Change slow to arrive for Luanda's frustrated citizens

A clapped-out old car edges its way around the muddy potholes and bumper-to-bumper traffic, nudging through the crowds of hawkers on the road from downtown Luanda to the shanty suburb of Hoji-ya-Henda. Irritated by the painfully slow progress, the driver winds down his window and yells at the crowds to get out of the way, nearly gagging as the putrid stench of garbage filters into his vehicle. The five-kilometre journey takes 40 minutes through overcrowded suburbs, along bone-shaking roads, through disease-ridden rubbish, and illustrates just a few of the challenges faced by those living in and around Angola's capital. During the 27-year civil war, millions of Angolans fled fighting in the hinterland, abandoning their homes and their livelihoods for the relative safety of Luanda. As a result, a city built for half a million people is today home to more than four million, most of them sardined into ramshackle shantytowns perched precariously on top of rubbish heaps. While there has been peace in Angola since April 2002, the fact remains that there is little formal employment and few other opportunities to earn a living in the countryside, so most Luanda residents have decided to stay put, despite the poor conditions. Many of the capital's elite - wealthy Angolans and expatriate businessmen and their families - can afford generators and bottled water, but the vast majority of people struggle along with little access to basic services like water and sanitation, while health and education border on being luxuries. The UN Children's Fund estimates that half Angola's 13 million people do not have access to clean, safe drinking water, and Luandans say although there are a host of other problems, the lack of water is their number one concern. "We haven't had water ... for months and months," said 25-year-old Roberto Nunes, a resident in the Prenda neighbourhood. "We buy jerry cans and sometimes big tanks of water - which we joke is more expensive than oil, but it's not really funny." "There is something wrong when a country like Angola, which is supposed to be so rich, cannot provide its people with the fundamentals, like water and electricity, never mind the fact that we have no jobs, and no money to buy food, and that our hospitals, schools and roads are in ruins," he remarked. Many families in the town centre live in cramped apartment buildings, often sharing with immediate and extended families. "I live with my Mum and Dad, and seven brothers and sisters; then there's my brother's baby son, and my other brother's fiancée - we only have two bedrooms, so there's not a lot of room," Nunes said. He is considered lucky - there are apartment buildings where construction was halted when the war came but, with the city so crowded and accommodation so scarce, families live in them anyway. The situation is even worse in the musseques, or shantytowns, on the outskirts of town. In Hoji-ya-Henda, 22-year-old Angelina straps her baby daughter to her back, hoists a stack of multicoloured plastic buckets onto her head and makes her way down the garbage-lined dirt tracks in search of water. Today she is lucky. The local water standpoint is flowing, and she only has to walk around 300 metres, but life is not always so easy. "It can be a real problem to find water," she said. "It's not out of the ordinary for us to walk for miles to find water, which we still have to boil before we can drink it," she said. Cases of diarrhoea and other diseases related to poorly treated water and a lack of proper sanitation are still rife in the area, but there are some rays of hope. A poverty reduction programme for the capital and its environs, focusing on the priority needs of the urban poor, has spurred the creation of around 16 new water standpoints in Hoji-ya-Henda. The Luanda Urban Poverty Programme (LUPP), a partnership between CARE International, the Development Workshop, One World Action and Save the Children UK, concentrates on the provision of basic services and helping local residents to find solutions to a host of other problems. In Hoji-ya-Henda, LUPP has supported the creation of an Association Committee of Water (ACA), which does everything from building the water points and managing them to liaising with the Luanda provincial water authority (EPAL). "We have many problems, but the first and most important thing is water - it's essential," said Antonio Nhanga, secretary-general of the Hoji-ya-Henda ACA. Although the 16 new standpoints are still not enough, they have made a huge difference to life in the community. "The situation is much better now. Before, we had to walk for a long time to collect water, and then it wasn't clean - many people were sick. But now, while there's still sickness, we cannot blame the water, and there are far fewer cases of diarrhoea - that's why there are so many people here," said Josefa Eduardo, pointing to a long line of women patiently waiting to fill their buckets. Eduardo is a water committee member, and collects payment for the clean water, making sure that the queue stays orderly and no-one takes more than their fair share. That's sometimes a tough task - water from the provincial water authority flows on an average of only 13 days each month and there is always huge demand when it does run. Nhanga said the lack of water was not the only problem. "We also have issues with the level of rubbish in the streets, and sanitation, while for the longer term we're trying to start social projects, such as schools and creches, as well as a community library." Schemes like LUPP are helping local communities work together to find solutions to the key issues affecting them. "The programme aims to help people solve problems; it is mobilising people around a need and showing them that, if they work as a group, look what they can achieve!" said Kate Ashton, a LUPP programme manager. "It has empowered communities. We cannot achieve everything but, if we can show by example, we start finding champions of change within the communities and also within government." To help this full-to-bursting, war-damaged city solve its problems, the people themselves need to take some responsibility for their quality of life but, even then, it will probably be some time before change reaches all of Luanda's citizens. See Special Report on Southern African cities in transition