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Angolans await their 'Nova Vida' in the decrepit capital
By Carole Landry
AFP
LUANDA
Petroleumworld.com 04 14 06Hundreds of families in Luanda's Cambamba settlement watched bulldozers demolish their homes last month, the latest victims of demolitions to make way for housing that few in Angola will enjoy.
The land in the south of the city has been turned over to the Nova Vida project, a complex of quaint houses and apartment blocks for members of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos' presidential guard and senior civil servants.
"It felt like I had died," recounts Artur Quartim Bimbe, 40, who lost his house in the mass eviction from March 13 to 16 at Cambamba.
Some 70 police backed by private security guards fired warning shots in the air and beat up residents who tried to save their homes from the bulldozers, according to Bimbe and other residents.
With his wife and five children, Bimbe now lives across the road from his former home along with about 360 other families in shacks made with scraps from the demolitions.
The evictions at Cambamba were criticized as a "gross violation of human rights" by UN monitor Miloon Kothari, who stressed that they came on the heels of a string of such forced resettlements in the capital.
Luanda, a city of four million on the Atlantic, is struggling to wrest itself from the devastation of Angola's 27-year war and become the showcase of Africa's second largest oil-producing country.
Oil is injecting billions of dollars in the economy, but more than 70 percent of Luandans live in the "musseques" or shantytowns, says Luis Araujo of the non-governmental organisation SOS Habitat.
"All this development is being done for the welfare of people who are part of the system," says Araujo. "But these people remain locked out."
Not far from Nova Vida is the luxurious Tacatona residential area where the nouveaux riches live in spacious tiled-roof Spanish-style villas next to coconut trees and swimming pools.
In downtown Luanda, a new 20-storey building for the state oil company Sonangol is under construction, built by Portuguese construction giant Soares da Costa.
Restaurants are serving seafood and fruit punches at western prices along the beach in the lively Ilha district while hotels are turning away guests, unable to meet the demand from businessmen trying to cash in on the oil boom.
Korean architect You Seung-Yeal has designed a new 90-room hotel for an Angolan deputy minister and real estate developer who plans to break ground on the project in July.
"All of the materials except the cement and all of the workers will come from Korea," he said. Without foreign workers, the hotel will not meet its eight-month deadline for completion.
Meanwhile, decrepit apartment blocks display all the signs of years of neglect: shattered windows, lifts that have been out of order for decades, blackouts that last days and sporadic water supplies.
Four years after the end of the war, the government says it is rebuilding, with 7 billion dollars set aside for new infrastructure in 2006 -- more than double the amount earmarked for 2005.
"There are a lot of basic needs that need to be fulfilled," says Finance Minister Jose Pedro de Morais.
"What you will see in a year is better water and energy distribution, better road systems, better sewerage."
"We are starting from scratch, starting from a very, very low level. The whole country was destroyed during the war and there was a lack of maintenance of systems," Morais told AFP.
It remains an open question whether the massive reconstruction effort will help bridge the gap between the haves and have-nots in the city.
New 4x4 vehicles navigate the streets, circumventing potholes and swerving by women carrying stacks of jugs filled with drinking water.
A cholera outbreak in the "musseques" has left 53 dead and more than 2,200 others sick in the past two months.
A one-day downpour in the city last week wreaked havoc, inundating streets and cutting off access to districts. Thirteen people reportedly died when their shacks collapsed in one of the slums.
AFP 04 14 06 0153 GMTCopyright © 1994-2006 Agence France-Presse. All Rights Reserved.
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