Embassy of Angola UK - Press Office, Newsletter No. 107 August 2005

In an impromptu address to a rally organised by the MPLA provincial committee in the Golfe neighbourhood of Luanda on 27 August, President José Eduardo dos Santos criticised the imposition of western economic and social models on poor countries.

He said that despite the formulas dictated by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to solve economic problems, the situation in Africa had not improved. There was, on the contrary, more hunger and ever more people were dying of diseases.

‘We don’t think that anyone will come from abroad with nice words, nice speeches and nice projects to solve our problems,’ the President said, adding that representative democracy on the continent should also be adapted to the realities of each country.

‘We live in a difficult world in which we must be the masters of our own destiny,’ he said.

Dos Santos spoke of ‘those who yesterday helped to destroy the country, but who are today against helping to rebuild economic and social facilities’, saying that it was, paradoxically, those same ‘blockade’ forces that were now protesting against the alternative solutions found by the government for rebuilding the country.

‘Angolans sought alternative solutions, found financial resources, found new friends and allies, and now they are laying the foundations for starting the national reconstruction process,’ he said.

President dos Santos urged all Angolans, irrespective of party affiliations, to work to put an end to the extreme poverty in which the majority of the population live.

‘The country needs everyone, everyone’s efforts, everyone’s work. Only united, each at his or her post, doing his or her work, can we change Angola,’ he said. ‘We are fifteen million, but perhaps not even a million have decent living conditions.’

‘The country is devastated, there is poverty almost everywhere, a lot of poverty,’ the President continued. ‘We need schools, houses to live in, water, electric power, better food, in short everything.’

He went on to stress the importance of the leaders of his party knowing how to interpret the wishes of the people and indicating ways to facilitate the resolutions of problems.

Recalling the heroic struggle waged by generations of Angolans against Portuguese colonialism, resulting in the proclamation of independence on 11 November 1975, the President spoke of the bravery of Angolans in defeating apartheid South Africa. Later on, Angolans had not allowed the results of the 1992 elections to be subverted.

‘We held elections. The MPLA won a significant victory in the elections. There were some who did not want to accept the results. The people put their foot down, said no, resisted and imposed their will, achieving peace soon after.’ These achievements, the President said, made Angolans ‘very special’.

It was reported on 10 August that President José Eduardo dos Santos had promulgated the new Electoral Law, thus completing the legislative process required for holding the next elections, due to take place in 2006. The rest of the electoral legislative package was passed by the National Assembly in April.

The National Assembly, meeting in special session, amended Article 17(d) of the Electoral Law on 3 August and passed it with 160 votes in favour, none against and six abstentions.

The law was not passed with the rest of the electoral package because President José Eduardo dos Santos had expressed doubts about whether it was in line with the constitution and referred it to the Supreme Court for its opinion.

The initial text of the law had stipulated that a citizen who had served as President of the Republic for two consecutive mandates or three non-consecutive ones could not be re-elected to the post. The Supreme Court ruled that this conflicted with Article 59 of the constitution and the law was amended to state that a citizen who had held the post for ‘three consecutive or non-consecutive mandates’ was ineligible.

During the debate, FNLA and PRS deputies had argued that other aspects of the electoral package were unconstitutional, but João Lourenço, acting president of the National Assembly, had pointed out that the other laws involved had already been passed.

Parties that voted in favour of the amended Electoral Law were the MPLA, Unita and the PRS, while the PLD and FNLA abstained.

The National Assembly meeting on 15 August, unanimously elected António Caetano de Sousa, 53, vice-president of the Supreme Court, to be president of the National Electoral Commission, CNE, and subsequently elected six other members of the CNE.

The eleven-member CNE was therefore complete, President dos Santos having already indicated two, and the government, the Supreme Court and the National Media Council one each.

The National Assembly also voted on provincial electoral commissions – six for each province – and municipal electoral offices.

During the same session, the deputies unanimously passed an amendment to Law No. 18 of 1996. The law had initially made the holding of the post-1992 elections dependent on a prior population census and the approval of a new constitution.

Bornito de Sousa, leader of the MPLA parliamentary group, which had tabled the amendment, had explained that neither of these preconditions could be met.

The CNE members were sworn in on 19 August.

Peter Gakunu, an International Monetary Fund administrator, visited Angola from 10 to 13 August to discuss with the authorities the possible signing of a staff monitored programme and to review the process of reconstruction, development and macroeconomic stabilisation in the country.

He arrived in Luanda a month after the Angolan government had threatened to suspend all negotiations with the IMF following the appearance on the IMF official website of a study on Angola by an American, John McMillan of Stanford University, entitled ‘The main institution in the country is corruption’.

Minister of Finance José Pedro de Morais, in a letter to Rodrigo Rato, director-general of the IMF, had described the study as ‘irreparable moral aggression’, stating that if a discussion on it at a seminar in London in early July went ahead as planned, it would result in the ‘immediate cessation of the talks between Angola and the IMF on a staff monitored agreement’.

He said that by sponsoring discussion of the document the IMF was ‘fuelling misunderstanding in the international community and among foreign investors of the real situation in the country and the effective progress made in respect of budget transparency, including oil revenues’. The IMF reacted immediately, writing a letter of apology to the government and removing the discussion of the study from the London seminar programme.

Speaking to the press after a meeting with Peter Gakunu, Aguinaldo Jaime, Minister in the office of the Prime Minister, said the government might reach agreement with the IMF on a formal programme in which the government would put forward the measures it wants to take and submit them to the IMF, which would merely monitor them.

He said this would be within the framework of a new facility, the Policy Support Programme, approved by the IMF last August, which was best suited to the realities in developing countries.

‘Under this facility, the Fund imposes absolutely nothing, confining itself to taking note of the programme, targets and goals proposed by governments,’ he said.

Addressing a press conference in Luanda on 12 August, Peter Gakunu stressed the importance of the economic programme drawn up by the government as the basis for discussion with the IMF. He said the IMF wanted a final agreement based on the programme, after which it would give a signal to the international community, with a view to its effective implementation.

Amended budget proposals presented to National Assembly

The amended draft budget presented to the National Assembly on 3 August gives priority to investment in social areas like education and health and to the rehabilitation of economic and productive facilities.

The government justified the proposed changes on the grounds of accentuated macroeconomic stability, stating that inflation had fallen from 105 percent in 2002 to 10 percent in June this year.

Presenting the budget estimates, Prime Minister Fernando da Piedade Dias dos Santos ‘Nandó’ said emphasis had been given to action related to peace, national reconciliation, the democratic process, the rehabilitation of facilities and relaunching production. The National Assembly approved the amended budget on 14 August by 124 votes in favour, 42 against (all from Unita) and seven abstentions.

Joaquim Malixe, head of the construction department of the national highway institute, Inea, has said that road traffic in Angola has been almost completely restored, following the assembly of 33 metal bridges in various parts of the country to replace bridges destroyed in the war.

He said Inea had five brigades specialised in assembling metal bridges and that ‘despite scant financial resources, it is determined to restore all road links throughout the country’.

Special attention had been paid to areas abandoned during the armed conflict to which war-displaced people were now returning. ‘When inhabitants return and find that a bridge has gone, we intervene as soon as we are told about it,’ he said.

Joaquim Malixe went on to say that Inea had started to mount two provisional metal bridges over the Juvaca and Buin rivers on the road from Andulo to Cunhinga, the main access route from northern Bié to Kuito, the provincial capital. The installation of the bridges, which was expected to take two weeks, came at a time when the Kuito airport was about to be closed for repairs to the airstrip. Meanwhile, planes would have to use the Andulo airstrip, so that road traffic between Andulo and Kuito had to be guaranteed.

The major current project, he said, was building a bridge over the Dande River in Bengo Province, to the north of Luanda, which was crucially important to ensuring road traffic between the capital and the northern coastline.

With a view to improving road traffic throughout the country, the government announced in late June that it planned to rehabilitate 1,200 km of the main highways by the end of 2006.

Vladimir Piskunov, president of the Russian Diamond Bourse, arrived in Luanda in late August with a view to the establishment of a joint venture with ATM-Minerais to be known as the Angolan-Russian Diamond Union, to mine diamonds in an alluvial area to be conceded by Endiama, the national diamond company.

He said he was also interested in the sale of Angolan diamonds through the Russian Diamond Bourse and invited officials from Sodiam, Angola’s diamond marketing company, to visit his country.

Speaking to the Angop news agency in the presence of António Tomé Lopes, vice-president of ATM-Minerais, Vladimir Piskunov said Angolan authorities had been very receptive to the projects. During his stay, he also had meetings with Mankenda Ambroise and Armando Tito, the Deputy Ministers of Geology and Mining, and Arnaldo Calado, president of Endiama’s board of directors.

Under a 2003 law, preference is to be given to Angolan companies in granting rights to mine alluvial deposits and the Ministry may provide administrative facilities for national companies.

According to a document issued in early August by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, 1.9 million tonnes of grain of different types were produced by organised peasants during the 2004-2005 agricultural year, and there had been a seven percent increase in agricultural output.

Among the figures given were 768,372 tonnes of maize, 108,798 of beans, 649,596 of sweet potatoes, 308,230 of potatoes and 69,444 of groundnuts cultivated on an estimated 3.58 million hectares of arable land. The document stated that the Ministry’s food security office planned to increase crop areas next year, especially in the provinces of Namibe, Uíje, Kwanza Norte, Luanda and Huíla.

The Pestõmbwa company in Namibe Province, in southwest Angola, produced 1,400 tonnes of tinned fish, including sardines and tuna, during the first six months of this year.

This was stated by Carlos Cruz, administrator of Pestômbwa, who said the company also produced frozen fish and fish oil.

The products, he said, had been transported to many provinces, including Huíla, Cunene, Kuando Kubango, Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul, Huambo and Bié.

Carlos Cruz said that although many people were accustomed to buying imported tinned goods, there was no reason to import them, because Pestômbwa’s products had greatly improved since it had started up, as shown by its marketing success, and it was producing about ten tonnes a day.

At least 3,349 trees were planted by the Forestry Development Institute, IDF, in Chibia, 42 km from the capital of Huíla Province, in the first six months of this year.

Severino Nolato Nahunda, the local IDF representative, said the trees – eucalyptus, jacarandas, cedars and other species - were part of a reforestation programme in areas where many trees had been felled, and some were also to improve the appearance of population centres.

He added that assistance with the planting had been given by members of the MPLA youth organisation and the municipal administration, as well as willing individuals.

The IDF had a tree nursery there with about 1,500 trees that would be planted in areas still to be decided, he said. They had planted more than 3,500 trees during the same period last year.

A course in plant improvement for Angolans involved in food crop development ended in Luanda on 20 August. The course was organised by the Plant Genetic Resources Centre in cooperation with the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation.

Elizabeth Matos, director of the centre, said the aim was to impart knowledge needed for better conservation of cereals and vegetables, taking advantage of the genetic characteristics of local varieties adapted to national conditions, while teaching farmers about plant improvement programmes and the use of biotechnical tools.

The course was attended by specialists from the provinces of Cabinda, Huambo, Huíla, Malanje and Uíje, members of the administrative training institute and teaching staff from the Faculty of Agriculture and the Agricultural Development Institute.

Three Brazilians specialised in modern techniques of applying biotechnology to improvement programmes lectured during the course, which was supported by the Science Faculty of Agostinho Neto University, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Norwegian government.

It was the first such course given in the country.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has received more than 16,000 messages this year from Angolans looking for relatives who went missing during the armed conflict. During the same period, it brought about the reunification of 68 families separated by the war. This was stated in a press release issued by the ICRC in Luanda on 30 August, world missing persons day.

The ICRC family reunification programme in Angola now had a list of about 19,000 people seeking relatives, 276 of whom were children, it said. Finding the relatives of children was one of the major aspects of the programme and 1,100 had already been returned to their families.

Meanwhile Isabel de Jesus Pegado, director of the Ministry of Assistance and Social Reintegration in Bengo Province, the same day that 114 children had been returned to their families in the province since 2004. Another 41 children in Bengo had been temporarily placed with foster parents. If their parents could not be located, she said, the families could adopt them.

She said 79 follow-up visits had been made to the interior of the province in 2004 to assess the social conditions of children reunified with their families.

The families lived in difficult conditions, she said, though her Ministry had supported them with food and arranged for schooling or vocational training for the children. Effective follow-up visits were made more difficult by the shortage of transport facilities, she added.

Diakunpuna Sita José, Minister of Town Planning and the Environment, told the Angop news agency on 22 August that the government was pursuing policies that should, in the medium term, discourage people from the interior of the country from moving to coastal areas and settling there, in view of the current overcrowding of coastal provinces.

At this stage, he said, special attention was being given to agricultural development, mine clearance, the repair of bridges, highways and inter-provincial and municipal roads and the restoration of production facilities and power supplies, with a view to the rapid development of industrial centres. This, he continued, would create the conditions for people to return to their home areas, making it possible to achieve a more balanced population distribution.

The Minister said the cities of Luanda, Cabinda, Benguela, Lobito, Sumbe, Lubango and Huíla were the main places where there had been a great influx of people owing to the war.

He said his Ministry, in partnership with other institutions, was engaged in a survey to identify the major factors involved. A team of United Nations consultants specialised in geographical information systems was expected in Luanda that week and they would be working with Angolan specialists.

A total of 30,641 war-displaced people in the municipality of Caconda, 240 km north of Lubango, the capital of the southern province of Huíla, have returned to their home areas in the past six months.

When the remaining 1,917 return, the process will have been completed in the area. This was revealed by Salomão Agostinho, the municipal administrator, who said that most of the people had left there for the provinces of Huambo, Bié and Benguela.

He added that 39 families had also been repatriated from Zambia, Namibia and DR Congo. Salomão Agostinho went on to say that within the framework of the social reintegration of former Unita troops, Caconda had received 1,114 demobilised soldiers, family members and widows, who were being supported by the government.

With regard to the re-uniting of family members, he said that 46 children had been returned to their families and the relatives of another 35 were still being sought in the area.

Artur Chilulu, head of the personnel administration department of the Ministry of Health’s national directorate of human resources, speaking at a meeting of provincial department directors in Kwanza Sul Province, said that 9,069 health workers from reception areas had been taken on by the Ministry and given jobs in accordance with where they wanted to live.

He went on to say that twelve of them had presented themselves as doctors and the rest as nurses or diagnosis technicians. While a few had documents to prove their qualifications, most did not, he said, so that a team comprising people from his department, the Angolan Armed Forces, the Health Training School and Unita had interviewed them to determine their category.

It was found that three of those who said they were doctors were in fact third year students. They were referred to the Medical Faculty to complete their studies. The eight confirmed doctors were subsequently all appointed to posts.

Evelize Frestas, national director of human resources, appealed to provincial authorities to continue the process of integration, since many were still unemployed, she said.

Speaking at the opening of a meeting of the Pan-African Education and Development Institute in Luanda on 25 August, António Burity da Silva, Minister of Education, said 3.5 million children has been enrolled in the general education system during the three years of peace in Angola. This brought the number of children in schools to five million, he said, adding that about 50,000 new teachers had been taken on during the same period.

The Minister went on to say the government had invested heavily in recent years in increasing and improving schooling, recruiting and training teachers and combating illiteracy, while starting to reform general education and technical and vocational training. ‘The country achieved definitive peace three years ago and the gains achieved in education and other sectors are outstanding, after about thirty years of war,’ he said.

Burity da Silva said primary education had been extended to all parts of the country, especially areas that were inaccessible because of the war. There had been spectacular growth in higher education, he continued. Agostinho Neto University now had about 40,000 students and covered nearly the whole country.

Apart from this, he said, the emergence of private education was supplementing the government’s efforts. There were now five private higher education institutions catering for about 10,000 students.

The Social Support Fund, Fas, handed over two primary schools to the communities in Kikombo and Pedra 1, in the municipality of Sumbe, Kwanza Sul Province, on 11 August. They had been built and fitted out by Fas at a cost of US$157,362.

Pedro Sabino Veríssimo, director of education science and technology, said the government was making efforts to ensure that as many children as possible were enrolled in regular education. He added that 74 social projects had been completed under the third Fas programme.

Another 17 primary schools are to be rehabilitated or built in Luanda Province in the second phase of a project financed by the Japanese government, which is making a donation of the equivalent of about US$7.1 million for this purpose. During the first phase, in 2003 and 2004, 13 primary schools in the province were repaired or rebuilt through non-reimbursable aid from Japan amounting to US$19.5 million.

The new agreement was signed on 4 August by João Miranda, Minister of External Relations, and his Japanese counterpart Nobutaka Machimura.

Eighty new classrooms to take in 15,000 pupils who until recently studied in the shade of trees have been built by the Huíla provincial government in the city of Lubango over the past four years. This was announced by Huíla governor Ramos da Cruz during visits to twenty schools in Lubango restored through public investment. He added that the extension and repair of most of the schools in Lubango would still not meet requirements, since there were about 778,000 children outside the regular school system, 50,000 of them in the city of Lubango.

Paula Inês, provincial director of education, said that more than 2,800 teachers had been taken on this year for different levels of education, especially for rural areas, where the need was greatest. She said seminars were being held in municipalities to improve the quality of education.

Seven primary schools, each with a capacity to take in 45 pupils, have been under construction in the municipality of Tchicala Tcholoanga, 52 km from the central highland city of Huambo, since May.

José Domingos, local representative of the Ministry of Education, said the schools would help to solve the problem of the 40,737 children still outside the education system, owing to the shortage of schools and teachers. This year, he said, 21,137 pupils had been enrolled in schools from primary to secondary level. The municipality now had 219 teachers, he added, and this year they had recruited another 100 who had passed the necessary tests. However, there was a shortage of teaching materials, desks, blackboards and other essentials, he said.

A new primary and secondary school with a capacity for 560 pupils was inaugurated in the Sambizanga neighbourhood of Luanda on 26 August by Francisca do Espírito Santo, deputy provincial governor, bringing the number of schools in the neighbourhood to 34. The school was built by the Cabinda Petroleum Association at a cost of about one million dollars.

Francisca do Espírito Santo expressed thanks to the associated companies – Sonangol, the state oil company, ChevronTexaco and Cabinda Gulf Oil – and said she hoped other institutions would take similar initiatives for the good of the community.

An International Committee of the Red Cross source in Cazombo, Moxico Province, said that 1,295 Angolan refugees had returned to Alto Zambeze from Zambia and DR Congo since May, as part of the organised repatriation programme.

Mateus Cahoco, the UNHCR assistance and protection officer, added that during the same period another 366 refugees had returned by their own means. He said that false reports circulating in the Maheba camp in Zambia alleging that there was famine in Angola and no medicines had led many Angolans to postpone their return.

Representatives of the UNHCR, NGOs and local government had gone to the camp to explain the true situation, after which more people had asked to return.

The second and last phase of repatriation, which was to have ended in October, was being extended until the end of the year, Mateus Cahoco said.

About a thousand demobilised Unita troops in Uíje Province have been benefiting from a nine-month vocational training course since June, during which they are being given courses in agriculture and livestock production, together with literacy classes and awareness sessions on HIV/Aids and other sexually transmitted diseases.

The course, in the municipalities of Uíje and Negage, is funded by US$600,000 from the World Bank and organised by Irsem, the institute for the social and vocational reintegration of ex-servicemen, and the provincial Caritas.

Samuel Quissango, head of Irsem’s studies and projects department in Uíje, said the programme would be extended to cover other municipalities in the province and former government soldiers.

He went on to say that Irsem was continuing to draw up a list of all the demobilised soldiers and war-disabled in different parts of the province, with a view to their being given vocational training.

EU funds training for physically handicapped

The European Union provided €222,000 for the training of 58 physically handicapped people, most of them war-disabled, at the orthopaedic centre in Viana. An initiative of the Spanish Red Cross, other participants were the Angolan Red Cross and the Ministries of Health and Public Administration, Employment and Social Security. Training was given in cutting and sewing, tailoring, metalworking and radio and television repairing.

It was the second course funded by the EU for the partnership between the Spanish and Angolan Red Cross Societies established in May 1998. EU funding has made it possible to train 112 handicapped people up to now. Another 512 were trained between 1998 and 2003, when the course was technically and financial supported by the Spanish Red Cross alone.

A total of 624 handicapped people, 573 men and 51 women, have therefore been trained through this programme, and 624 new jobs have been created.

According to the teaching staff, the next course, probably for another 60 disabled people, is due to start shortly. At the end of the courses, kits of working tools are distributed.

Appeal for funds to fight polio

The Angolan government appealed on 18 August for funds to carry out the third phase of a polio vaccination campaign to take place on 23 and 25 September.

José Van-Dúnem, Deputy Minister of Health, said that after the detection of seven cases of polio in four provinces – Luanda, Lunda Sul, Benguela and Moxico – US$1.8 million was urgently needed for the third phase of the tenth polio vaccination campaign, so as to stop the spread of the disease.

The appeal was made in the presence of diplomats, the resident UN representative in Angola and representatives of the World Health Organisation, Unicef, USAID, the Red Cross, donor agencies and NGOs.

The tenth national campaign to vaccinate all children under five against polio was launched in late July by Luís Gomes Sambo, the Angolan regional director of the WHO. After four years when the disease appeared to have been eradicated in the country, there had recently been four cases.

During that first phase, 95 percent of the target population was immunised, an estimated five million children.

The second phase, on 26, 27 and 28 August, was aimed at vaccinating the same number. A total of US$3.59 million was provided by the government and its partners for the two phases.

Health sources said the import of this polio virus seriously threatened the eradication of polio, not only in Angola but in the entire region. It was feared that if the spread of the disease was not stopped in the next 24 months polio might once again become endemic in Angola. There are six countries in the world where polio is still endemic: Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Niger, Nigeria and Pakistan.

The Jornal de Angola reported on 6 August that the haemorrhagic fever caused by the Marburg virus had been nearly eradicated. There had not been a single case since 21 July, when the seventh member of an infected family had died in the village of Cazola in Uíje Province.

Bengui Henriques, Uíje provincial health director, was quoted as saying that a number of people who had been in contact with the person who died on 21 July were under observation. The incubation period of the disease is 21 days, so if they showed no symptoms within a week they were not infected.

Meanwhile, two suspected cases, aged 16 and 18, the survivors of a family of six in the village of Nova Cadeia, four of whom had died, were put under observation in a safe ward in the Songo municipal hospital, though they showed no symptoms. After a few days they had complained of headaches. They were examined by doctors, who diagnosed meningitis, and transferred to a normal ward, where they were reacting well to treatment for meningitis.

A doctor said that although the situation was under control, active searches had been stepped up in the municipality of Songo, the main source of the infection, and public awareness work was continuing.

He said that even though there had been no new cases, vigilance was needed because the origin of the disease had not yet been discovered. The doctor stressed the need for a specialised laboratory in the country to deal with any epidemic that might arise, so as to avoid situations like those experienced with the Marburg virus. The laboratory at the provincial hospital did not have conditions for tests for even current diseases, he said, because its equipment was obsolete.

It was reported on 18 August that €178,000 had been donated by partners of the Angolan Red Cross for public awareness work and the training of 168 activists - €62,000 by Germany, €5,000 by Britain and €111,000 by the International Federation of Red Cross Societies. There had still been no new cases since 21 July.

Another death was reported on 15 August. Ministry of Health spokesman Carlos Alberto said on 31 August that there had been no further cases since, but that the disease could be regarded as eradicated only after 42 days without a single case.

The latest figures were a total of 374 cases and 328 deaths since October 2004.

The fight against sleeping sickness

Natália do Espírito Santo, Deputy Minister of Health, revealed in Luanda on 12 August that the government had recently acquired 60,000 tsetse fly traps. Speaking at the close of a workshop on the eradication of tsetse flies and trypanosomiasis, she stressed that the government was fully committed to fighting the disease and had set up an institute for this purpose. This had made it possible to establish 22 sleeping sickness diagnosis and treatment centres and seven teams to wipe out the vector in provinces where it is endemic.

The final communiqué of the workshop stated that in view of the harmful effects of sleeping sickness on the continent, the joint development of a regional project was very important. An executive committee to deal with all administrative and financial matters should be constituted by the end of October, under the auspices of the Pan-African Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Eradication Campaign, with the project due to start in the second half of 2006. Aerial spraying will be one of the main methods used.

Government supports programme for former FAPLA troops

João Baptista Kussumua, Minister of Assistance and Social Reintegration, officially launched a sub-programme for the social reintegration of demobilised troops from FAPLA, the former government army. The ceremony took place in Quipungo, Huíla Province, on 3 August.

In line with the policy of providing benefits for all soldiers demobilised under the Bicesse and Lusaka agreements, the programme is especially for ex-servicemen in vulnerable circumstances, particularly disabled ones. It will consist mainly of education and training to enable them to work independently.

According to official data, the total number of servicemen demobilised following Bicesse and Lusaka is 76,615, of whom 5,403 are disabled.

Week of films on wildlife at Museum of Natural History

The Museum of Natural History held a week of films on fauna from 10 to 19 August. Pupils from a number of schools in the capital were invited to attend. The programme, aimed at increasing understanding of the need to preserve fauna, included films on dolphins, sharks, whales, insects and other animals. On the first day there was a press conference to announce a seminar on natural science and biodiversity to be held at the museum in October.

The Museum of Natural History was founded in 1975. With a staff of 68 and exhibits of 3,429 species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals and molluscs, it has two permanent display exhibition rooms, a conference auditorium, a hall, a room for temporary exhibitions, a library and a reading room. It is visited by about 59,000 people a year.

Angola wins eighth African basketball championship

Facing a strong adversary in Algiers on 24 August, the Angolan men’s basketball team beat the Senegalese team by 70 to 61, winning its eighth consecutive championship.

Observers said this showed that Angola was still unbeatable in Africa, in view of the results of the matches, during which South Africa and Mozambique were the most severely beaten.