Nelson Dembo, better known as Gangsta, has become the biggest face of the opposition to the MPLA in recent months. He now says that his life is in danger and that he has already fled Angola.
“My life is in danger. I’m sorry. I have a family that was already coerced, my sisters were taken to the SIC [Serviço de Investigação Criminal Angola]. They took them and their children, in the sense of trying to take away the point of location where I was”, denounced the activist in statements to TSF.
Gangsta has led several protests against the government of João Lourenço and had called another demonstration for Labor Day. He was even arrested on charges of instigating the rebellion. He was finally released with coercive measures, but decided not to comply and lived in hiding in Luanda for several weeks.
The clandestine life was not easy: “Permanent paranoia. But then I think that spirituality manages to concentrate you. And we talked to some people who are very, very close friends and they end up giving you a word of comfort, calm and encouragement.”
Opposition to the party that governs Angola is not new, nor is it forgotten by Gangsta. “The biggest cancer we have is MPLA. It’s not João Lourenço’s problem. People thought it was José Eduardo dos Santos, people thought it was Agostinho Neto. The MPLA is the fundamental base of underdevelopment and of all that misery, of all this force of repression, since November 11, 1975 and it became official on May 27,” she argues.
May 27, 1977, when Nito Alves, then Minister of Internal Administration, attempted a coup to overthrow the leadership of Agostinho Neto, but failed. João Lourenço promised reconciliation to the families of the victims, but, accuses the activist, that process was also fraudulent.
“How do you deliver fake bones to the families of the victims of a mass murder carried out by the MPLA itself in 1977? This is serious. He is not prepared to be president, ”Gangsta charges.
Against the power installed in the country, Nelson Dembo has organized several protests: “Because I am not an individual who comes from a political-partisan force. I am an individual who is going to get out of the miseries and popular social ills. People look at me as a representative, which also generates in me a higher level of responsibility, mainly moral and ethical”.
With the official unemployment rate hovering around 30% and an economy often based on informal work, Nelson Dembo argues that a lack of regulation is the biggest obstacle to development in Angola.
“A population that lives from the informal market exceeds 75%. That is a big problem. Poverty levels are very serious”, highlights the activist.
That is why he decided to demand an old promise from João Lourenço: “In his first term, he could have found 500,000 jobs. Since then, it has not been fulfilled.”
And that’s why he decided to call another protest. But the approach of the date tightened the mesh of the authorities.
“With the May Day campaign, they saw that this young man had to be taken off the street,” reveals the activist.
Source: TSF
