Manipulation of the media in Angola has allowed the government to attack its critics, while using public opinion as a political weapon in its efforts to consolidate power. Such tactics resemble those leveraged by autocratic leaders in another distressed oil economy, Venezuela. EXX Africa assesses the parallels between these two countries’ media sectors and implications for Angola’s political and economic stability.

Despite their world-leading oil reserves, Venezuela and Angola are suffering from famine – and it is only getting worse. Last year, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization reported that 21.2 percent of the Venezuelan population were malnourished, an estimated 6.8 million people, up from just 3 percent in 2010.

In Angola, 2.4 million people including 85,000 children are suffering malnutrition. The country’s southern Huila province alone has seen a doubling in the rate of malnutrition compared to last year. Robert Bulten, the emergency program director in Angola for aid group World Vision.

While economic mismanagement and government incompetence play their parts, they only exist because of the absence of media freedom. The legal scholar Amartya Sen once said of the free press: “There has never been a famine in a functioning multiparty democracy. A free press and the practice of democracy contribute greatly to bringing out information that can have an enormous impact on policies for famine prevention.”

The media is the fourth pillar of every democracy. It exists to inform citizens about what is happening in their country, particularly what the government does not want the public to know. Armed with these facts, citizens can hold their governments to account. Considering the state their countries are in, it comes as no surprise that both Venezuela and Angola rank at the bottom of regional and international freedom indexes, nor that both countries have a reputation for media repression.

Freedom House, a US NGO, ranked Angola as ‘Not Free’ in 2019 with a score of 31 out of 100 (0 being left free and 100 being most free). In the group’s same 2019 Freedom in the World report, Venezuela was ranked as ‘Not Free,’ with a score of 19 out of 100. On Angola’s media, the group said: “The Angolan state owns most media in the country. Many ostensibly private outlets are owned by senior officials of the MPLA and act as mouthpieces of the regime… Defamation was still considered a criminal offense, and press freedom advocates had yet to convince the government to reform the repressive legal framework.”

“Venezuela’s independent journalists operate within a highly restrictive regulatory and legal environment, and risk arrest and physical violence in connection with their work. Most independent newspapers have shut down or moved to a digital format,” Freedom House said. “The Maduro government maintains a state communications infrastructure, bolstered by a broad legal framework, which is used to propagate its political and ideological program.”

As the world begins a new decade with populist authoritarianism tearing at the roots of democratic institutions, Freedom House said what was happening in countries like Venezuela and Angola was part of a wider trend. “Freedom of the media has been deteriorating around the world over the past decade,” the group said. “Part of the assault has come from an unexpected source. Elected leaders in many democracies, who should be press freedom’s staunchest defenders, have made explicit attempts to silence critical media voices and strengthen outlets that serve up favourable coverage. The trend is linked to a global decline in democracy itself.”

Venezuela and Angola are both oil-exporting countries who use state media to push government propaganda and repress critical press. What is interesting, however, is how these two countries use entirely different means to deal with what remains of free media. Caracas has chosen the path of chaos – to discredit the concept of news itself to the extent that its citizens cannot tell the truth from the fiction. Luanda has gone in the other direction entirely, choosing to co-opt former government critics and buy up foreign media to cloak itself in credibility.

Comparing the tactics of these two countries allows us to see how authoritarianism, and its repression of the free press, function in this second decade of the 21^st century.

Angola: Co-opting credibility

On World Press Freedom Day 2019, former director of Expansão newspaper Carlos Rosado said: “We can speak badly, or rather, they can speak badly, or we hear badly about the former President, José Eduardo dos Santos, but there is no criticism regarding the new president, João Lourenço, the story is the same as in the past.”

The Angolan state controls almost all media, especially that which has a nationwide reach and in traditional languages such as Bantu. This already gives it an unparalleled advantage against small private opposition outlets. Internet penetration has still not peaked, further limiting attempts to rebut government propaganda. Nonetheless, the government routinely harasses those who seek to hold it to account. It ranked just 109 out of 180 in the 2019 World Press Freedom Index.

The ‘triumvirate’ and Angola’s Murdoch

Freedom House was right to highlight the role of generals and government-linked businessmen in the ownership of Angola’s private media landscape. Grupo Medianova is Angola’s largest private media publisher. Among Grupo Medianova’s assets are O Pais, a weekly newspaper; Radio Mais, the first private broadcaster in Angola; and TV Zimbo, Angola’s first private TV station. The company is owned collectively by the so-called ‘triumvirate’:

• Manuel Vicente, also known as the ‘$60 billion man,’ former Vice-President from 2012-17 and former Sonangol CEO from 1999-2012;
• General Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias Júnior, also known as General Kopelipa and the ‘$750 million man,’ the former head of the Presidential Intelligence Bureau from 1995-2017 and former minister of state from 2010-2017;
• General Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento, also known as General Dino, former head of Presidential Telecommunications from 1995-2010, and former advisor to the minister of state and Head of the Presidential Intelligence Bureau in the Presidency from 2010-18.

The triumvirate is notorious inside Angola for being at the centre of corruption scandal after corruption scandal. Their web of media and business ownership is still intact under current Angolan President Joao Lourenco, despite his high-profile anti-corruption campaign. The detrimental influence of internal Angolan repression of freedom of press extends far beyond its own borders, however. Even former colonial Portugal is not immune, suffering what some commentators call ‘reverse colonization.’

Newshold Group is a joint Portuguese-Angolan media group, but the real movers and shakers are Angolan investors such as Alvaro de Oliveira Madaleno Sobrinho, 57, an Angolan banker and business tycoon. Sobrinho owns the company through shares in Pineview Overseas, a company based in Panama but whose headquarters are in Lisbon. Sobrinho has so many legal cases stacked against him across the world it is nothing short of worrying that he continues to be able to do business.

Portuguese prosecutors have had a case open against him since 2011, the Swiss Criminal Court have frozen €150 million of his assets in Switzerland, and prosecutors in Mauritius have charged his associate Jose Pinto for misrepresentations to their country’s Financial Services Commission.

Newshold have an astonishing amount of pull in Portuguese media. They own: 15.08% of Cofina, a Portuguese media conglomerate that in turn own the largest-circulation Lisbon tabloid, Correio da Manha; 97% of Sol, the third largest weekly newspaper in Portugal; all of the daily newspapers; and minority stakes in Visao and Expresso, two of Portugal’s leading magazines.

Co-opting dissent

Reading the Anglophone press, it can sometimes seem as if there is only one activist in Angola, Rafael Marques de Morais. The long-time anti-corruption campaigner was a fierce opponent of former President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, using his website Maka Angola as a platform.

While other activists are still suppressed, de Morais, a favourite of Western media outlets, is still allowed a voice. In fact, he was awarded with a presidential medal by Lourenco for his activism. His journalism has since shifted from deep exposes to sounding remarkably in-step with the current president’s agenda, not least his campaign against the former first family.

After taking into account his high international profile, why would Angola’s authoritarian regime single out de Morais of all the country’s activists to co-opt. The attempt could have sorely backfired. One reason is who the activist does not talk about on his firebrand blog, such as Sobrinho, the aforementioned Angolan Murdoch. De Morais is neighbours with Sobrinho’s parents, and despite his international legal troubles and role in extending Luanda’s media influence abroad, Sobrinho has only been mentioned twice on the Maka Angola blog, once in 2014 and again in 2017. This is a notable lack of coverage all things considered.

Another reason is the company he keeps. Rui Verde is a writer at Maka Angola, as well as a legal advisor. His latter position is somewhat ironic as he is also a convicted criminal. In July 2017, he was handed a suspended jail sentence of 4 years and 2 months after being convicted of falsifying documents, forgery, and qualified tax fraud. The case involved the Independent University, which was shut down by following accusations of corruption by University Dean Luis Arouca. Irony seems to run in the family. His ex-wife Maria Isabel Pinto Magalhaes was a judge, and also a convicted criminal. She was sentenced to 5 years in prison after being accused of money laundering. Despite Verde’s conviction, he continues to write for de Morais at Maka Angola.

The website is not a registered company, nor is it a registered charity, meaning the source of its funding is difficult to ascertain. Like many political activists in developing world countries, de Morais receives funding from a number of foreign organizations. Unlike many political activists in developing world countries, he receives his funding via an offshore, Luxembourg-based account named “Mona Ndengue.” Some of these funds are transparent due to the donor organizations themselves being transparent. For example, the US’ National Endowment for Democracy has given funding to de Morais and Maka Angola exceeding $300,000 since 2011, including an $84,600 payment in 2016. He also received $5,000 from a German donor via Transparency International in 2017.

The issue is that when the individual or organization investing in de Morais is under no legal or political duty to be transparent, they rarely are. He received $10,000 in 2017 from an unknown real estate developer, as well as ‘gifts in kind’ from several unnamed donors. De Morais has blurred the lines between impartial journalism and political activism. There is no issue with being the latter, especially in a country sorely in need of holding power to account, but political actors are rightly treated different to journalists.

In a 2017 court case in Portugal, the court ruled that despite labelling himself an international journalist, he was in fact “subject to scrutiny and is a political activist.” The court case involved de Morais brining a defamation case against a Portuguese public relations firm after he had written an article in favour George Soros. Soros has been unfairly stigmatized by a conspiratorial and aggressive far-right across the world. His Open Society has been involved in countries across the world, and it is only natural that it financed de Morais’ work in Angola. De Morais had in fact worked for the Open Society for seven years.

The reason why de Morais’ association with Soros and the Open Society stood out in the Angolan context was the group’s arms-length ties with UNITA. The country’s three-decade civil war was fought between the Soviet-backed MPLA, who govern the country, and the US-backed-UNITA, who remain the main opposition party. UNITA’s refusal to respect Angolans’ right to elect their government, fuelled by US military support, was a primary reason why the war dragged on endlessly, arguably needlessly so.

Deborah Harding was a former vice president of the Open Society until 2015. She was on the advisory board of KRL International, a consultancy firm founded by Riva Levinson, who lobbied for UNITA in the 1980s. Harding is known to be a strong backer of de Morais, who is also close friends with former Portuguese MEP Ana Gomes, and Gomes’ husband who was the former ambassador to Angola. Taken together, it is not difficult to see why the Portuguese courts in 2017 treated de Morais as a political activist rather than a journalist, especially as both are perfectly reasonable professions to pursue.

On the basis of the above, it is not hard to see why Lourenco thought co-opting de Morais was a gamble worth taking. Both men share a hostility to the ex-regime, albeit for vastly different reasons, and both are prepared to look the other way when the corruption they claim to fight hits a bit too close to home. Where Venezuela has sought to discredit opposition outlets, Angola has sought to buy credibility and co-opt dissidents.

Venezuela: Chaos in Caracas

In 2002, there was a coup against former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, one which the country’s private media heavily backed. One of the participants, Vice-Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, said: “We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you.”

The coup failed, and the country’s media have suffered ever since. Whilst supporters of Chavez defend this as a necessary measure to protect democracy as they see it, the reality is the lack of media oversight has led to the complete mismanagement of the country’s phenomenal oil wealth – and in turn led directly to the state the country is in today.

The IMF has reported that hyperinflation hit 10 million percent in 2018, and the combined decline of the economy reached 65 percent in the same year. It is one of the worst financial crises in recent history not caused by war or some equally severe external shock. Social crisis followed economic crisis: corruption, murder, and life-threatening food and medicine shortages all combined to spark one of the largest mass-migrations in Latin America’s recent history.

While the country’s free media has been repressed since 2002, the situation deteriorated further still under Chavez’s successor, President Nicolas Maduro, especially since socioeconomic crisis first struck the country in 2014. Between then and 2018, Caracas went down 27 places on the World Press Freedom Index, which is compiled by Reporters Without Borders. In 2018, it stood at 143 out of 180 countries.

In 2019, Reports Without Borders condemned “the disastrous climate for journalists in Venezuela, where the deepening political crisis has been accompanied by increasingly blatant and disturbing censorship of non-governmental media.”

Fake news

In 2017, the government announced that a coup was underway, again. A police helicopter was seized and fired on the Supreme Court and Interior Ministry. A pilot was arrested and the government survived. This is what government media reported, all the while their street gangs were laying siege to the opposition-held National Assembly. For many Venezuelans, in desperate need of free and fair media, the coincidence was too convenient. The head of the country’s parliament at the time, Juilio Borges, said: “It seems like a movie. Some people say it is a setup, some that it is real.”

The government uses state media to exaggerate or underplay events, or simply deny protests or crises are taking place. Its vice-like grip has pushed opposition media outlets online on social media. The government media then set about discrediting the alternatives to its propaganda, heaping chaos upon chaos. The minister of communications and information, Ernesto Villegas, has taken the lead in this regard, saying: “These are websites that corroborate each other (and) help spread exaggerated or false news.” He added: “The pretext for foreign intervention is human rights violation. Therefore, the efforts of a gigantic media apparatus are put to this narrative of Maduro’s government as a massive violator of rights.”

University of North Carolina Latin American politics professor Gregory Week told NPR: "Independent media has been gradually attacked or shut down over time. So that in general social media becomes the means by which you learn what's going on, on an ongoing basis." Forty radio stations were closed by the government in 2017, and Reuters reported that 75 percent of newspapers have shut down since 2013 due to the country’s recession causing unbearable financial strain.

Experts have noted a class component to press freedom. Higher-income earners are more likely to have access to cable TV and VPNs, allowing to switch from government to balanced or pro-opposition media. This in turn limits to effectiveness of government propaganda. For lower-income earners, activists have set up innovative groups on apps such as WhatsApp, where independent journalists setting up groups like Servicio De Informacion Publica (Public Information Service). They send out audio news bulletins and infographic with headlines for people to share on their social media accounts.

The problem is that this media environment is ripe for exploitation. It is a breeding ground for fake-news peddlers – and not just by saboteurs, but the government itself. Social media also relies on access to internet, which the government has repeatedly proven it is prepared to block when matters reach fever pitch. The choice therefore becomes between a consistent pro-government narrative on the one hand and dubious opposition information on the other.

One of the few, public groups trying to separate fact from fiction is Datanálisis, a polling firm. Director Luis Vicente León aptly summarized the situation his country faces: “When you are at the climax of polarization the truth is seen as a betrayal.”

Caraquenian cartel

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a US based NGO, awarded its satirical 2016 person of the year global award to Maduro “on the strength of his corrupt and oppressive reign, so rife with mismanagement that citizens of his oil-rich nation are literally starving and begging for medicines.”

“It’s been a big year for Maduro,” said Drew Sullivan, editor of OCCRP and one of the judges. “I think this year has been the tipping point and his negligence, incompetence and corruption are the cause. When a country’s leader can watch his people starve and still oversee a government stealing $70 billion a year all while his family deals drugs, it’s a special kind of evil. He deserves this prize.”

With domestic press muzzled, it has been up to foreign media to report on the scandals rocking Venezuela. These have not been in short supply. In 2015, the US arrested two of Maduro’s nephews for conspiring to transport 800 kilograms of cocaine to the US. Most famously, in September 2013, members of the Venezuelan National Guard shocked the world after being arrested by French authorities with 31 suitcases containing 1.3 tons of cocaine on a Paris flight.

This is aside from the billions that have been looted from PDVSA, the country’s state oil company. No surprise, then, that Transparency International’s 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index gave the country a score of 18 out of 100 (with 0 being the most corrupt), ranking them 168 out of 180 countries in the world.

In response to crisis after crisis, Maduro has subjected his cabinet to reshuffle after reshuffle. The end result has been an increasing militarization of civil government. In 2017, six of nine newly appointed cabinet ministers were high-ranking military officers. General Osorio Zabrano, for example, was appointed the new chief of staff, but also accused of food trafficking in the starving country in his previous role as food minister. The military’s backing of Maduro and their use of indiscriminate violence has tarnished their reputation.

Freedom House reported: “ The scale of Venezuelan corruption is exemplified by Alejandro Andrade, former head of Venezuela’s treasury, who was sentenced by a US court to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to taking over $1 billion in bribes, in exchange for helping a network of elites purchase dollars at fixed exchange rates and resell them on the black market for a massive mark up.”

Maduro has in turn launched an anti-corruption campaign in order to be seen to be doing something. In 2017, two former top officials at PDVSA were arrested as part of a series of high profile arrests. Government media praised the case as a strike against corruption, critics saw it as a cynical power play. The show went on. In 2018, Rafael Ramirez and his cousin were accused of embezzling $4.8 billion of funds from state oil funds to Andorra Bank. Ramirez was the former oil minister from 2004-14, and former UN ambassador from 2014-17, when he was fired after criticizing Maduro.

INSIGHT

Angola President Lourenco’s anti-corruption campaign, like Maduro’s, is born out of a need to be seen to be doing something about the country’s woeful economic state, as well as consolidate his personal power, mainly by targeting the former president and his family. Allegations of corruption made against others, including himself, are dismissed.

Former Vice President Manuel Vicente is a perfect example. Part of the ‘triumvirate,’ he was accused of bribing Portuguese prosecutor Orlando Figueira with €760,000 ($850,000) to scrap an investigation into his real estate deals in Portugal. At the time of alleged bribery, Vicente was head of Sonangol, Angola’s state-owned oil company, which he left in financial ruin after his tenure.

In May 2018, a Portuguese court ruled that Vicente would be tried in his home country instead on the charges of corruption and money-laundering. Lourenco had publicly pressured Portugal to drop the case. Vicente, who enjoys judicial immunity as a former vice president, returned to Angola. Not only has he not been penalised, he is more powerful than ever, acting as the key link between Angola’s corrupt political elite and the riches of the Angolan economy.

Freedom House said of corruption in Angola: “Public officials are periodically prosecuted for corruption and other crimes. Often these instances are highly publicized and occur in conjunction with presidential announcements of a renewed assault on corruption, but such efforts are episodic rather than systematic.” Transparency International’s 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index gave the country a score of 19 out of 100, ranking them 165 out of 180 countries in the world.

With the sharp disparity in treatment between the former president and his family, and the rest of Angola’s top figures like Vicente, international media have cooled on Lourenco. As recently as Jan 10, 2020, Voice of America asked “Is Angola’s Anti-Corruption Drive Real or Cosmetic?”

Lourenco is personally invested in the repression of his country’s press. Before rising to the presidency, he was defence minister from 2014-17, during which period of time he also became one of the country’s largest land owners. He was awarded huge agricultural contracts, with his farms’ assets being worth an estimated $200 million. As Defence Minister, he systematically awarded contracts to firms and individuals closest to him but matters escalated when he became president.

In February 2018, Finance Minister Archer Mangueira announced that Angola would sell five government-owned aircraft. The contract for their sale was drafted by National Director of State Patrimony Valentim Joaquim Manuel with the assistance of three companies. They were: SJL Aeronautica, owned by the President’s brother General Sequeira João Lourenço; EAPA, owned by General Higino Carneiro, deputy chairman of parliament and a member of the MPLA political bureau; and Air Jet, owned by former Angolan Air Force officer António de Jesus Janota Bete. Unsurprisingly given the make-up of team tasked with selling the aircraft, they were sold for an undisclosed amount. Three months later, it was announced that the public-private consortium Air Connection Express would take over domestic flights from national carrier TAAG, and to that end signed a $198 million contract with Bombardier, a Canadian firm, for six new aircraft.

Air Connection Express has ties with companies close to Lourenco. These include: the Minister of State and Chief of Staff Frederico Cardoso, the main shareholder of Air 26; The Minister of State and head of the President’s Intelligence Bureau General Pedro Sebastiao, owner of Mavewa; and the president’s brother, owner of SJL Aeronautica.

The military’s influence under Lourenco has not just expanded in the economic sector, but the civilian government sector as well due to repeated cabinet reshuffles. In April 2018, Lourenco appointed his brother, General Sequeira Joao Lourenco, as Deputy Director of the President’s Intelligence Bureau. The position has vast powers over the interior, defence, and intelligence ministries.

The flurry of reshuffles Angola has seen in recent years has only added to the sense of chaos gripping the country, not least due to the lack of a free press to inform the public as to reasons why these reshuffles have taken place at all levels of government, ranging from government ministers to regional deputy governors to military generals. From what can be gleaned from the press reports that do exist, the following people have all been removed from office by the president:

• Angolan Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Geraldo Sachipengo Nunda,
• Civil Aviation Minister Antonio Cruz lima,
• Deputy Governors for Kuando Kubango Luisa Mateus and Bento Francisco Xavier,
• Deputy Governor for Zaire Antonio Felix Kialunguila,
• Chairman of the Board of Directors of the investment and Export Promotion Agency Licinio Contreiras,
• Defence Minister Gaspar Santos Rufino,
• Public Works Minister Fernando Malheiros Jose Carlos,
• Deputy Governors for Luanda Julio Marcelino Vieira Bessa and Jose Paulo Kai and Ana Paula dos Santos Correa Victor,
• Deputy Governor for Lunda Sol Ophelia Madalena Jeremias Uqueve Xiri,
• Fisheries and Sea Minister Victoria de Barros Neto,
• Social Action, Family and Women’s Promotion Minister Victoria Fracisco Correia da Conceicao,
• Agriculture and Livestock Minister Jose Carols Lopes da Silva Bettencourt,
• Minister of Social Communication Joao Melo.

As to the reasons behind their dismissal, the details are scant. The causes could be many, ranging from corrupt behaviour embarrassing the president’s attempts to portray himself as a clean president, to internal power struggles within Luanda’s upper echelons. So long as the press can be either suppressed or bought, no one really knows; and from Caracas’ and Luanda’s point of view, that is exactly the point.