Magnificent and Beggar Land by Ricardo Soares de Oliveira

Author:Ricardo Soares de Oliveira [de Oliveira, Ricardo Soares]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780190251390
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-04-02T04:00:00+00:00

There is no need to elaborate on the self-serving logic53 or on the fact that many in the elite would be unable to articulate this justification for Angola’s inequities. But at some level this explains the elite’s deep-rooted sense of entitlement. Whatever shades of opinion may exist, there is a virtual consensus amongst the powerful that “the Angolan economy is theirs”.54

The fact that this elite takeover of the Angolan economy has been elevated into national policy is consequential in many ways, the most important being that, contrary to much talk of Angolan grand corruption, much of this process is actually legal. Influential people did not just grab money, assets and opportunities; the official policy is that they must be helped in doing so. Some elite ownership of assets and businesses is held by straw men or carefully camouflaged in letterbox offshore companies. But a surprising amount is increasingly available for all to see in the Angolan state gazette, the Diário da Républica,55 in the pages of which one can track the complex web of crossed ownerships that make the top hundred-odd political and military figures partners in some business with just about every other member of that exclusive club. In this context, a selective and self-serving engagement with “the law” amounts to a strategy for consolidating one’s business interests and collecting whatever above-board benefits (concessional interest rates, subsidies, preferential treatment for Angolan nationals, etc.) can be had.56

Otherwise, the default position of Angolan businessmen is above the law, whether it is a matter of capital flight, money laundering, the unilateral abandonment of partnerships with foreigners, the non-payment of loans and import duties, conflict of interest between public and private roles, the use of coercion to secure extraction, etc.57 These are not occasional whims, but the very stuff of Angolan private sector life.58 Such practices are also illegal according to Angolan law, but few Angolan businessmen would describe their behaviour in terms of “breaking the law”: they simply assume the latter doesn’t apply to them. In what can alternatively be described as the product of arrogance, cynicism or a sheer fit of absence of mind, many progressive laws have been passed in recent years meant to provide some ground rules for Angola’s market economy. But they are primarily conceived as tools to regulate foreign entrepreneurs and are not meant to be deployed against the system’s masterminds. The activist Rafael Marques’ surprising use of these laws to throw lawsuits at some of Angola’s most formidable players has therefore been met with anger. Other than the considerable nuisance, this will have no legal consequences. In the words of Inglês Pinto, the former head of Angola’s Bar Association, “they expose themselves to that extent because they have total impunity.”59 As an Angolan academic noted, “now that we have that information in the public domain, what is going to happen? Nothing!”60

For the improvements of the postwar era were not meant to create a genuine rule of law and certainly not to throw open the economy to the unconnected.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.