CHRONICLE OF LUÍS MOREIRA
Journalist of O MINHO. From Braga.
In October 2003, as a journalist, I went to Angola, in the entourage of the then Prime Minister, Durão Barroso. I was going with the support of Diary of Minho – where I never worked, only having collaborated very sporadically, but who was kind enough to support me – and the extinct newspaper The First of January, that God has, because it has already closed.
In the first chronicle I sent, I referred to Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of former Angolan president, José Eduardo dos Santos.
He said that she was seen as corrupt in many sectors of Angolan society, and that – it was said – she benefited from her father’s political support, and consequent access to state money. In Cashier beside, I was careful to express the opposite opinion, that, according to other sectors, she was a woman of great initiative and quality, capable of investing and creating wealth. And that the corruption charge was “a slander”.
It turns out that publishers of The First of January, for lack of space, cut this Cashier, which defended the businesswoman’s reputation.
The next day, both newspapers received phone calls, I think from the Angolan Embassy in Portugal, asking who I was, and why I represented them. Phone calls that were forwarded to me and that indicated what followed: statute renegade; O staff who followed the media started to turn my face, with an aggressive air, and they didn’t even answer anything I asked. That night, there was a dinner for journalists hosted by the Angolan Embassy, with the official in Portugal, and the hostility was repeated: no one spoke to me!
I returned to our country, aware that if one day I wanted to return to Angola, where I have been three times – once in troop in 1975 – the visa would be refused to me by slander the President’s daughter.
And sure that I stayed in the files of the Angolan secret …
Ambassador does not respond
Months later, the Ambassador came to Braga, to the Chamber, at the time of Mesquita Machado. I was sent there by Agência Lusa to those who worked. The unsympathetic procedure remained: even the aide did not speak to me, and the Ambassador – a tall, bloated type whose name I do not remember – refused to answer me.
The issue of corruption bothered Angolan leaders, it is good to see. Fortunately, the current President, João Lourenço, wants to end the mafia and rule for all Angolans !!!
In this trip, I had the right to participate in a dinner offered by the Angolan Prime Minister to the Portuguese counterpart, and where ministers, various leaders and businessmen from both sides were present … On the table that I was sitting on was Rui Mingas, who had been a minister and also an ambassador in Portugal. Before, he was a Benfica athlete … Mingas was critical of the MPLA regime, which party he belonged to, but which he had left – he said – due to the phenomenon of corruption. On the table was also the ambassador of Mozambique to Angola, António Mathonse, brother of the painter Elias Mathonse, both my friends, from chest.
The conversation flowed and came to the said phenomenon … Said Mingas: “you see that table over there. The general who is there has a mansion on the island of Luanda, one in South Africa, another in Brazil, another one in Florida, home in Lisbon and the Algarve and on the Côte D’Azur, in France ”. Worth tens of millions of dollars! And he concluded: “in this room, there are several others with the same situation, at the expense of Angolans”.
I shut up and wrote nothing, because it was confidential !!!
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