Angola is under fire after it denied entry to several senior African political figures set to attend a conference hosted by the country’s main opposition party.
Unita said it had invited the politicians, including Tanzanian opposition leader Tundu Lissu, Mozambique’s Venancio Mondlane and Botswana’s former President Ian Khama, to a summit on democracy.
“The action of the Angolan government to prevent us from entering Angola is inexplicable and unacceptable,” Lissu said on X.
The BBC has asked the Angolan government to comment.
But according to a source from the Migration and Aliens Service (SME), “the expulsion was due to irregularities in the visa procedure, which prevented Mondlane and 13 other members of his entourage from entering Angolan territory”.
Mondlane, who has called for nationwide protests over what he says were rigged elections last year, was this week subjected to travel restrictions in his home country.
At least 20 leaders and representatives from various political parties across Africa were denied entry, said Lissu.
“The government of this country is ruling a dictatorship while pretending that Angola is a democratic country,” he said.
Lissu is a vocal critic of the Tanzanian government and head of the main opposition party, Chadema. He survived an assassination attempt in 2017 and has spent several years in exile.
Kenyan senator Edwin Sifuna, from the opposition Orange Democratic Movement, said on X he was among those denied entry into Angola.
Delegates from Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Sudan who had visas or were eligible for visa on arrival were deported, the Platform for African Democrats (Pad), a group of opposition parties across Africa, said in a statement.
Khama, Colombia’s former President Andres Pastrana, Zanzibar’s first Vice-President Othman Masoud Othman and 24 others were detained at the airport for nine hours with no explanation. They were released but missed their connecting flights, according to Pad.
The Angolan government promised to make up for these actions by providing a plane, but it never materialised, the opposition grouping said.
Zanzibar’s main opposition party, ACT Wazalendo, urged the Tanzanian government to immediately summon the Angolan ambassador to provide a formal explanation of why the party’s vice-president was denied entry to the country.
Tomas Viera Mario, a Mozambican political analyst, told the BBC the move was “strange” as Angola’s President Joao Lourenco has positioned himself as a kind of mediator on the continent.
Lourenco is currently the chair of the African Union (AU), and is hosting peace talks over the DR Congo conflict next week.
Mr Mario added that barring these figures showed “total contempt and “little respect” for the pan-African spirit of the AU.
All the deported leaders were part of a delegation invited by Unita to attend its 59th anniversary celebrations in Benguela province.
Unita lawmaker Nelito da Costa Ekwiki also condemned the decision not to allow them entry to the country.
The Angolan government has long been accused of shutting down dissent in order to maintain its hold on power.
Additional reporting by Jorge Nsimba in Luanda
