Rafael Marques (journalist)
Rafael Marques de Morais (born 1971) is an Angolan journalist and human rights activist who received several international awards for his reporting on conflict diamonds and government corruption. He currently heads the anti-corruption watchdog Maka Angola.
Early life
During growing up Marques “became disturbed by the worsening state of his country. “I had never heard of a lawyer, [had] no idea of what human rights were, no idea of what fighting corruption was”, he later recalled. “I realised that the way of addressing the issues that concerned me was by being a journalist.”
He received a BA (Hons) Anthropology & Media from Goldsmiths, University of London and an MSc in African Studies from St Antony's College, University of Oxford. He started work as a journalist in 1992 at the state-owned newspaper Jornal de Angola.
Shortly after joining Jornal de Angola, Marques wrote an article on the forthcoming presidential election in which he quoted an opposition leader's criticism of dos Santos. He did not intend for the quotation to be published in the newspaper, but through some editorial error it did appear in the paper and Marques was punished with a transfer to the local news desk. Owing to his continued “tendency to inject unwelcome social commentary into even the driest reportage”, he continued to be demoted. One day, assigned to write about the latest national statistics, he included political analysis. “And that was the last straw”, he later told a reporter. He was fired.