Day 6: Angola

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I think Jonas Savimbi's murder was the best thing that happened to Angola in modern times.

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Reportage from Angola by the west tends to reflect a great deal of "shade." After losing the colonial war, then losing a decades-long Communist insurgency -- a nation choked with land mines and blacked-out cities -- the west practically condemned Angola to become a new Liberia or DR Congo. (Journeyman Films documentaries about Angola made from late 1990s all but decree it). Instead of submitting to immiseration, its ruling Marxist family dynasty decides to sell out to China, and the country subsequently thrives, developing faster in 10 years of Chinese intervention than it did in 400 years as a Portuguese/South African colony. Angola did everything wrong and anti-western, and has not suffered any visible consequence, leaving the western media to bang on instead about "corruption."

That said, I believe that authoritarian regimes will always fail in the end, but the way US and British media report about Angola in particular makes me suspect that they want state failure as a desired outcome.

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the way US and British media report about Angola in particular makes me suspect that they want state failure as a desired outcome.

1) The US and British media never report on Angola.

2) Why would they want a state failure? The Angolan government has a lucrative relationship with international big business. State failure would be bad for the bottom line. You think the West wants to bring down Angola because 40 years ago it feigned non-aligned Marxism? Hell, even back when they were actively feigning non-aligned Marxism, Chevron and BP and Exon were already in bed with the MPLA and trying to restrain the Reagan administration.  

The Economist reports fairly often about Angola. UK publications are my sources of most of the info about the economic development of the country. Granted, the only mainstream American media that reports anything at all about Africa is the NY Times, but by US media I broaden my description to include US documentary producers like Vice and such.

I disagree with the second paragraph. The oil Chevron extracted in those days was used to fund Savimbi -- if he weren't there, then Chevron would not have been allowed to operate there. And to the broader point: nearby DR Congo barely functions as a government outside the capital and the big cities, yet multinational and Chinese mining companies still operate there.

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I'd like to see some evidence Chevron was funding Sivimbi. It doesn't make sense. They literally signed contracts with the Angolan government. South Africa attacked their plants. Additionally, conservatives in America led a campaign to boycott Chevron.

You're right. Chevron was able to operate in Angola even during the worst of the civil war period by defending its rigs with Cubans (which was the source of the conservative boycott). Firestone operated its plantations during most of the Liberian civil war as well. Western companies find ways to obtain profit in strife-ridden, failing countries.

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I am not arguing that Santos is not a kleptocrat (but I do deny he is a second Mobutu) and a great representative of 'sit-tight' African leadership, but it cannot be denied that he has governed his country more conscientiously than more western-oriented African leaders. Those improvements in national GDP per capita, literacy rates, and in health delivery for rural people in the past twenty years are demonstrable -- Angola has progressed since the dark days of 1985 -- and cannot be handwaved as just reflecting the general improvement in the African economic climate. Furthermore, many of the criticisms about Angola's wealth inequality can just as well be leveled against Namibia or Botswana.