Angola’s “fake news” law reveals a fear of the truth

Angola’s Law No. 6/26 took effect on Aug. 4 with a contradiction. It reproduces passages from Brazil’s proposed “fake news” bill, PL 2630, which remains pending there.

The law contains useful measures. It requires platforms to report removals, advertising, and sponsorship, and targets fake accounts, bots, deepfakes, and coordinated campaigns. Angola needs safeguards. The danger begins when transparency gives way to state control, leaving the government with the power to decide what is true.

In June, France’s VIGINUM identified 48 Facebook accounts showing signs of inauthenticity, including AI-generated images. Its report said they amplified Angolan government material and posts promoting the ruling MPLA, in power since 1975. Investigators found angola-plan.blackcore.online, which referred to training for the Angolan government. The report also raised a possible link to BlackCore. These indicators demand answers. But VIGINUM could not identify the network’s sponsors, and its findings do not establish that the government commissioned it.

The law defines an “artificial dissemination network” as a structure coordinated for political or financial gain. Its first test is clear. Will the regulator investigate a network promoting those in power, or begin with their critics?

Article 12 orders the immediate removal of content “considered false information.” Article 19 allows content to be declared false through an administrative or judicial decision. Article 25 gives the regulator enforcement and fining powers. Yet safeguards are missing. The text sets no evidentiary threshold, urgency test, or requirement for prior judicial authorization. An appeal comes only after removal. In an election campaign, vindication months later may still mean defeat.

The regulator is INACOM, Angola’s communications authority. Despite formal autonomy, it remains subject to executive oversight; its board is appointed by the president on a minister’s recommendation. The framework allows classification, enforcement, and sanctions to remain within the administrative chain. A regulator under executive supervision may initiate removal of reporting about the same executive.

This arrangement appears to breach a foundational principle of Angola’s constitutional order: the separation of powers. The same executive authority becomes adjudicator, enforcer, and interested party, leaving no credible basis for neutrality or impartiality in the law’s application. That defect alone should provide sufficient grounds for the law to be declared unconstitutional. Under Article 230 of the Constitution, both the Angolan Bar Association and the Ombudsman may petition the Constitutional Court for such a declaration. They should act without delay.

Those who demand absolute accuracy from the public should begin by applying the same standard to their own legislation. This law lays bare the technical shortcomings and lack of critical judgment among some of the government’s legal advisers serving. They are cabulas — an Angolan term for those who copy without understanding—and poor ones at that. They copy foreign legal provisions without understanding their origins, the context in which they were drafted, or their compatibility with Angola’s Constitution. That is not lawmaking. It substitutes expediency for thought. Academic training means little when it fails to produce diligence, intellectual independence, or critical judgment.

“Fake news” implies intent to deceive. Yet “misleading content” may be false, distorted, or unsupported, with or without intent. Deliberate lies causing harm merit consequences; good-faith errors, developing stories, and public-interest reporting do not. Maximum fines reach about 20 million kwanzas for individuals and 40 million for organizations. The law omitted stand-alone prison terms of up to 10 years and expressly protects opinion, criticism of public policy, satire, and parody. Still, Article 29 applies existing criminal offenses to intentional falsehoods and increases penalties by up to half. The immediate threat is removal, fines, litigation, and possible criminal prosecution. Censorship needs no censor in every newsroom. It need only make publication prohibitively risky. This is what freedom-of-expression law calls a chilling effect.External pressure turns into self-censorship.

The statute imported Brazilian definitions, reporting requirements, terminology, and a telling error. Where the Brazilian bill asks how many removals were “reversed,” the Angolan text uses revestidas—roughly “clothed”—which is nonsensical. A typo does not invalidate a law. It reveals the haste behind an instrument that punishes citizens for publication. Brazil is still debating PL 2630. Angola copied part of an unfinished debate, added administrative powers and sanctions, and brought the law into force immediately.

This clumsy law reveals the regime’s anxiety. It does not primarily fear falsehood. It fears freedom of expression and of the press. A government confident in its record would answer errors with facts, open its archives, publish contracts, protect journalists, and tolerate difficult questions. A government with a disastrous record, operating against the common good through the partisan capture of state institutions, instead seeks to intimidate those who expose its failures. Ahead of Angola’s 2027 vote, platforms facing severe sanctions may over-remove content. Journalists, whistleblowers, and citizens unable to defend themselves may fall silent before a case is heard. A law advertised as a defense of truth may become a shield for the official version.

Freedom is not impunity. Power cannot enjoy immunity either.

Online publishing can be abused for coercion, reputational attacks, and organized smear campaigns, including by sites presenting themselves as news organizations. Where credible evidence indicates unlawful conduct, the answer is investigation, due process, and judicial oversight. Such conduct is not protected simply because it is labeled journalism. Nor can alleged abuses justify suppressing legitimate criticism. Artificial networks should be confronted. Turning an arm of the executive into the arbiter of truth should not. An investigation does not become false because it troubles the powerful, nor does an official account become true by administrative decree.

No regime, however violent, manipulative, or repressive, can defeat truth once society rejects arbitrary rule. It may restrict a publication, persecute a source, or intimidate a citizen. It cannot repeal facts. Social media users need only speak and write courageously and truthfully about the country as it is. That reality is the light the authorities find most disturbing.