Welcome to the last edition of Zitamar’s special series of the Angola Briefing, covering the 2022 general elections in the country.

This newsletter will go into hibernation again after this briefing; but Zitamar Consulting remains available to provide bespoke reports on the political and economic risk impacts of these contested elections. Write to consultancy@zitamar.com to find out more.

Please forward this email to friends and colleagues who will find it relevant — our election coverage is free for all to read.

On Tuesday, Unita submitted a formal challenge to the official results confirmed by election administration body CNE, that give the MPLA a slim overall majority, with 51% of the vote. Unita won just under 44%, according to the CNE’s “definitive” results (see below).

Unita, however, says it has other figures. A message circulating on WhatsApp, which the Angola Briefing has not yet been able to confirm, purports to show Unita claiming to have won 64.57% of the national vote, compared with just 24.4% for the MPLA.

By the end of Tuesday, however, the CNE had already rejected Unita’s complaints on technicalities, as well as another complaint lodged by the CASA-CE coalition. Unita could now appeal to the Constitutional Court, however, this court was quick to turn down similar appeals after the 2017 elections. Following the constitutional review in April 2021, Angolan legal experts have even less confidence in the independence of the judiciary today.

Meanwhile, the civil society parallel counting organisation ‘Mudei’, linked to activist and musician Luaty Beirão, has launched a petition calling on both the CNE and Unita to publicly release the result sheets on which they are basing their opposing claims. The petition has almost 29,000 signatures at the time of writing — and the organisation delivered a printed copy of all the names to the CNE yesterday.

Greater transparency now seems to be the best that voters, frustrated with yet another questionable win for the MPLA, can hope for. But the opposition can also reflect on its best result ever — and consider how it might go one better in 2027.

Below we publish a translation of our correspondent’s final dispatch from Angola — reflecting on Unita’s historic result, in particular in the Angolan capital of Luanda, and the party’s chances of building on this for the next elections in 2027.

From Quifangondo, to 24 August

In 1975, on the eve of independence, with the help of a small Cuban expeditionary corps, the MPLA repelled a powerful FNLA military column at the gates of Luanda, supported by Portuguese mercenaries, regular troops from what was then Zaire, and artillerymen of the South African army.

With the famous battle of Quifangondo, fought 26 kilometres from the capital city, the MPLA expelled the FNLA and Unita from Luanda, then a movement with very little presence in the region. Agostinho Neto, with the sound of artillery in the background, the famous B-10 and BM-21 also known as “Stalin's organs”, proclaimed Angola's independence on the night of 11 November.

Luanda consolidated its position as a stronghold of the MPLA, which it continued to be in all multiparty elections held since 1992.

Until August 24, 2022.

Under the leadership of Adalberto da Costa Júnior (ACJ), Unita won 62.25% of the votes in the capital, against 33.62% for the MPLA. Of a total of 2 million votes, Unita won 1.2 million versus 672,000 votes for the party led by João Lourenço. Luanda officially has nine million inhabitants, and more than a third of the national electorate. 

What explains the MPLA's hecatomb? A young population — 64% under the age of 25 — that has never heard of the battle of Quifangondo, a formal unemployment rate of 40%, social networks that are the alternative to the unnatural intoxication of the public media, the economic crisis and covid-19, a campaign against corruption that was perceived as an inter-factional struggle within the MPLA itself. That's why the Unita vote in neighbourhoods like Alvalade, Maianga, Talatona, where the elite live, but who are revolted by the designation of “marimbondos” given by JLo, as the president is known. A new Unita of catchy speeches digging into the opponent's weaknesses.

With the evolving situation, in which Unita has not yet accepted the results, it is difficult to predict the political future of Angola and the MPLA. The hegemonic party has lost its two-thirds majority and 26 deputies, it has lost Luanda and its top activists are well aware of the extent of the damage to the country. The numbers of the population and of the electoral roll have been greatly inflated, meaning in reality turnout was much higher, so the losses are more concrete.

Depending on the MPLA's ability or inability to reinvent itself, all Unita may need to do is wait five years to consolidate the 2022 results, because oil does not solve everything and the tide of high prices is not going to last.

It remains to be seen whether the formidable coalition behind Adalberto da Costa Júnior, an engineer by training but clearly the architect of the new, modern, urban and future-oriented Unita, can last that long. Abel Chivukuvuku, Filomeno Vieira Lopes, Nelson Pestana and Justino Pinto de Andrade are heavyweights of what they proclaim as the “national team”. But often, egos end up speaking louder than the strategies of the long-distance runners.

As one Angolan commentator said, quoting Roman Emperor Julius Caesar: Alea jacta est — the die is cast.

Fernando Lima (Zitamar News / Canal de Moçambique / @Verdade consortium)

Welcome back to Zitamar’s Angola Elects newsletter. With almost all the votes now counted, the MPLA have been returned to power — albeit with a much reduced majority. For a brief summary of the state of play, see AP’s article this morning, by our correspondent Fernando Lima:

This one-off series of newsletters is brought to you free by Zitamar Consulting, providing blue-chip clients with bespoke reports on Lusophone Africa. Email consultancy@zitamar.com to find out more.

In this issue:

💵 Electoral violence, but not the usual type

🗳 Unita supporters protest results

🥱 High abstention

💵 Electoral violence, but not the usual type

One of the impressive features on election day was the presence of delegates for all the parties, seated at a bench, usually in front of the voting table officers and the ballot box. Were they party activists, or just another “small job”? With protests erupting on Thursday in the city of Luanda it is now clear that those youngsters, mainly women, were promised pay and a food subsidy for their time, which in many cases was not delivered. Police were called to APN, FNLA and CASA-CE offices to disperse protesters. They were refusing to turn in their copies of the results sheets before being paid. They claim they were promised KZ30,000 (equivalent to $60). The counting process revealed that at many polling stations, the small parties did not get any votes, suggesting even the party delegates did not vote for the political group they signed for.

Angolan social media quickly filled with videos of police on the streets of Luanda opening fire on APN protestors (although it remains unclear whether they were using live rounds). Isabel dos Santos, daughter of the former president and vocal critic of President Lourenço, was quick to share the scenes, claiming they showed “protests about ‘controversial’ election results and the ‘early’ announcement of a win for MPLA”, before she was corrected by Angolan BBC and VOA journalist Israel Campos.

🗳 Unita supporters protest results

Along with the protests around payments, in some neighborhoods in Luanda, there were also protests disputing the election results. Since Unita achieved an overwhelming victory in Luanda, young voters in particular claiming the CNE’s results, giving overall victory to the MPLA, were false. These spontaneous protests will likely continue on a small scale in Luanda and other Unita strongholds like Benguela and Huambo, for the coming days. MPLA spokesperson Rui Falcão suggested last night Unita leadership should confront their supporters and tell them the outcome of this week's election.

Unita is treading carefully with regards to the election results being presented by CNE. In a press conference they admitted that, according to the 40% of results that they had analysed so far, the MPLA had a small lead over Unita, of 47.99% to 46.89%. But, the party said, as more data was still to come from Luanda, that result could still be reversed. Spokesperson Ruben Sicalo said they would base any claim on seeing results sheets, “since this is the attitude of a responsible party,” adding that “there is no room to create an environment of social convulsion, an agitated environment, something our adversaries have done all the time”.

In past electoral campaigns, the MPLA has been quick to associate Unita with the chaos of the civil war days, and imply that a vote for Unita was a vote to return to violence. Adalberto Costa Júnior has been very wary of this throughout his campaign, avoiding any indications of alignment with Angola’s growing youth protest movement. The Unita leadership has historically (and often unfairly) been blamed for any violence that occurs at their supporters’ street protests, hence the calls for calm from Ruben Sicalo. It is likely that Costa Júnior will opt to take the legal route to challenge these results, if that is something his party wishes to do, as opposed to calling for mass protests from their supporters. However, at the grassroots level, it is unclear how much influence Costa Júnior will have over Unita supporters who feel disenfranchised and wish to organise spontaneous street protests.

🥱 High abstention

One of the surprising features in the elections is the high abstention rate, of 54.34%. Anecdotally, polling stations looked very well attended, with turnout of around 50% of the 650-700 registered voters in each logbook, so it seems CNE should correct and update its electoral roll to remove duplicates and deceased voters. Of the 14,399,391 registered voters, only 6,574,762 actually cast a vote.

MPLA spokesperson Rui Falcão blamed the high abstention rate for the MPLA’s poor showing in Luanda. This is quite a characteristic lack of self-reflection for a senior MPLA politician, and is likely to further raise tensions as Unita and civil society groups continue to (slowly) carry out their parallel vote counts. At the time of writing, Movimento Cívico Mudei has Unita ahead of the MPLA by 52% to 43% nationwide, though they have only counted 184,735 votes so far.

Latest results:

Amid multiple reports of vote-counting irregularities, election administration body the CNE presented results showing an almost unassailable lead for the ruling MPLA party this morning — and refused to take questions from journalists.

Official results released at 10:45am local time give the MPLA a nine point lead over Unita, with the incumbent winning 52% of the vote versus 43% for the opposition, with 86.41% of the vote counted.

The remaining 5% is divided between other parties, none of which seems likely to get enough votes to win a seat in parliament.

Unita has a strong lead in the capital, Luanda, where 77% of the votes have been counted. Unita has 63% there, to the MPLA’s 33%. Unita is also in the lead in Zaire province, with 52.25% to the MPLA’s 36.14%.

The ruling MPLA is leading in all the other 16 provinces, however — and with only 13% of the total vote yet to be counted, it is a very tall order for Unita to overcome its 52:43 deficit.

The results confound voter intention surveys taken before the poll, which consistently showed Unita with a strong lead. A parallel count being conducted by civil society group Movimento Civico Mudei is currently showing a strong lead for Unita, but that is based on less than 2% of results so far, likely heavily skewed towards Luanda where the CNE agrees that Unita has won.

But the results are likely to be contested by the opposition and their supporters. Multiple reports have emerged of polling stations not posting their results on their doors, as required by law. Those results are what can be fed into the parallel count — but they are few and far between. Instead, results are being sent by polling staff to municipal authorities, who then forward them to CNE — with little or no transparency over what result is being sent.

There may be trouble ahead.

Battle over vote counts

The first salvo in the battle for the count came from the CNE (National Electoral Commission), at 1:00am last night. A CNE spokesperson announced that after 33.16% of the votes had been counted, the MPLA was leading with 60.65% and Unita was behind with 33.85%. Immediately after the CNE announcement, a set of commentators was brought onto TPA, the public TV channel which the opposition says is a government propaganda tool, saying that this was a clear victory for the ruling party, despite it being “too early to start festivities”. CNE did not provide any further details or context about the vote count.

Unita contested the results released and Abel Chivukuvuku, number two on the party's national list and candidate for vice president, told journalists and observers that the party has “clear provisional indicators of a victory all over the country”. Speaking at the same press conference in the early hours of Thursday morning, Filomeno Viera Lopes, from the Democratic Bloc within the Unita coalition, said that the party had won 65% of the vote in Luanda, the main electoral constituency in the country. He did however concede that the MPLA won the Quissama municipality, in the far south of the province.

Angolan social media is awash with highly divergent sets of numbers being circulated from voting intention polls, exit polls and parallel counts. Yesterday TPA broadcast results of a voting intention poll by Spanish public opinion firm Sigma Dos, which indicated that the MPLA would receive 53.6% of the vote, versus 42.4% for Unita. However, an exit poll from Movimento Civico Mudei indicated a strong lead for Unita, albeit using a very small sample size. The same organisation’s parallel count so far also indicates a strong lead for Unita, though counting is very slow — and the website with the live results is frequently unavailable. This could be due to excessive traffic on their server due to public interest, or the result of a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack, a tactic often used against websites not in line with the government’s official position.

View from the ground

Our reporters followed the vote count in three different neighbourhoods in Luanda (Kilamba Kiaxi, Golfe and Talatona) and there were clear indications of Unita´s lead in all three.

Our reporters witnessed the results sheets being filled by electoral officials and signed by all party list delegates. However, it is difficult to confirm the allegations from opposition parties that the sheets were not posted outside the voting assemblies. We were told list delegates get copies of the report or take a picture of it and then send it to the party's headquarters for parallel verification of the election results.

The movement suggested by Unita, “vote and sit”, encouraging voters to stay around the electoral voting assemblies did not have a major impact, despite groups of people seen close to the assemblies trying to find out the outcome of the election results. The orderly manner in which the voting exercise took place probably explains this non-confrontational stance from voters. Police standing outside the polls seemed to have instructions to not act in a violent fashion. This was even the case when angry would-be voters tried to force their way into polling sites after 4:00pm, the time set from ballot boxes closure.

Despite early indications of a good showing by Unita in these elections, it is too early for the opposition party to claim it has won. To be able to do so, it will need to be able to present its count of the result sheets that should have been sent to head office by the party’s delegates at polling stations around the country.

There are multiple reports from across the country of voting station presidents refusing to affix their actas to the outside of the station, as mandated by law, with one source noting that these orders came directly from CNE, as reported by VOA.

Concerns were raised back in February at the appointment of Spanish information technology and defence systems company INDRA to handle the provisional count and the final tally of Angola’s general election. This company also handled the vote counts in the 2008, 2012 and 2017 general elections in Angola, all of which were marred by irregularities, according to opposition political parties. There is also controversy surrounding INDRA’s work in Venezuela up until 2015, with investigative journalists accusing them of manipulating the vote collection systems in favour of Hugo Chávez. They have also faced criticism following their refusal to divulge the source code of their vote-counting algorithms, with Transparency International giving them a C grade in their anti-corruption assessment back in 2020.

Expired IDs leave some disenfranchised

Zitamar saw voters turned away from polling stations after they presented expired ID cards, even with the receipt saying they are waiting for their replacement to be issued. Election administration body CNE left it until almost 2pm on Wednesday — with little more than two hours left to vote — to formally clarify that voters in that situation should be allowed to vote; too late for the message to make it through to all polling stations.

Welcome back to Zitamar’s Angola Elects newsletter on election day, where our special correspondent Fernando Lima is on the ground in Luanda.

For a good backgrounder on today’s poll, see Fernando’s report for the Associated Press yesterday:

This one-off series of newsletters is brought to you free by Zitamar Consulting, providing blue-chip clients with bespoke reports on Lusophone Africa. Email consultancy@zitamar.com to find out more.

In this issue:

🚶🏿 Angolans off to the polls! Or are they?

🗳 MPLA mobilises for mass election monitoring

📱 No time for reflection in the age of social media

😷 No covid-19 regulations at polling stations

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🚶🏿 Angolans off to the polls! Or are they?

Up to 14 million Angolan voters will head to the polls today across the country (and in various locations overseas). In the populous neighbourhoods in Angola’s urban centres, all informal shops, street vendors and roadside alcohol purveyors have been told to close. Today is not a public holiday, but many people — including civil servants — have been given the day off, and the government doesn’t want them using their day off to frequent these establishments rather than actually voting. Formal commerce, in particular the country’s numerous shopping malls, will not be forced to close but the government did instruct their managers to ensure all workers have time to go and vote. In 2017, abstention hit an all-time high of 43%, and this year a high number of voters is again expected to stay away from the polls, despite a serious push to get voters registered.

Abstention rates will be key in this close-run election. Low voter turnout would favour the incumbent MPLA in provinces with strong Unita support (such as Huambo, Bié and Lunda Sul) or strong CASA-CE support (such as Cabinda, Zaire and Namibe). But the ruling party will want civil servants to cast their vote, knowing that in many cases they will be scared that voting for the opposition could somehow cost them their job.

🗳 MPLA mobilises for mass election monitoring

Ruling party the MPLA has announced it will be monitoring the elections in real time via its 53,000-strong list of trained delegates assigned to the 26,443 polling booths across the country and abroad. According to a party apparatchik, as soon as a polling station has filed its final results tally, the delegates will be sent to a special monitoring room in the party headquarters, to follow the results in real time and “fight all sorts of disinformation on results.” Unita has not publicised the exact system that it will use to follow the elections, but the party also has a special team to follow the election results. It is not yet known when official results will be available, but in the past, despite the sophistication of the equipment acquired by election administration body CNE, there have always been inexplicable delays on the publication of results. Several organisations are trying to organise parallel vote counting, as a way of fighting the manipulation of results.

The lack of a coordinated or formalised system for election monitoring by opposition parties will make it much more difficult for them to prove any claims of fraud made against the MPLA following the election. This is of particular concern since multiple recent polls, from organisations such as Movimento Cívico Mudei and AngoBarometro, have indicated that Unita has a strong lead, while the MPLA claims that its own polls indicate it is leading by over 20 percentage points. The highly partisan head of CNE is also unlikely to be keen on hearing complaints from the opposition about election irregularities (see Angola Elects 2022 — Issue 1).

After the elections in 2017, Unita went to Angola’s constitutional court to try and have the election annulled, but was unsuccessful. It claimed that in a number of provinces, the results published had been sent to the provinces from CNE’s headquarters in Luanda, rather than the other way round. Despite widespread concerns of irregularities by opposition parties and civil society organisations, the African Union Election Observation Mission (AUEOM) concluded that it could not find proof of the claimed fraud. There were no EU election observers in 2017, though they are present this time around.

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📱 No time for reflection in the age of social media

Traditionally, the day prior to election day is considered “the reflection day” where no political propaganda is broadcast or published in official print media. However, the concept is clearly outdated, given the importance and influence of social networks and cable TV, which makes it almost impossible to control the flow of information entering the houses of Angolan citizens. So, this year, the election campaigners simply halted their mass rallies. The coverage and political messaging has continued across media outlets, showing that times really are changing. 

😷 No covid-19 regulations at polling stations

People can vote without a face mask today — a boon for turnout, but a cause for some concern since Angola has only managed to double-vaccinate 20% of its population against covid-19. The health authorities have acknowledged this failure, given the high level of investment made in the vaccination campaign. But Angola is also one of the few remaining African countries that does not allow untested entry for vaccinated visitors, instead forcing all entrants to the country to take a rapid test at the borders, provided free of charge.

The rolling seven day average for new covid-19 cases in Angola is currently very low, according to the covid-19 Data Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. As such, it seems unlikely that these elections will constitute a “super spreader event”, although testing capacity in Angola is very low, so there are questions around the validity of the data.

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Welcome back to the Angola Economic and Political Risk Briefing — and to the second edition of our special coverage of this year’s general elections in Angola (you can read yesterday’s first edition, free of charge, here).

In this issue:

• 🗳 Some voter fraud fears allayed……but others remain

• 🕵️‍♂️ CPLP observers express concerns

• 📺📻 Costa Junior praises state broadcasters’ campaign coverage

• 🛂 The painless Angolan entry process

Angolans head to the polls tomorrow to elect their president and National Assembly. The incumbent, President João Lourenço, was elected at the head of the MPLA ticket in September 2017. His predecessor, President José Eduardo dos Santos, had ruled Angola since 1979, making him one of Africa’s longest serving heads of state. 

All eyes are on this election, as Lourenço’s popularity ratings have declined significantly since he first took charge, due to economic difficulties compounded by the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic. Recent surveys suggest that the ruling MPLA will be fighting for political survival, up against the threat of the increasingly popular Unita opposition party.

Zitamar News has a special correspondent on the ground in Angola to cover the crucial elections in August 2022 — allowing us to send daily updates to subscribers to this newsletter.

Fernando Lima, a senior editor at Zitamar News, has covered all of Angola’s and Mozambique’s multiparty elections since the start of the democratic era in the 1990s, as well as the New York and Bicesse Accords. He is in Angola to cover these elections for Zitamar as well as Mozambican and Portuguese media and the Associated Press.

SEE: Angolans prepare for elections amid calls for a poll sit-in

This newsletter will go on ice again after the election fortnight is over; but Zitamar Consulting remains available to provide bespoke reports on political and economic risk as the full implications of what could be a turbulent period become clear.

Please forward this email to friends and colleagues who will find it relevant — our election coverage is free for all to read.

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🗳 Some voter fraud fears allayed……but others remain

24 hours before the elections, the Angolan CNE (National Commission for Elections) has started to publish the names of “list delegates” in the Jornal de Angola newspaper. These are lists of the parties’ representatives that should be present at all polling stations. The fact of these lists not being released was one of the complaints by opposition groups in the run-up to the election. But another concern is the lack so far of the “voters list” with the relevant location where every citizen is entitled to vote. The opposition parties fear that without these lists being published, people could end up voting in indiscriminate locations, making it harder to track vote manipulation and fraud.

The CNE has certainly left it to the last minute to publish these lists, however, they will go some way towards allaying fears of electoral malpractice amongst opposition groups. Unfortunately, there remain worrying indications that this will likely not be a free and fair vote. This week there were accusations from one civil society group that around 2 million dead Angolans remained on the electoral roll.

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🕵️‍♂️ CPLP observers express concerns

Jorge Carlos Fonseca, former president of Cape Verde and the head of CPLP (Community of the Portuguese Speaking Countries) observer mission in Angola, made headlines by saying he is listening to different perceptions on the role of electoral institutions in Angola — citing Unita’s complaints contesting the independence of CNE. Yesterday he led a strong contingent of CPLP observers to Cazenga, where Unita candidate Adalberto da Costa Junior was making his last appearance. It was noted that he was not present at Camama on Saturday, where the MPLA candidate João Lourenço delivered his final speech.

It is both encouraging and surprising to hear Fonseca making such statements in his official capacity, given the CPLP’s long track record of rubber-stamping flawed electoral processes within their member states. His absence at the MPLA rally, while attending that of Unita, is perhaps a diplomatic gaffe, but will provide further assurance that he is not in Angola to rubber-stamp a fraudulent MPLA win. The Angolan government is generally happy to allow CPLP, African Union and SADC monitors to observe their elections, given the low risk of negative feedback. By contrast, the MPLA would not admit EU monitors to the last legislative elections in 2017, and caused tensions with EU representatives this time round with the timing of observer invitations. One of the sticking points in 2017 was the EU’s demand for their observers to have unfettered access to all polling stations nationwide during the vote. 

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📺📻 Costa Junior praises state broadcasters’ campaign coverage

Unita candidate Adalberto da Costa Junior has praised the state television and radio broadcasters TPA and RNA for covering his campaign events, not only those of the MPLA.

Public media in Africa is notorious for its alignment with the governments of the day, particularly during electoral periods. Angola is no exception, and the Reporters Without Borders index for 2022 noted that “State-owned media dominate the Angolan media landscape. Only 20 or so of the 120 radio stations are privately owned and only two of them – Rádio Ecclesia, which is linked to the Catholic Church, and Rádio MFM – are regarded as independent.” It was therefore surprising to see Costa Junior praising the work of public media, noting that Unita’s political events are finally being covered live by TPA and RNA. However, his olive branch to the state broadcasters was met with silence from the crowd at the rally, who had cheered the other actors that Costa Junior had made a point of thanking.

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🛂 The painless Angolan entry process

International media and observers have been pleasantly surprised by the attitude of Angolan immigration authorities handling visitors at Luanda’s Quatro de Fevereiro International Airport. Covid-19 tests are mandatory upon arrival, but the process has been expedited, now being fast and free of charge (throughout covid-19 payment used to be taken with card terminals that would often reject international cards, causing stress and delays for visitors). The same can be said of the positive attitude of the SME (Serviço de Migração e Estrangeiros) immigration officers, usually part of the security apparatus. Only minimal questions are asked at passport control. Stress is further reduced with free wi-fi made available at the “covid hangar” and the SME premises, so that visitors can have instant communications with their institutions or families upon arrival.

Under former President dos Santos, Angola used to be a bureaucratic nightmare for visitors, with tourism and work visas both extremely difficult to obtain, and many immigrants working illegally on Ordinary visas. Tourist visas were only introduced in November 2007, and it quickly gained a reputation as being one of the hardest tourist visas in Africa to get hold of. On 1 December 2017, less than three months after coming to power, President Lourenço signed a reciprocal visa-waiver programme with South Africa. The following March, President Lourenço introduced a tourist e-visa on arrival for citizens of 35 countries, later expanding it to 59 countries (including all EU nations). It is likely that many foreigners are visiting Angola for the first time during this election, and are being pleasantly surprised by the relatively new simple entry procedures.

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More coverage from Fernando Lima:

Welcome back to the Angola Economic and Political Risk Briefing — and to the first edition of our special coverage of this year’s general elections in Angola.

On Thursday, 24 August, Angolans will head to the polls to elect their president and National Assembly. The incumbent, President João Lourenço, was elected at the head of the MPLA ticket in September 2017. His predecessor, President José Eduardo dos Santos, had ruled Angola since 1979, making him one of Africa’s longest serving heads of state. 

All eyes are on this election, as Lourenço’s popularity ratings have declined significantly since he first took charge, due to economic difficulties compounded by the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic. Recent surveys suggest that the ruling MPLA will be fighting for political survival, up against the threat of the increasingly popular UNITA opposition party.

Zitamar News has a special correspondent on the ground in Angola to cover the crucial elections in August 2022 — allowing us to send regular updates to all subscribers of this newsletter.

Subscribe now

Fernando Lima, a senior editor at Zitamar News, has covered all of Angola’s and Mozambique’s multiparty elections since the start of the democratic era in the 1990s, as well as the New York and Bicesse Accords. He is in Angola to cover these elections for Zitamar as well as Mozambican and Portuguese media and the Associated Press.

This newsletter will go on ice again after the election fortnight is over; but Zitamar Consulting remains available to provide bespoke reports on political and economic risk as the full implications of what could be a turbulent period become clear.

Please forward this email to friends and colleagues who will find it relevant — our election coverage is free for all to read.

🔢 The Angolan Election: By The Numbers

Seven parties and one coalition are running in the Angolan general elections scheduled for next Wednesday, 24 August. MPLA, UNITA, PRS, CASA-CE (coalition), FNLA, APN, PHA, P-Njango are the acronyms for the parties. 

14,399,391: Number of registered voters for these elections. 

43%: Abstention level in the last general elections in September 2017.

22,560: Angolan voters registered in the diaspora, enfranchised for the first time 

105,952: Number of CNE (National Commission for Elections) officials operating the 26,443 voting booths across the country and abroad. 

220: Number of deputies for Parliament that voters will be electing – 130 as a national constituency and 90 at the provincial level, five for each province, all elected through proportional representation under the d’Hondt method. 

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🗳 Vote and sit vs Vote and go

One of the main controversies in Angolan Elections. Unita, the main opposition party, has been expressing doubts as to the independence of election administration body CNE for years (for example, see Angola Briefing, 9 October 2020). As a result, Unita is arguing that voters, after casting their votes, should stay around the polling stations in order to monitor the count and the filling in of the results sheets, two crucial moments in southern African elections where the results are often stolen. All other parties, including the coalition CASA-CE, say voters should return to their homes and wait for the results there.
Unita certainly has grounds for concern. Manuel Silva Pereira "Manico" was a highly controversial choice to head up Angola’s CNE, with his inauguration two years ago drawing criticism from opposition parties and prompting street protests outside the National Assembly building in Luanda. Unita leader Adalberto Costa Júnior noted at the time that Manico’s appointment was intended to “keep the regime in power for eternity”. Manico is accused of being highly partisan in favour of the MPLA, having allegedly sent death threats to a Unita politician in June 2017 while president of the Provincial Electoral Commission of Luanda. He has also been accused of corruption relating to his previous role in Luanda.

✈️ Dos Santos finally home

Former President José Eduardo dos Santos is finally at home after a judicial dispute in Spain where he died on 8 July. A court in Barcelona decided the former president died of natural causes and his body should be returned to his widow, Ana Paula dos Santos. The body arrived in Luanda last Saturday aboard a TAAG aircraft, the Angolan national carrier, while the family came on another plane organised by the Angolan government. As part of an agreement reached with dos Santos’s family, the state funeral will only take place after the general election, to avoid it being exploited for political purposes in the run-up to the elections. The transport of the coffin in the luggage compartment of the plane, and the lack of military escort on removing the body from the aircraft, have caused controversy. In 1979, when the first president Agostinho Neto died in Moscow, his coffin was transported in the passenger compartment of a plane,  flanked by top-ranking officers of the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA).
The saga of Dos Santos’s death while in self-imposed exile in Spain has gripped the nation. It has negatively impacted President Lourenço’s public image, with many Angolans feeling that the whole affair highlighted Lourenço’s lack of respect for the former president. 

⚽️ Corruption scandal threatens Girabola kick-off

The Lussaty corruption case, which first made headlines in May 2021, has become a scandal which has engulfed the Angolan soccer premier league (known as “Girabola”), ahead of the new season due to start in September. Lussaty was the army officer in the Presidency´s military headquarters (Casa de Segurança) who made international headlines after dozens of bags containing foreign currency were found in his house (see Angola Briefing 28 May 2021). During the trial, the Attorney General’s office (Ministério Público) revealed that 39 soccer players from Kuando Kubango Futebol Clube (KK FC) were paid using funds from the provincial delegation of the Presidency´s military headquarters,  despite not being members of the military or Casa de Segurança staff. These salaries were paid until October 2021 and the calculated amount is 410 million kwanzas — almost a million US dollars. As a result of the scandal the KK FC have declared that they won’t be able to participate in the Girabola and the authorities are considering postponing the 2022-2023 season.

Under former president dos Santos the Casa de Segurança, headed by General Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias “Kopelipa”, was seen as one of the epicenters of grand corruption in Angola. President Lourenço has engaged in a sweeping (and some claim politically-targeted) anti-corruption drive since coming to power, including trying to clean up the Casa de Segurança. Football, along with basketball, is a massive spectator sport in Angola. Any delay to the start of the season will be very unpopular nationwide. A delay potentially caused by corruption within the Casa de Segurança is deeply embarrassing for President Lourenço, at a time when he is seeking reelection.

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