Change at the top in Angola may not bring much progress
ON FEBRUARY 3, Angola’s President José Eduardo dos Santos announced that he would be stepping down after almost 38 years as head of state. General João Lourenço, the current minister of defence, will be the ruling MPLA’s presidential candidate in the upcoming election in August.
Hopes that Dos Santos’s exit will lead to a greater democratisation of Angola’s authoritarian political system and increased respect for human rights and civil liberties are, unfortunately, unlikely to be fulfilled. The change in power at the top follows historical patterns of elite management of politics with little input from the larger population.
Dos Santos’s departure might therefore mean little in practice, and substantial political changes are unlikely.
Dos Santos’s exit takes place during Angola’s deepest economic crisis since the end of the civil war (1975-2002). For decades, a small elite, centred on the presidency, has feasted on the country’s vast oil reserves. Luxury cars and designer clothes are the visible signs of this system. These stand in sharp contrast to the electricity cuts and flooded roads that bear evidence of the state’s incapacity to provide basic services.
This system of elite enrichment reached a zenith between 2002 and 2015, but Angola’s fortunes have since swiftly changed. The collapse of the international price of oil in 2015 has left it heavily indebted and running low on foreign reserves. The country is struggling to import basic goods. Inflation has seen the real value of salaries dramatically tumble in the space of three years.
Angolans find themselves confronted with a collapsed public healthcare system and few opportunities for advancement in the face of rampant corruption in the public and private sectors.
The bust has worsened already unbearable socio-economic inequality.
Dos Santos is handing over the reins precisely when it has become most difficult for the MPLA to justify the existing situation of political repression and economic inequality. Although Angola is in theory a multiparty democracy, it is widely viewed as an authoritarian state, and the economic crisis has intersected with bubbling discontent.
This has found its most vocal outlet in small but ongoing protests. The regime has increasingly turned to repression to control dissent. Critical journalists and human rights activists have been charged and often jailed, and protesters have been met with extreme brutality. Nevertheless, how much longer the cultivation of fear will work in the face of a growing frustration, especially among the youth of Luanda, remains a big question.
Dos Santos might well be using his exit as an opportunity to shift the difficult questions of political and economic change on to someone else in a bid to make his successor, rather than himself, the focus of anger.
How much politics at the top of the Angolan political system will change depends on to what extent Dos Santos’s exit means an actual relinquishment of power. Dos Santos continues as the president of the MPLA, meaning that he will exercise considerable power for years to come. Given the entanglement of the MPLA with the official structures of the Angolan state, it remains to be seen whether a head of state or head of the ruling party exercises more power.
Given that Dos Santos has built up a considerable number of enemies during his long tenure, it is extremely unlikely that he would leave without having made plans to protect his and his family’s extensive financial interests. It is the nature of these behind-the-scenes plans that will determine whether his exit will be real or a farce.
Even if Dos Santos relinquishes actual power to Lourenço, the current presidential candidate is unlikely to introduce substantial changes without considerable pressure. He is known as a man of the system, not a dissenter. It is this existing system of elite MPLA rule that he will most likely seek to reproduce.
Without more substantial participation of Angolans in shaping a new political trajectory, change at the top will not mean change in the system. The most that those struggling for the end of authoritarianism can hope for is that the handover of power might reveal cracks in the edifice that could be opportunities for pushing towards a new path for the country.
Claudia Gastrow is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, University of Johannesburg