ABSTRACT
The current pandemic is perceived in most countries as a sanitary crisis, demanding first of all the expertise of those within the medical sciences and public health. That was also the case of Angola at the initial stage. But soon, the coordination and overall leadership of the state response was handed to the military, which in turn has led to a problematic militarisation of lockdown language and state policy implementation. Moreover, under the military leadership there was an adoption of a stricter version of lockdown, leading to both loss of human lives and livelihoods, particularly among the most vulnerable. This chapter aims to examine this military control of state response and the perceived impacts of the link between state policy and the ensuing militarisation of the language on the population and more specifically on how the sanitary crisis was managed. It is argued that the current sanitary crisis has shown that the military class in Angola retains the ability to hold on to power and they will do anything to undermine any civilian attempt to constrain their status quo.
