Angolan authorities could be planning to forcibly evict thousands of squatters living in the capital Luanda in a Mugabe-style slum clearance over the Christmas holiday, aid agency Christian Aid’s Angolan partner organisation, SOS Habitat has warned.
Thousands of families who fled to Luanda for protection during the 27-year Angolan
civil war which ended in 2002, live in squalid, self-constructed slums on waste land. The capital, home to 4.5 million people, is overflowing, inflating land prices which are among the highest in Africa. Angola’s great wealth of resources, mainly oil and diamonds, has led to increased demand for housing, including for foreign workers. Since 2001, the government has been demolishing poor people’s homes, often to make way for new luxury housing. In Zimbabwe mass demolitions led to an international outcry last year while Angola’s ongoing programme of evictions, which the UN says have been growing more and more violent, has largely gone unnoticed.
DW Angola
Development Workshop Angola