Investigative journalist Rafael Marques de Morais has been reporting on corruption in his home country of Angola for close to three decades. His investigations into illegal diamond deals and land grabs made him a prime target for the government of José Eduardo dos Santos, who was president from 1979 until 2017, and he faced years of intimidation and harassment.
During the dos Santos years Angola’s courts dealt with journalists as if they were criminals, even if they were working in the public’s interest. In 2013, Morais was covering the trial of civil society and trade union activists who had been arrested for taking part in anti-government protests, covering proceedings from outside the courtroom because he was banned from entering. As he spoke to the activists as they emerged from the trial, dozens of police surrounded the group and arrested Morais. “I was taken to the headquarters of the Rapid Intervention Police and they had a crew to film our torture. I was filmed being beaten up. I was hit so hard on the neck with a baton that I later had to go for a scan and a screening abroad.”
Morais attracted international media attention and support from human rights organizations after he was charged with defamation. One high-profile case concerned the publication of his book Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola, in which he documented murders and torture linked to the country’s diamond industry. He also faced jail time after he published an article about links between the country’s former attorney general and a real estate deal that a judge overseeing the case eventually acknowledged was “tainted with irregularities.” He was eventually acquitted in the real estate case, and in 2018, he settled out of court with the group of generals he had initially accused of being involved in the diamonds scandal.
Wherever he went, and whoever he tried to talk to, he faced intimidation. When fishermen and people selling goods on the beach near his house were evicted from their businesses and makeshift homes, he was arrested for just listening to their stories. “The police came in and said I was the agitator,” he told Journalism is Not A Crime. He was also under surveillance for years, a situation he described as a “nightmare.”
When Angolan police were trying to come up with ways to arrest him, they often had to be creative. “They kept calling it other names,” Morais recalls. “They would call it ‘retention,’ not ‘detention.’” He says friends even joked with him about how often and under what strange circumstances he was arrested. “I was once arrested going to buy tomatoes,” he said.
The authorities targeted him directly, but they also put pressure on others to isolate him and discriminate against him. “That's when you learn who your friends truly are. It was like a mousetrap...if someone was found talking to me, there would be consequences.” The authorities confronted his contacts, including a friend of his who was a businessman. “Be mindful of your business,” they told him during questioning. “It was a clear warning that if he continued to interact with me, he would suffer,” Morais told me.
“For years even embassies were advised not to give me visas to make things hard for me,” he says, disrupting his investigations into corruption links between the Angolan government and businesses abroad. “I've been turned away from the airport some 14 times,” he said.
Angola, Oil and Iran
Society is changing in Angola, and the new president João Lourenço has pledged to tackle corruption. Morais says the president is genuine about this commitment, but Morais points out there’s a long way to go — “corruption is in the DNA of the party,” he says, referring to the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola party, which has ruled the country since it became independent from Portugal in 1975.
So Morais is determined to continue uncovering large-scale crimes. Some of Angola’s biggest corruption scandals can be linked to governments, businesses and individuals based abroad, and Morais says one of the main areas he hopes to look into is the country’s corrupt deals links within the oil industry.
Angola has enjoyed international clout due to its oil reserves, much of it in the northernmost province of Cabinda. Morais explains that, as well as making profits from Angola’s oil, the Angolan government invested in the industries of both Iran and Iraq between 2003 and 2006, an arrangement that came to an end in Iran after the US imposed sanctions. “To this day, we don’t know what happened to those assets in Iran,” Morais says, indicating that certain officials had the opportunity to exploit relationships with governments for personal gain. But what is clear is that the vast majority of the Angolan people have not seen the benefits from any of these investments. “What Sonangol [the state-owned company that manages Angola’s petroleum and natural gas] invested in Iran was considered to be a total loss. Sonangol would invest and then the oil executives would basically transfer those assets to their own private enterprises,” Morais says. He adds that because Angola’s oil industry involved deals with several countries — Cuba and the United States as well as Iraq and Iran, among others — Angolan officials believed they could do business with any country, even if those countries were not necessarily on good terms with one another. "But I think at some point they realized that the US was not too happy about it,” Morais says. And, at the same time, Sonangol “started getting in bed with China.” In addition, the CEO of the company was the daughter of President dos Santos, so the lack of transparency was endemic, and the lines between official and unofficial, or legal versus illegal, deals were often blurred.
“My interest now is to try to piece together what really happened,” Morais says, adding that he has begun talking to contacts and trying to forge links with Iranian journalists and people with knowledge about Iran’s oil industry. “The [Angolan] person who was in charge of the deals in Iran and Iraq died in mysterious circumstances in Lisbon,” he says, referring to Mateus Morais de Brito, who died in April 2014. “He was found dead at home [in Portugal] and to this day, there’s no information, and no one knows what really happened to him.”
He welcomes the new openness President Lourenço has encouraged. “At the height of dos Santos’ power, no one questioned anything within the system,” Morais says. It’s now possible to ask difficult questions; certainly the current government is more tolerant toward such challenges. And other subjects that were once not talked about are now more widely discussed — domestic violence is one example.
But the country needs to introduce more dramatic changes to policy if it is to effectively combat corruption. The system is really in need of a complete overhaul, something that will only be possible once the crimes of the dos Santos regime are fully exposed and the politicians and the business community show real commitment to transforming Angola so that it serves all its people. Fostering a robust and active civil society and a healthy, thriving journalism community is a key part of this process. So Morais’ tradition of challenging the system and reporting on injustice will be needed now more than ever.
Read more about Rafael Morais' work
Read more about corruption in Iran:
Corruption in Iran and the Fishermen Who Lose Out
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