Angola

President dos Santos and the ruling MPLA: Afraid of Angolans
if Luaty Beirão dies in jail on their watch, Angola's state will have a much bigger problem than small protests on their hands.

#Free15Angolans: An update
You’d never know it from reading the US media, but 15 political prisoners in Angola are still in jail.

What you need to know about #free15Angolans
For one, their original crime: Gathering as a book club and reading the books 'From Dictatorship to Democracy' and 'Tools to Destroy a Dictator and Avoid a New Dictatorship.'

Peace deployed as a weapon in Angola
In the Angolan government and its security forces’ violent relationship with its citizenry, they deploy the discourse of peace as a weapon.

Angolan ‘justice’ in a Portuguese slave house
The irony and the absurdity that the case against journalist Rafael Marques — an opponent of state corruption in Angola — is being heard in a former slave house.

Angolan Cinemas: Past and Present Tense
Cultural spaces and historic patrimony have not fared well during Angola's post-war reconstruction and development.

Africa, in a state of constant self-discovery
Afripedia is a visual guide to contemporary urban culture on the continent.

Nicholas Kristof Discovers Angola
This is now our eleventh piece on Nicholas Kristof. This needs to end. He has to stop somehow.

Angola’s Flash Mobs
Should the tipping point against the MPLA - in power since independence - arrive in Angola, there are some activists ready to hit the ground, running.

Angola’s Forgotten Massacre
Lara Pawson's book about the complex and violent events on and after the 27th of May, 1977: the date of a supposed coup d’etat in Luanda, Angola.

Bam bam riddim
Hipster's Don't Dance's 'Top 5 World Carnival Tunes' for September 2014.


The last space of cultural dynamism in Luanda’s baixa is no more
Angolans protest as the state threatens to tear down an historic building.

When Salazar met one of Lumumba’s murderers
António Oliveira Salazar founded Portugal’s New State dictatorship in 1933. Some Portuguese still remember him fondly.

The increasingly shaky edifice of Luanda
How Nito Alves has become the symbol of a slowly emerging movement that has shaken the Angolan government’s narrative of post-conflict stability.

Smells like Brazil
Angola spends millions of dollars to host the World Championships in roller hockey (yes). Anyone who think it is a waste of money gets beaten up.

Golden Lions
A conversation with the curators of the Angolan Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale.

Isabel’s People
When Forbes, who used to celebrate the Dos Santos family, starts asking questions about the wealth of Angola's rulers.

Angola’s Biennale
It is hard to find critics asking what Angolan artist Edson Chagas’s work does, the context through which it was produced, or the social conditions it draws attention to.