Syndicate of Angolan Journalists: a unique story with more than 30 years starting from the hard stone of democratization
The Syndicate of Angolan Journalists (SJA) marked, on March 28th, another anniversary of an organization that entered the history of the country’s democratization in a pioneering position that no one can take away from it, when talking about syndicalism in Angola. But not only that, the SJA will also be called upon to testify for future memory when talking about the achievement of freedom for all, which until then did not exist, with the performance of the state average - the only one that existed - a good mirror of this reality full of omissions and manipulations, where only the booming “voice of the owner” could be heard and little else.
A syndicalism that began by having as its great demand the uncompromising defense of the first of all fundamental rights, which is freedom of expression, without which freedom of the press, so dear to journalists, but not only, could be the public good that serves everyone, no exception.
Of course, that, in reality, things don’t always go according to plan, with Angola being an emblematic case of this clash, which is permanent, of discourse with reality, of text with context.
It is already difficult to find a constitution in the world in which freedom of expression/freedom of the press are not part of its catalog of fundamental rights that all citizens have the same right to enjoy, no matter what.
Considering the political context of the time, just a few months before the first multi-party elections in Angola after 17 years of mono-partyism and civil war, the entry into the scene of the Syndicate of Angolan Journalists, which has nothing to do with the other syndicate of the same name which existed in colonial times, was, effectively. a major event that marked the current times of those early days of political openness at a time when the MPLA Government and Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA had already signed the Bicesse Peace Accords. 32 years have passed since the Constitutive Assembly of the Syndicate of Angolan Journalists took place on March 28, 1992, in Luanda. It was the culmination of a challenging process that involved, in its genesis, a small group of professionals who, a few months earlier. had embraced the idea of mobilizing the class around what would become the emergence of the first independent syndicate in Angola. Specifically, we are talking about this type of labor activity outside the supervision of the only syndicate center, the National Union of Angolan Workers (UNTA), which until then controlled and regulated the sector that was divided into ten national syndicates corresponding to ten branches of socioeconomic activity, one of which is education, culture and social communication, of which journalists were a part.
At a time when the right to strike was prohibited, syndicalism controlled by UNTA was the only one allowed in the country, in obedience to the “Leninist philosophy of transmission belts.” The Secretary General of UNITA was a member of the MPLA Political Bureau. This syndicalism without any claim-making tendency was nothing more than a permanent action of mobilization and organization of workers in order to enthusiastically support the implementation of the policies outlined by the party in power. The Government was responsible for transforming the strategy defined into sectoral executive plans within the scope of the centralized state economy regime that was then in force in Angola, as a consequence of the socialist option embraced by the MPLA-Party of Labor in 1977 and which the mood of Angolans quickly changed. to be called “schematic socialism.” Even though the country was already on the path to political opening, following the signing of the Bicesse Peace Accords, it was with the face of very few friends that at the time the news of the entire process that led to the creation of the Syndicate of Angolan journalists. The current Secretary General of the Syndicate of Angolan Journalists, Teixeira Cândido, the fourth leader in its history since Avelino Miguel (the first), by Ismael Mateus and Luísa Rogério, summarized on the occasion of this anniversary the entire trajectory of the organization with the following considerations: “The Syndicate of Angolan Journalists (SJA) was born with a death seal. The constitutive act disappeared at the time of its proclamation, according to reports from its “Founding Fathers.” Its Organic Statutes had to wait for 28 years to be published in the Diário da República which only happened in 2018 and without any explanation.” Teixeira Cândido recalled that it was unthinkable in its early years for the SJA to have representation especially in public bodies, which were and continue to be those that employ the most journalists. For the Secretary General of the SJA, who is already in his second and final term, after more than three decades of active life of the organization he directs, today “the times are different, with greater tolerance, however, prejudices as well as the attempt to link those responsible to unconfessed or political interests (it is not clear what the concept of political is) continues as on the first day.”
Teixeira CândidoIn fact, the proclamation of the SJA, 32 years ago, was not good news for many people in Angola who saw the project’s independence as a threatening rupture with the monolithic system that needed to be put down as quickly as possible, so everything was done behind the scenes to block its action among journalists and society itself. Unable to develop direct syndical action in the workplace, the Syndicate’s management limited itself in its first ten years of life to denouncing attacks on press freedom in Angola alongside other advocacy and promotion actions for fundamental rights. However, these first ten years, between 1992 and 2001, were marked by the emergence and affirmation in Luanda of the first independent newspapers, all of them weekly, along with some radio stations, where the highlight certainly goes to the resurgence in 1997 of Emissora Católica de Angola. The media landscape was thus substantially changed in favor of pluralism and professionalism, with the politically controlled and motivated public media no longer being the only source of information that people had at their disposal, with all the positive consequences that this evolution had for the state of press freedom in Angola.
In a statement in 2001, the Syndicate of Angolan Journalists recognized that its syndical action had not developed “in the most satisfactory way, translating first and foremost, the permanence of a hostile political-institutional situation, in a country where most of the class continues to have the State as its employer.” Within the scope of this declaration, the intention was expressed to relaunch the activity of the SJA “with the participation of all those who, around ten years ago, subscribed to this syndical project, with the certainty that it was, and continues to be, the solution ideal for us to solve our problems together as a working class; a class with very particular responsibilities in the management of one of the fundamental democratic rights of our time: freedom of the press.”
With this declaration, a call was made for the Second General Assembly of the SJA, which was scheduled for March 2002 under the motto “Unity and Professionalism for the Dignification of the Class”. It is said in the declaration that the intention was “to hold a General Assembly that marks the rebirth of the Syndicate of Angolan Journalists, with the strength and support of the entire class, which is why we are committed to holding a Congress that is as open and comprehensive as possible, in ways that the specific documentation will clearly define and regulate.”
After 2002, there was a surrender of the guard in the leadership of the Syndicate with the arrival on the scene of Ismael Mateus, and from that date onwards, syndical activity itself underwent another dynamic with the implementation of the first syndical centers at the level of social communication companies.
There would certainly be much more to say about these 32 years that the Syndicate of Angolan Journalists has already carried on its feet, in a very challenging year for the future of the organization as there will be a new surrender of the guard, considering that the current SG, Teixeira Cândido, can no longer re-run, as the statutes only allow for two consecutive terms.
Teixeira Cândido, who will certainly go down in the history of the Syndicate as having been its most dynamic and combative General Secretary until now, that does not hide his concerns regarding the new threats that hang over the historic organization he inherited.
He even talks about ongoing exercises that are part of “unsettled intentions to tear down the Journalists’ Syndicate,” in an allusion to the past when the SJA was established.
For Teixeira Cândido “the Syndicate of Angolan Journalists remains faithful to its ontological object: defending Freedom of the Press and the Labor Rights of its members. Freedom of the Press means diversity of bodies and plurality of opinion in each media outlet. This is the presence of several different voices about the same subject.
The Secretary General of the SJA took the opportunity of this anniversary to reiterate the need for independence as the cornerstone of all the professional movement of journalists.
“Independence of bodies (in the face of political and economic power) and of journalists in the face of information sources. In other words, it is only journalism when it offers citizens all the facts of public interest, bringing together all parties with relevant interests. This is the essence of the Syndicate of Angolan Journalists, bequeathed by the 1991 Windhoek Declaration, the same one that supports World Press Freedom Day. This is the Freedom of the Press that the SJA professes as yesterday as today, without changing a single point, and any journalist who identifies himself as such cannot profess another.”
