Shortly after replacing the long-serving Jose Eduardo Dos Santos as President of Angola, the country’s new leader, João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço moved to reverse two of the most controversial decisions of his predecessor’s near four-decade rule. He retrieved control of two of the country’s most valuable assets, the state-run oil and gas company, Sonangol Group and the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, from two of Dos Santos’ family members, a daughter and a son, respectively. Nepotism, the records suggest, was one of President Dos Santos’ most glaring weaknesses.
The daughter, Isabel, seemingly the most favoured of the Dos Santos siblings, is reportedly Africa’s wealthiest woman, a portion of her fortune believed to have derived from her influence in the country’s diamonds industry. In 2016 Amnesty International had listed her alongside the likes of the former Tunisian ruler Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali, former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli, and the likes of Hosni Mubarak (Egypt), Teodoro Obiang (Equatorial Guinea) and Viktor Yanukovich (Ukraine) as examples of powerful people who symbolize grand state corruption.
Angola is Africa’s second largest oil producer, after Nigeria. While the country’s oil resources have positioned it as one of the continent’s richest countries per capita, the vast majority of its population of more than 31 million share much the smaller portion of its wealth.
Sonangol, as Angola’s new President put it in a public statement some time ago, is the country’s “golden goose.” Its responsibilities embrace areas that range from the allocation of concessions for oil exploration to production, distribution and marketing of petroleum and petroleum derivatives. Dos Santos had given his daughter, known in some Angolan circles as ‘Princess’ dominion over the state entity responsible for more than 70% of the country’s earnings! In March this year Angolan prosecutors commenced an investigation into possible graft at Sonangol and are also expected to probe suspected irregular financial transfers out of Sonangol worth hundreds of millions of dollars under Isabel’s chairmanship.
The country’s Sovereign Wealth Fund is the state-run investment fund established from balance of payments surpluses resulting mainly from resource exports, in Angola’s instance, primarily oil sales. That was the former President’s son’s (Jose Filomeno) to manage and seemingly, to plunder. In March this year he was arrested and charged over reported irregularities associated with the transfer of US$500 million from the Fund out of Angola.
In effect, President Dos Santos had placed the ‘beating heart’ of Angola’s economy in the hands of two of his children. Another daughter, up until recently ran a company which reportedly enjoyed lucrative contracts with the state-run television sector. She too, reportedly, has had her wings clipped by the new President.
Dos Santos had held power since 1979, as both Head of State and Chairman of the powerful ruling party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). His authority rested on the foundation of his credentials as a celebrated leader of the country’s liberation struggle against Portuguese rule. He is not alone among prominent Southern Africa’s freedom fighters who went on to lead their countries and to slip into ignominy though corruption and self-aggrandisement.
Some comparative data on the Angola situation provides sobering enlightenment. Just last June the World Bank approved a US$150 million loan (which would have been a pittance compared to Isabel’s personal fortune) to support a water and sanitation service delivery project that reportedly seeks to do no more than take potable water into the yards and houses of 1.2 million Angolans. As of earlier this year Angola was also engaging the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in pursuit of a US$4.5 billion extended financial aid programme.
Out of office the former President has conceded that he made mistakes during his tenure (Dos Santos is quoted as saying that “there is no human activity without errors”) though it has to be said that the barefaced plunder and/or hiving off to family and friends of countries’ resources by corrupt leaders has become far too prevalent to be dismissed as though it were some understandable error in judgement. It is therefore not surprising that the new Angolan President is coming under pressure to not just restrain the Dos Santos’ siblings but also to bring them to account.
If this is no more than the briefest of summaries of Angola’s tragedy it is more than enough to serve as an object lesson for Guyana where, less than two years before the expected materialization of ‘first oil’ from what, by all accounts, is an enormous find, public discourse continues to focus on, among other things, how to protect oil and gas returns from misappropriation on the scale of Angola…or worse.
Here, it is more than worth mentioning that Guyana is still some considerable distance away from a state of readiness for the capable management of an oil and gas sector, a condition which, if not remedied with a generous measure of urgency, could significantly increase the likelihood of both blunder and plunder in the longer term. More than that, in the absence of a structure buttressed by the strongest of enforcement mechanisms, control of the sector could well be left open to the machinations of whoever governs, in the longer term, not an encouraging prospect in circumstances where corruption is a frailty to which officialdom has been known to be vulnerable.
So that where the economic future of the nation is at stake it is far better that we protect ourselves by instituting checks and balances enshrined in the strictest of laws and procedures rather than take for granted what has become the customary professed altruism of those who purport to have the interest of the nation at heart. The lesson that Guyana must learn from Angola’s tragedy has to do with the importance of leaving no stone unturned in ring-fencing the country’s oil and gas sector against an identical debacle. That is one of our most important missions as 2020 and first oil beckons.
