This article was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
Angolan rapper Luaty Beirão, also known as Ikonoklasta. Credit: Facebook / Luaty Beirão.
On Monday, 17 Angolan activists received sentences ranging from two to eight-and-a-half years in jail for participating in a book club that was discussing Gene Sharp’s “From Dictatorship to Democracy”. Far from being just an isolated act of dissent, their book club was actually an escalation of a decade-plus conflict between Africa’s second-longest-serving president Jose Eduardo dos Santos and young Angolans seeking a brighter, more democratic future.
