ANGOLA

The name Angola comes from the Portuguese colonial Reina de Angola, which derived from Angola. The discovery and colonial occupation of Angola was by the arrival of Diogo Cao at the mouth of the river Zaire in 1494. The first governor of Angola was Portuguese whose name is Paulo Dias de Novais. Novais was established in 1576 in the capital city of Luanda, which remains the centre of administration. The colonization of Angola developed a Portuguese colony which Brazil relied on it for the extensive exporting of slaves from Angola. The Constitutional Reform which was liberal in Portugal of 1822 responded to the independence proclamation of Brazil. Brazil then also granted Angola the constitutional status of an overseas province that led to the abolition of the slave trade. The Portuguese Constitution of 1911 encouraged further administrative autonomy, but the 1933 Salazar Constitution re-imposed a centralist model of colonial administration, re-affirming an earlier Colonial Act (Acto Colonial) of 1930. In terms of Article 132 of the Portuguese Constitution of 11 April 1933, read together with Article 3 of the Colonial Act of 1930, Angola's constitutional status reverted to that ofa colony. Native people could acquire limited citizenship rights only, based on their formal classification as 'assimilated natives', and forced labor recruitment continued.

After World War II, many independence movements started popping up in the region and they were shut down by the Portuguese Military. The major players in these movements were the MPLA or the very popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, which were part of the Marxist Party as well as the National Front for the Liberation of Angola. I Angola became an independent state on November 11,1975. In its Constitutional Act of the same date recorded in its Article 60 that the Independence Constitution had been proclaimed by resolution of the Central Committee of the MPLA liberation movement/ In the absence of any constituent assembly process or elections, the Independence Constitution was implemented as an imposed constitution.

On 11 November 1975, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) declared Angola's independence and installed Agostinho Neto as its first President in the former Portuguese colony's capital at Luanda. This outcome had long seemed uncertain and indeed even unlikely; the MPLA had not only had to deal with its own serious internal troubles and disaffections, but had also had to take on the Portuguese colonial army and the two rival armed movements, each backed by powerful allies. Holden Roberto's National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) had initially been the most powerful of the three competing national liberation movements and in the autumn of 1975 it came close to capturing Luanda from the north, backed by a heavily armed force supplied by President Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire, which is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the south, two armored columns of a South African invasion force, acting in military coordination with the Union for the Total Independence of Angola CUNITA), led by Jonas Savimbi, almost reached Luanda before they were stopped by Cuban troops which had been rushed to the assistance of the MPLA. The independent Angolan state was thus born out of turmoil and violence and amid serious national, regional and global I http://www.ugs-angola.com/a-short-history-of-angola.php

Interestingly, the new World Constitutions Illustrated: Contemporary & Historical Documents & Resources published b~ ~illiall1.S Hein & Co, Inc & HeinOnlil~e, published in 2011, as the only relevant text for Angola: the 1975 Constitution. This text ,:as already superseded In 1978 and has since that time been of historical interest only. FOI the complete documentation of all Angolan constitutional enactments see A Correia and B de Sousa A I Historic Constitucionat (Coirnbra, 1996). For the English text of the 1975 Constitution see ' ngota Ihttp://en. wikisou rce.org/wild/Collstitutioll_ of_Angola _( 1975) I. rivalries. This heritage with its deep historical roots was to influence the unfolding of events for a long time.

Article 1 of the 1975 Constitution declared the new independent state of Angola to be a country where 'any form of exploitation of man by man' would be abolished," and Article 2 announced that the MPLA party was vested with the status of the only lawful political party in Angola, with the constitutional mandate to exercise complete control over the state and all its organs, at all levels. Accordingly, the new government appointed commissars throughout the country and at all levels of administration, as further stipulated in Articles 31 to 52 of the Independence Constitution, and later in Act No 1 of 1976. During the transformation of Angola into the self-proclaimed "People's Republic of Angola" pursued the repression of pluralist political activity as well as nationalization of all natural resources, land, industries, private enterprises, real estate, and other private assets such as private bank accounts balances or insurance policies which ran well over into the 1990s.

During this time Nationalization was achieved by confiscation decrees without statutory basis, or through state inventions. The effect of either one of the two methods confiscation or intervention was the same, namely expropriation without due process or compensation. The attempt to radically transform Angolan society within the shortest possible time led to widespread dissent within the ranks of the governing MPLA party. Following widespread membership purges from its ranks, arrests, and extra judicial mass killings on 27 May 1977, over 100,000 Angolans mostly middle-class professionals and intellectuals fled the country. 3 http://www .c-r.0 rg/ accord-a rticle/ ango Ia-past -presents A Correia and Bornito de Sousa, Angola Historia Constitucional (Coirnbra, 1996) 21-23, 177-190. The pre-mdepe.ndence Dec~e~-Iaw 128/75 of 7 October 1975 already empowered either the Minister for Economic Plan~lng, or the ~lnlster of ~co~omic Affairs, to order by ministerial decision an 'intervention' in any kind of business enterprise operating In Angola. 'Interventions' meant that the state dismissed the directors of the company and replaced them with government 'commissars' who were vested with all and any powers and dispensed from any controlling powers of the shareholders.

First, Act 13177 of7 August 1977 transferred the power to appoint the Prime Minister and any Ministers from the legislative Revolutionary Council to the State President alone, and further gave the President the right to appoint anyone to act in his place, in the event of absence or illness. Second, on 7 February 1978 the MPLA Central Committee resolved to re-enact the Independence Constitution and in the process, further formalized its Leninist government ideals, while at the same time introduced fundamental new concepts, such as the notion of Socialist Property (Article 9). Third, Act 1179 abolished the offices of Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, concentrating further political power in the office of the State President. Shortly after this amendment the first Angolan President, Agostinho Neto, who was suffering from severe cirrhosis of the liver, died on 10 September 1979 in Russia. The successor of President Neto, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, was appointed by the MPLA Central Committee on 20 September 1979 and hastened to organize the requisite support base for a series of reform measures. The Constitutional Amendment Act of 23 September 1980, also passed by resolution of the MPLA Central Committee, instituted for the first time an elected state organ, namely the indirectly elected' People's Assembly'. This earn with a system of local and provincial peoples' assemblies was created, and the principle of popular sovereignty was thereby implemented for the first time. The People's Assembly assumed the functions of the earlier Revolutionary Council, which was abolished. However, most of the envisaged peoples' assemblies were never actually constituted, and instead of further steps to normalize Angolan constitutional law, Act 1/86 of 1 February 1986 merely created the positions of 'State Ministers' as ministers appointed by the President, to function in the State President's office (as opposed to government ministers). A further Act 2/87 of 31 January] 987 provided that the 11 deputies of the People's Assembly sitting in its Permanent Committee would no longer be appointed by the Central Committee of the MPLA, but would instead be elected on proposal of the same Central Committee by the People's Assembly."

At this point The Angolan Civil War had begun. The Angolan Civil War was started just after Angola was declared free from Portugal; the war lasted from 1975; four years before Santos was appointed.to 2002. This was not the first civil war to occur in Angola there were two previous, I the Decolonization Conflict that ran from 1974 to 1975 and the Angolan ...