Georges Chikoti - Angolan Foreign Minister HARDtalk

given to Meryl Streep, best leading actress, for her depiction of

Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Congratulations to her.

Now it is time for HARDtalk. The 10th anniversary of the end of

Angola's devastating post- independence civil war is being

marked in 2012. What a difference a decade makes. Angola is now one of

Africa's powerhouse economies, enjoying growth that puts the West

to shame, and exploiting China's insatiable demand for commodities,

especially oil. I speak to Angola's foreign minister, Georges Chikoti.

For Angola and Africa, this is a time of opportunity. Will it be

seized or squandered? Georges Chikoti, welcome to

HARDtalk. Thank you. You are in London on an official visit, the

first Foreign Minister visit to London for a long time. Do you

believe perceptions of Angola, maybe Africa, in Western capitals,

has fundamentally changed? I think a lot needs to be done in that

context. As far as I'm concerned I think there have been some

misconceptions. I think we have to take it to the last ten years of an

All and peace, which has shown one of the great achievements our

government has made -- and golden.... To have the growth we

have in terms of the economic recovery. That is very very

important. People have almost generally look Dakar problems more

than the good things we have done. -- looked at. Does it make a big

difference now that Angola has huge amounts of oil? It has made it,

with Nigeria, the biggest oil exporter. It has cloud and muscle

that is now recognised across the world. That surely makes a

difference. It makes a difference but I think it also shows the

strong leadership that Angola has. I think the President has the merit

of having finished the war, we have reconciled Angola, everyone can

participate in the process, not only of reconstruction but

consolidating democracy. We have many challenges in Angola. Indeed,

I believe that all these things have been achieved first because of

strong leadership, good leadership and then we can think and talk

about oil. We are lucky to have oil at this particular moment. To make

good use of it for our own development. Let me stop you there

- you said to make good use of it - let me be blunt, is the era of

Western nations patronising Africa over? Well your new economic power

ensure that you make sure it is over? I think we need to co-operate.

I think we are not fighting against Western influence or Western powers.

I think it is a different perspective. We need to take into

account our own realities - Africa has some big challenge is in terms

of its own development. What we need is to talk more and since my

arrival in Britain I have been talking to politicians and the

economic and business community so we can work together in the

interest, not only of our countries, but also in the interest of Western

powers. There is a need for better corporation. You're talking a lot

about lessons to be learned. You went to the United Nations Assembly

last November and you made a speech in which I was very interested to

note you said that Angola could be seen as a reference point for how

to resolve conflict in Africa. I wonder if you pitch yourself as a

sort of model for Africa? What you believe and all is saying to, and

can teach, the rest of your continent? I think we are saying

that we have a particular experience way we have been able to

make a transition from a long conflict and then coming out of the

conflict with a devastated country and a divided society. We had to

then engage in a process of rebuilding the society and also

rebuilding community and infrastructure. We can say that we

are able to do our part, but we are ready to work with international

community. We have been able to help contribute to peace in some

countries. You will recall that Angola, during this period of time,

also participated in helping build the democratic process in the

Republic where we helped not only trained the soldiers but the police.

-- not only train.... What we are saying is that we are ready to co-

operate. In any other conflict, based on an armoured security...

Right, so you are doing different things in different neighbouring

countries, but here is the bottom line. What kind of model tenure

represent when you are run oil exporting nation with currency

reserves of tens of billions of US dollars, and yet two-thirds of your

own population still live on less than $2 per day. What kind of

example is that? I don't think that is true as you put it. We have

built more economic infrastructure than any other country in such a

short period of time. In order to take development... You have

infrastructure, but you still have unbelievable rate of poverty. You

have one in ten residents of Rwanda with access to running water, the

rest are without. You still have bourbon polio, which almost no

other country in the world has, the highest infant mortality in the

world. That is one of their challenges. You have a city which

has had no infrastructure at all for 30 years.... It is clean

running water, the situation is worse now than it was at the end of

the civil war. We have more water now than at any other time. We are

getting more electricity than at any other time. You need to look at

these things with time. I think in the next three years we will

achieve most of the main goals. I don't think we should... What we

are trying to say is that with time, we are inviting in the number of

partners, we are involved with countries, working partners with

China, each country is doing a little piece. You need things to

come into place, you need time. What I am grappling with is this

idea of the new Africa, with Angola being the vanguard of the new

Africa. You represent a government led by a President who has been in

power for more than 30 years and yet it is still true today to say

that Angola is one of the most aren't equal societies in the

entire world. -- unequal. Why is that? I think you should first of

all credit our president for peace. The challenges of the last 85 years

have been war and peace. We have achieved peace. This is a very

important aspect of... You know, we all know that hundreds of thousands

of people died in your civil war, hang on... Hang on... Since we have

had peace, we have had more people coming into schools, more hospitals

built. You need time to do all of these things. I think you cannot

now go very quickly to judge or us on our shortcomings. This is the

only country where we are doing things by ourselves. Remember, this

was a war that we did not provoke. This is a consequence of the cold -

- Cold War. People wanted changed by force and they supported the

military activities that destroyed or us. We are saying that we need

to work together. You're saying there is poverty. There is poverty

in Britain, there is poverty in the United States, anywhere. The

percentage of poverty is proportionate to their time...

minister, the point is not so much... Let me make my point. You

are not judging or us from a distance. You are not looking at

some of the fast changes we have done. It is very important that we

have more children in schools today than ever before. I understand that,

you have made that point, but my point to you is that much of it is

unnecessary poverty, it is poverty born out of corruption.... I don't

agree, it is born out of war. That is the wrong reading of the

realities. Would you agree that corruption is a fundamental problem

in your country? Corruption is a problem in Angola, it is a problem

here, it is a problem anywhere. What were we do to fight it, we

need institutions. At the end of the war we had no culture working,

we had something they control the government spending, we had more

and more things under control,... Who appoints the judiciary? Who is

in charge Kvitova it is the president. We have a constitution.

-- who is in charge? There is now such an inextricable link between

business interests, presidency and politics that you have a system

which is riddled from top to bottom with corruption. I don't agree with

that. I think it is the understanding of things - people

want to judge or us on one thing. We have to look at the changes that

have taken place in society. The President is indeed an important

player in order to consolidate democracy in our country. In order

to achieve peace, a reconciliation. Just imagine someone like him

coming from totally a different political background, totally a

different ethnic group. Which, for a long time, was involved in war.

Look at the difficulties we have had, people have been fighting for

30 years, they are living together in one army, in one country, they

are all... You have explained, yourself, you were close to the

leader of the rebels... Exactly. What we should look at is how have

the president been able to build a society? I believe that one day

people have to judge how these processes took place. You have got

to look at how many people died in this process and how much the

president has been crucial to establishing peace. You keep

talking about the overall... Establishment of peace as being the

fundamental core of Angola... Because... Because... But I put it

to you that right now, people in an goal would like to move on.... Let

me make a point, I would like your thoughts on this. There is a

journalist, an anti-corruption campaigner, in the recent past he

has filed legal cases against members of the current government.

One of the individuals he cited was the man who used to run your estate

owned oil country. Some are to beat him as a possible successor to the

President. According to the work done by this campaigner, when he

was running the oil company he signed off on other on the contract

by another company, it's a oil company, that was owned by those in

politics. How do you feel about that sort of business relationship

between politics and big oil? of all, we never heard the other

side of the story. This man has made so many things, he has said so

many things, not a lot of them are true. In many cases... By that is

true. Wouldn't you regard it as completely and utterly

unacceptable? I believe it is not true because the other side has

never said anything. What you have to take into account here is that I

think you need to give Angola time to put order it in its own country.

I think what should be is that you give us the mayor at it from where

we are coming from and the fact that we have been able to reconcile.

All other things that corruption is not the most important thing. What

we need is to have proper institutions in an goal that will

allow opportunities for everybody. It somebody accuses somebody I

think he should be fair. At the other side be given the opportunity

run to respond. What is man says is He filed this and months ago and

there has been no response. believe that what people want to do,

but you may not want to recognise the most important developments

Angola has achieved. I think some western countries have not been

happy with Angola in the past and they don't want to accept good

things can happen here. The British Government has $3 billion a year of

trade with Angola each year and you want it higher. There are rules

across the industrialised world about making sure the deals they do

are done with clean companies with governments that work in those

countries. They cannot be confident of that when you tell me that you

frankly don't know whether one of the most senior members of your

government is involved in these sorts of sweetheart deals between

big oil business and government. What you are telling me is that Mr

Rafael Marquez has written this, he has insulted many people in and go

there. It is not about Rafael Marquez, it is about a culture of

transparency. Your country is 160 something on a list of 180

countries, you are at the bottom of the corruption index. Time and

again this is reported by international observers. You are

saying there are 100 and something countries all affected by a

corruption. Globally all countries need to improve their policies, and

my country is doing its putt. None of these countries were affected by

25 or 30 years of war. First you need to look at how we are building

institutions. We did not have a legal system working until ten

years ago, we have won today. Today people can face trial whenever they

commit a crime. When you have a legal system that works these

things can be put in and those are one of the challenges of society.

Before you can try us on so many things, go into details and look at

the progress we have made on the legal system, into all the measures

on equality in terms of competitions coming in. If things

were so wrong, you are not going to have so many countries coming into

Angola's. Today we have a private investment law that is so fair and

so open. Hang on, let's stick to specifics, why did Angola promise

it would sign the extractive industries transparency did

initiative and then back away? Maybe some of its articles are not

responding to what we want. A country can eventually not sign

something that will affect their sovereignty. This was an

international initiative, absolutely designed to introduce

transparency to oil contracts across the world between

governments and big businesses, between oil extraction companies

and the contractors. Many many countries like Angola, which

produces large amounts of oil, signed it. You said you would as

well and then you refused. What did that say about your Government's

commitment to transparency? I don't think that is the only point.

must make your job very difficult? It doesn't. We went through a wall,

you have to remember, during this war while was the only resource the

Angolan government had to defend itself -- or York was. People say

we need to look into our accounts. I think we will come to a stage

where people have to understand they can not judge us from their

point of view, they have got to judge us from the whole of our

history and the difficulties we have gone through. Remember in

southern Africa, not only did we have strife, but we are the only

country that was invaded by the South African regime. At that time

that was supported by many countries. Look at that. I keep

trying to press you on the future and you keep looking back. You are

not, you are trying to tell me that I am a corrupt nation. I am trying

to tell you that you should not only judge us from there because

the oil we are talking about, you are telling me that we do not spend

our or you'll probably. People want to justify how we are spending our

oil. I don't think those are the only aspects, looking at Rafael

Marquez. They are other elements of Angola's current situation. I want

to be fair. Let's look at another aspect of Angola's current politics

and economic development, the relationship with China. Angola is

China's number one supplier of oil. In return you have had vast

development in infrastructure from China, billions of dollars. Are you

satisfied with the way that relationship is working? I think we

are satisfied globally with all the corporation with all of our

partners. We give more oil to the Western countries. We give it to

Chevron, BP, they take more... how do you call, the French company?

China's relationship with Angola is actually extraordinary? It is.

Within Africa as a whole, China's investment in your country is

remarkable. Over $10 billion worth of roads, railways, hospitals, a

new airport. Coming back to Rafael Marquez, who has done an awful lot

of work on this, he talks about infrastructure projects that are

crumbling. Roads that have been washed away. There is the general

hospital in Luanda that was built by the Chinese and then had to be

closed because of subsidence. Time and a gain the building in the

country has been very poor. Why do you keep talking about Rafael

Marquez? I will show you the good projects that China has built in

Angola. We also have Western countries, I will not mention names,

who have lied to us, who had promised to ask they would do

things and they never did anything. Because of our capacity for

verification and control and surveillance and knowing what is

going on, we struggle sometimes. You can not only judge us on what

is wrong, judge us on what is right. When you see a housing project,

tens of thousands of social housing units being built by Chinese

companies. And they all collapse! No, but when you look at them you

see thousands of Chinese workers being employed and handfuls of

Angolans. That is making Angolans very angry, there has been tension

and violence. Do you understand it? You should not look at it that way.

You can only take it one thing at a time. The Chinese build houses very

quickly so we can give the House is to the Angolans. It is not

necessarily to employ Angolans. It is true, sometimes with these

contracts they come and then they go back quickly. The issue of jobs

is one thing. Angola is coming out of a war, we have many people to in

tents and they need jobs. In the long run we need to provide more

jobs for younger people. But it should not be a confusion between

the contracts that we have from Chinese companies, who come for a

specific contract. They build the infrastructure and then they go

away. They do not come to take jobs away from Angolans. Dos Santos has

been in power for almost 30 years, there have been constitutional

changes which mean he could be in power until 2022. We have seen an

Arab spring in North Africa, will there be a time when the Angolan

people will not be prepared to live under his authoritarian rule any

more? Do you have a problem with it? They might have a problem with

it. The most important thing is that we have a working democratic

system. If the Angolans Chew's Dos Santos we are happy to be with him.

You should look at his record in terms of bringing peace,

reconciling everybody, in terms of allowing this economic development

that is taking place in only ten years. Let's only judge him in the

ten years we have had peace in Angola. I think the democratic

process in Angola will ring the changes necessary. Why should