavale is going to be delayed by another day. The plan is to drive to the site of the last battle fought by the old South African Defence Force against Angola." The Battle for Cuito Cuanavale was a turning point in the history of apartheid, and is soon to be revisited in a tourism initiative.
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/ 10 December 2004
Mozambique’s ruling party, Frelimo, surged ahead last week in unofficial results from the country’s recent election, puzzling analysts who had expected a neck-and-neck finish with the opposition Renamo. This drop in Renamo support was accompanied by an equally dramatic fall in voter turnout. ”People chose to stay in the fields — voting doesn’t fill the belly,” said independent journalist Marcelo Mosse.
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/ 2 December 2004
Just hours before the closing of polls in Mozambique, the elections commission called on citizens to vote, reminding them of their civic duty. The elections were marked by controversy over observers’ access to the final stages of the count.
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/ 29 November 2004
"We need Renamo to see what they will bring," says Asahel Bin Dando Ossene who, along with most other people on Mozambique Island, survives by fishing. "For 20 years we had Frelimo and they brought us nothing." Mozambique Island is closer to Zanzibar than to Maputo and its dhows and mosques emphasise the point. As Mozambique goes to the polls, a remote area in the "forgotten" north of the country raises its voice.
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/ 26 November 2004
Four years after the murder of Mozambican journalist Carlos Cardoso, his legacy in investigating corruption has cast a shadow over the campaign for next week’s election. At the time of his death he had been investigating how more than -million had disappeared from Mozambique’s formerly state-owned banks during the privatisation process of the 1990s.
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/ 19 November 2004
Teodósio Alexandre (21) spends his days knee-deep in garbage. Picking through rubbish at the dump in the Maputo township of Hurlene, he makes 30 000 metacais (about R10) on a good day, selling scrap metal. He believes that Mozambique’s governing party, in power for 29 years, has done nothing for him. But he will vote for it anyway. ”Whether I vote for Frelimo or Renamo, it will be the same.”
Almost 12 years after Angolans last went to the polls, prospects of an election are becoming brighter. Earlier this month, Angola’s Council of the Republic — the highest presidential advisory body — advised President José Eduardo dos Santos to exercise ”judicial influence” on Parliament to approve the legal framework for elections in September 2006.
When former Unita soldier Pedro da Silva disembarked from an army truck at Kituma, he thought it was going to be an overnight stop. That was in January and he is still there.