Angolan Writer and Former Political Prisoner Republishes Book on Practical Tools Against Dictatorships

By Tirso Sitoe, Trans by: Liam Anderson

Editor’s note: The author of this text is also a contributor to the new edition of the book by interviewee Domingos da Cruz. 

In June 2015, Domingos da Cruz, a journalist and human rights defender, and other activists were detained under suspicion of “planning a coup d’état” after attending a conference discussing his book on peaceful methods of protest and civil resistance. The conference was led by Da Cruz, and the group of 17 activists became known as the “15+2” group.

Ten years later, Da Cruz has released a new edition of “Tools to Destroy the Dictator and Avoid a New Dictatorship – A Political Philosophy of Liberation for Angola,” which includes analyses from several academics and discusses tools of civil resistance. The work, according to a 2015 Deutsch Welle report “is an adaptation of the 168 techniques presented by the American philosopher Gene Sharp in the book From Dictatorship to Democracy.”

The title summarizes the purpose of the work, which aims to provide civil resistance methods for authoritarian contexts, such as those of Angola and Mozambique. In these, “academia should promote human dignity and that means confronting the dictatorship with practical solutions,” said Da Cruz in an interview with Global Voices.

In 2015, Da Cruz was remanded in custody for six months, he was “let go” to house arrest for about three months, and was then convicted along with other activists. He was released in June 2016. Since then, he has been living between Portugal, Sweden, and Canada where he was a visiting researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, at the University of Concordia, and has been coordinating the Media Observatory (Observatório da Imprensa), a civil society organization that aims to monitor and evaluate the performance of Angolan media.

At that time, Angola’s president was José Eduardo dos Santos, who stayed in power for nearly four decades (1979–2017) and died in 2022. He was succeeded by the current president, João Lourenço, from the same party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).

In the Human Rights Watch’s 2025 report, the organization listed problems Angola currently faces, such as police brutality and chronic malnutrition among children, highlighting:

President João Lourenço has signed off on laws that do not meet international human rights standards and that severely restrict freedoms of the press, expression, and association. Angolan prisons continued to suffer from overcrowding.

The new version of Da Cruz’s work revisits ideas discussed in the first edition, published in 2015, now expanded with contributions from Brazil (Susan De Oliveira and Fernanda Cris Franco), Mozambique (Nelson Domingos António, Tirso Sitoe, and Edgar Barroso) and Angola (Raul Tati), in a collective effort to refine strategies of action against political oppression.

In May this year, as French outlet RFI reported, the book was censored in Angola, which led the author to make it available for free online.

The transition of power

Da Cruz starts from the observation that “the reality of Angola’s authoritarianism requires concrete answers, and that relying on elections organized by authoritarian regimes would be falling into a trap.” According to him, in such contexts, there is no possibility for a transition of power as would typically be expected in democracies.

In Angola’s case, I would not count on any of the current parties because they do not represent a revolutionary solution. Now, within civil society, maybe there needs to be unity among the civil society [organizations] so that they can develop two or three major strategic plans [of action], which would be a set of tactics to bring about a popular revolution. Specifically, informal education about a society in which vigilance is needed to preserve freedom, but also education for confronting an authoritarian regime.

Da Cruz points to the example of Mozambican rapper and activist Azagaia, who passed away in 2023, and whose music made social commentary that inspired demonstrations, which were met with police repression. He makes a comparison with the Angolan context, where he perceives the artists as being focused on the symptoms of the dictatorship, by talking about arbitrary arrests, high levels of poverty, corruption, manipulation of the media, and a general lack of basic services:

We need to make songs that clearly tell the people that, to free ourselves, it’s necessary to start a popular revolution. So, this would be a collective project in which people join their strengths to achieve democracy and overthrow the dictatorship. What there is in Angola is not elections, it’s rehearsals to legitimize the power [in place]. Many believe they are in a democracy, but they live in an illusion.

In the country’s last elections in 2022, the civil society movement Mudei carried out an initiative — “Citizen Electoral Monitoring Project” — and incorporated activists and citizens from various parts of Angola who contributed to the unofficial counting of the election results. These results highlighted a disparity with the official results, which showed the MPLA winning with more than 80 percent of the vote against UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), and which the opposition contested.

Just like Mozambique’s FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front), both the MPLA and UNITA have their roots in movements dating back to the struggle for independence from Portugal, which later evolved into political parties.

Mudei also assessed press coverage at the time of the elections. In its report, they said there was unequal treatment and that the press gave more attention to the party in power, the MPLA. Da Cruz said:

In Angola it’s not possible to talk about free, fair, and transparent elections.

He also observed that tools of civil resistance, such as protests, boycotts, and holding vigils, have been used in government transitions, such as in Tunisia, during the Arab Spring, and could be adapted and employed in other contexts.

In Mozambique, for example, Da Cruz sees similarities with Angola and has been sharing the book with Mozambican activists and academics, as they too are faced with an authoritarian-inclined government formed by the party FRELIMO. In the run-up to elections in 2019, Mozambican journalists and activists were the target of threats.

More exchanges and raising awareness

Da Cruz believes it is urgent to promote deeper political and philosophical exchanges between Portuguese-speaking countries. Although still limited, he has noticed a deepening of the links between civil societies, as seen during the protests in Mozambique after the 2024 elections, which inspired protests against the socio-economic crisis in Angola.

He also cites examples such as Turkey, where the president, Recep Erdoğan, in power for over 20 years, adding his time as prime minister and president, has become more authoritarian over time, to highlight that no democracy is invulnerable:

Freedom is not guaranteed. Democracies can also fall. It is necessary to educate new generations about this and maintain a vigilant and active civil society.

In order to achieve this, the writer highlights the role of accessible media, such as content published on social media, where citizen art or sharing articles can be used to raise awareness around issues.

Returning to his work a decade later, in the current context of Lusophone Africa, he says he hopes readers will not only read, but also adopt the tools and put them into practice.

It is not enough to know the recipe. We need to get to work. Only this way will freedom be won and defended.

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Previously Published on globalvoices.org with Creative Commons License

Photo Credit: unsplash

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