Focus on struggle for social justice

It is often said that Angola is one of the world's worst places to be born in and to live. Now there is fresh hard data to back that claim. This week, the National Institute for Statistics released a study carried out with the UN children's agency (UNICEF) last year. It is the first nationwide survey since 1996. Afterwards, the on-off civil war impeded data collection in many areas. Due to attacks in eight provinces this survey had to skip several rural districts originally included. The data from 6,600 households provides a wealth of fresh information on Angolan women and children. It also paints a shocking picture. More than 50 percent of rural and 40 percent of urban children don't attend school. Only three out of 10 rural women over 15 years can read or write, compared to six out of 10 urban women. It is not just the elderly who are illiterate. Among both rural and urban women aged 15-24, only six out of 10 can read and write. Men fare better. Nine out of 10 urban men and seven out of ten rural men can read and write. Roughly 70 percent of the urban and 40 percent of the rural population has access to potable water through community wells and pumps, communal taps or tankers, and to some form of sanitation. But in the western and eastern regions, half of the people use the bush as a toilet for lack of latrines. Two out of every 10 pregnant women do not see any health staff at all, and more than half of mothers give birth without medical assistance. Grim data on children has long been available. Now it is official. Angola has the third worst child mortality rate in the world (250 per 1,000 live births). Malnutrition affects 30 percent of children. Nearly half of the babies do not take vitamin A supplements to prevent blindness. Only one-third consume iodised salt, which prevents thyroid problems. Only three out of 10 children are registered. This means that, without an identity document, seven out of 10 will face problems to access health care, education and eventually jobs. The most frequent reason for not registering babies is the cost. Angola has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the world. Less than one-third of babies gets all the required shots (BCG, DPT, polio and measles). Only half have had the measles shot. Malaria accounts for roughly half of the deaths of under-fives, yet only 10 percent of children sleep under a mosquito net. The survey found a much higher number of orphans than previously thought. In a recent letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos requested assistance for 50,000 war orphans. The joint UN programme against AIDS (UNAIDS), and the World Health Organisation (WHO) speak of some 100,000 AIDS orphans. The survey found that, among children aged 0-14 years, 750,000 have lost one or both parents. These alarming social statistics cannot be solely attributed to the three decades of civil war. The decay in public services, especially health and education, stems from the low priority accorded to them in the state budget. In spite of the opaque nature of the government's accounts, since 1999 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been able to obtain a fuller picture, with sectoral breakdown of expenditures. Since 1994, the share for defence and public order (the armed forces and police) never got less than 30 percent, shooting up to 41 percent in 1999 as the government's re-armament drive intensified. Meanwhile, the share of social sectors (health, education, housing, social security and welfare) consistently dropped, from 15 to 9.4 percent. In 1999, education got 4.8 percent and health, 2.8 percent. Angola's social expenditure is far below any other African country. Even resource-poor Mozambique, with no oil or diamonds, spent far more on social services during its 17-year-old civil war. "A fraction of the money [US $1.2 billion] spent every year on defence is more than enough to ensure the food security of all war-affected people in the country," said a report by the aid agency Oxfam. Oil revenues totalled US $3.18 billion in 2001, yet Angola ranks 146 out of 162 countries in the UN Human Development Index. While the vast majority of Angolans remain poor, sick and out of school, a tiny elite has amassed huge fortunes through oil, diamonds, weapons, forex and other business deals, according to human rights campaigners. In Luanda, the contrast is obscene. An army of street kids, amputees and destitute people sleep on the broken pavement amid heaps of rubbish while the latest models of Mercedes Benz, BMW and Porsche zoom by, their cellphone-holding drivers nattily dressed in French and Brazilian couture. On Mussulo island, luxury speedboats and jet skis compete, while picnickers bring hampers with 20-year-old whisky and cold lobster. Although hard to quantify in hard data, "the chasm between the richest stratum, collectively dubbed by some Angolans as the 100 families, is real enough," writes economist Tony Hodges in his book 'Angola: from Afro-Stalinism to petro-diamond-capitalism'. The disparity results in greater social stratification and inequality. The new data released aptly describes the big loser in this civil war: the Angolan people.