By Bruce Venter
A commercial airliner belonging to the Angolan government has been seized at Johannesburg International Airport by the Kempton Park sheriff.
The plane was seized hours after the Pretoria High Court issued a draft order authorising the attachment of the aircraft in lieu of money owed to a Johannesburg businessman.
The application for the attachment of the aircraft was brought by Joaquim da Silva Augusto against the Angolan government, which owned Angola Airlines.
Augusto claimed he was owed more than R5-million by the wholly owned Angolan company Sociedada Angolana De Commercio International Limitada (Sacilda), which had never paid him for the 45 percent stake it had purchased in JA Enterprises Import and Export, a company he had owned in Namibia in the 1990s.
Augusto said in papers handed to the High Court that he had brought the application in South Africa because he believed he would be murdered if he returned to Angola.
He said the company had supplied Jonas Savimbi's Unita rebel movement with food, clothing and general items.
"When details of such business came to the knowledge of the MPLA government in Angola government representatives persuaded me rather to supply the Angolan government with substantially the same goods which I had previously supplied Unita," he said.
In June 1990, Sacilda agreed to purchase the shares for $3,175-million (abut R20-million) and entered into a sale of shares agreement with Augusto.
A spokesperson for the Angolan Embassy in Pretoria failed to comment on Thursday.