Angola is on Fire: Isabel Dos Santos Must Return!

With chaos in Angola amid outrage at fuel price hikes, the call is being raised for the economic genius who once got the country on its feet to return. It’s time to forget the USAID smears and start building again in Angola.

A 25% hike in gas prices has the people of Angola writhing in anger. Taxi drivers are on strike, and the people are in the streets. The capital of the second-largest oil-exporting country in Africa is in utter chaos. President Lourenço’s policies of continually squeezing working families to appease Western monopolies—while gradually dismantling the economic apparatus built up since 2002—are going down in literal flames. In a country where 28% of the population lives on less than $1.90 per day, shooting up gas prices means taking food from the mouths of children.

The Angolan people know how to fight for themselves. The MPLA, the ruling party, led a battle against Portuguese colonialism that lasted for decades. The United States backed the brutal terrorists of UNITA and imposed civil war on the country after it gained its independence. The best friend of Angola has always been Cuba. Cuba sent its soldiers to fight off an invasion from apartheid South Africa and has played a key role in ensuring security since 1975.

When peace was finally declared in 2002, the slogan was “Angola Starts Now!” Record levels of economic growth followed as state-run oil profits were used to build a new economy. From 2001 to 2010, the average GDP growth rate of Angola was an astounding 11.1%—the highest rate of economic growth for a country in history, according to some sources. The capital city of Luanda boomed. Transportation access expanded, along with education. Life expectancy increased. A country that had been littered with landmines and the trauma of decades of war was finally seeing a moment of hope and expansion.

Who was the genius who oversaw such a dramatic improvement in living conditions? It was Isabel dos Santos, daughter of the president, who was put in charge of the state-run oil company. Born in Azerbaijan and having studied at the London School of Economics, Isabel was up to the challenge. The results of her effective economic management—coordinating with investors and state-run industries in Russia and China—are indisputable. Angola’s best days were when a brilliant, highly educated woman, born in the Soviet Union as the daughter of anti-colonial guerrilla fighters, was calling the shots and charting the way forward.

Obama’s “Corruption” Scam to Bring Austerity

“There are thousands of people for whom we gave their first job,” Isabel has explained. Dos Santos oversaw the creation of a telecommunications corporation called Unitel, a huge expansion of railway and transportation access, and other projects that laid the basis for economic prosperity.

In 2014, the Obama administration coordinated with Saudi Arabia to drop global oil prices. Michael Reagan, son of US President Ronald Reagan, explained how Obama was doing the same thing his father had done—manipulating oil prices to weaken Russia and other geopolitical rivals of Washington:

“Since selling oil was the source of the Kremlin’s wealth, my father got the Saudis to flood the market with cheap oil. Lower oil prices devalued the ruble, causing the USSR to go bankrupt.”

As oil revenue dried up, with prices dropping below $30 per barrel thanks to Obama-Saudi manipulations, the knives came out. The “Luanda Leaks” accompanied a propaganda campaign demonizing Isabel dos Santos and playing up charges of “corruption.” The “Luanda Leaks” can be traced back to the notoriously corrupt USAID as well as globalist George Soros. It was an obvious targeted campaign—not sincere outrage about corruption. Corruption is a big problem in many impoverished countries, no doubt. But the idea that there was anything particularly egregious about the way Isabel dos Santos allegedly “handed out the goods” is absurd to anyone familiar with the context.

The real reason Isabel was targeted by Western media was stated by The Wall Street Journal in 2017 after she was forced out of office. She had refused to privatize natural gas and hand it over to Western monopolies. Isabel had stuck firmly to Angola’s constitution, which says natural resources “by law belong to the government.” Furthermore, Isabel insisted that Western companies operating in Angola hire local people. WSJ complained that when it came to Western oil companies, she “required they buy their supplies from select domestic firms.” Her “turgid bureaucracy” was getting in the way of their ability to loot the African nation and maximize their profits.

With her father out of office, it wasn’t enough to remove her from her position running key economic pillars. Isabel was charged with corruption and fled the country. Since then, her assets in Britain have been seized, and the United States has banned her and her relatives from entering the country, singling her out for special sanctions.

From exile, Isabel continues to speak up, despite being targeted with a “Red Notice” from Interpol calling for her arrest. She maintains that the corruption charges and innuendo are a cover story used to drive her out of politics so the current government’s neoliberal policies can be implemented.

Yet, in December of 2024, Isabel hinted to the BBC that she is considering running for president, saying it’s “a possibility,” and continuing:

“Look, I will always serve my country… To lead is to serve, and I wish to serve Angola—whether it’s in politics, or whether it’s in business, whether it’s in philanthropy or culture.”

The fact is that she has a huge amount of support and popularity on the ground—maybe not with the tiny layer of rich kids who dominate Angola’s social media, but with the working people of the ports and oil fields, the farmers of the countryside, and the millions of others who directly benefited from her effective economic management.

#IsabelComeHome – Now Is Her Time!

There are clearly different forces working to manipulate the unrest in Angola. We know that George Soros and the imperialist deep state aren’t satisfied with President Lourenço’s cuts and looting; they want the entire anti-colonial state of the MPLA ousted. They may be trying to pull off a color revolution amid the confusion.

However, the anger is about cuts in social spending and fuel hikes. The demand of the public isn’t some vague denunciation of corruption or a call for “freedom.” The taxi drivers are on strike and people are in the streets because they want economic growth. They don’t want to be squeezed to pay for gasoline when they live in an oil-rich nation. The rallying cry can pretty clearly be interpreted as a call for the return of the policies most closely associated with Isabel dos Santos.

Isabel dos Santos is a builder, tied in with the new economy rising in Eurasia. She is what the Center for Political Innovation calls an “Innovationist.” She built Angola by investing in people and the physical economy—not Wall Street rip-off schemes or destructive accumulation. Center for Political Innovation founder and ideological leader Caleb Maupin has long been an admirer of Isabel dos Santos and has defended her against smears in the press, highlighting the solid economic data pointing to her achievements.

The people in Angola don’t want to be “de-grown” by Wall Street monopolies and British bankers any longer. They want growth, increased living standards, good-paying jobs, healthcare, education—all the things they were seeing before Obama’s “anti-corruption” scam brought in the current despotic neoliberal regime.

It sounds like now is Isabel dos Santos’ time. Figures in the military, people in the business community, and average Angolans on the streets need to raise the call: #IsabelComeHome. It’s time to have someone in power who builds, constructs, and carries on the heritage of Angola’s anti-colonial revolution. The corrupt austerity regime must go.

In 2002, the rallying cry was “Angola Starts Now!”
It’s time for Angola to start up again—with experienced, effective leadership.