When a small group of supporters gathered outside the court where this week the Angolan journalist and human rights activist Rafael Marques went on trial, they were arrested. A woman was beaten up – this is the price Angolans pay for dissent. Mr Marques might pay a far higher price for criticising seven army generals, whom he has accused of complicity in killings, torture and corruption in Angola’s diamond fields.  They, in turn, have accused him of criminal defamation and are suing him for $1.2m (£800,000). For the generals, $1.2m is peanuts. They are part of Angola’s tiny elite, which revolves around the 72-year-old president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, and which has become rich on the country’s oil and diamond wealth.  Since four decades of conflict ended in 2002, Angola’s economy has skyrocketed, albeit from a low base. According to the auditors Ernst and Young, it was the world’s fastest growing economy from 2000-10.  But wealth and power have stayed largely in the hands of a very few families, who come closer that anything else I have seen on the continent to an African nobility.

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