Angolan security officials arrested at least five people March 7 after an Internet-based group calling itself the Angolan People's Revolution issued a call for social protests for that day in cities from Cabinda to Cunene. It is currently unclear who is organizing the protests — the name of the group's leader on its website, Agostinho Jonas Roberto dos Santos, is a combination of the names of the country's three leaders at independence. International media reported that Mangovo Ngoyo of the Cabinda rebel group Front for the Liberation of the Cabinda Enclave (FLEC) had a hand in the protest group, while the president of the country's main opposition party, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), said his party was not involved and would not participate. Angola's ruling party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), has been wary of the possibility for protests, dissent and hostile anti-government threats since the end of the country's civil war, which ran from its independence from Portugal in 1975 until 2002. This wariness has grown since the beginning of unrest in the Middle East and North Africa. Conditions are indeed suitable for protests in Angola, where an ethnic minority ruling elite have become extraordinarily wealthy via oil wealth and massive corruption while most citizens live on meager incomes. However, the MPLA has thus far retained power through aggressive use of its robust security apparatus, and it is prepared to undermine and battle dissenters and opponents to keep its grip on power. Potential Angolan protesters thus know the high price they will pay for opposing the MPLA. Angola's domestic situation has been relatively fragile since the end of the civil war, and there are many Angolans dissatisfied with the current political system. The end of the war brought rapid increases in oil production and diamond mining that have been the source of large amounts of income for the MPLA. Party members are given economic incentives, such as equity stakes in commercial deals with foreign investors, in exchange for loyalty. These can reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars for party officials — and billions for the MPLA's inner elite. But while this has led to tremendous wealth for the ruling party, socio-economic conditions have not improved for ordinary Angolans, most of whom live in poverty — the average per capita income in Angola is estimated at $2 per day. The MPLA is ethnically affiliated with the Mbundu tribe, which makes up only about 25 percent of Angola's 19 million people. During the war, the MPLA fought several rival groups, primarily UNITA, affiliated with the Ovimbundu tribe, which comprises about 37 percent of the population. The country's other major tribe, the Bakongo, make up about 13 percent of the population and are the main tribe in the oil-rich Cabinda region, from whence the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) drew most of its support in its fight against the MPLA during the civil war. The Bakongo also have significant population overlap with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country with which the MPLA has an uneasy relationship. Parallel to the FNLA campaign, and continuing after the war ended, the FLEC (which was closely linked to the FNLA) has been conducting a low-level insurgency in Cabinda. These actions, such as the January 2010 attack against a convoy escorting the Togolese soccer team to the African Cup of Nations tournament and the November 2010 attack against an armed convoy carrying Chinese oil workers, have not significantly impacted the government's control over the region. Despite the currently weak UNITA-led opposition, the ruling party has not forgotten the 27 years of civil war, and containing dissent thus remains a high priority. The party diverted much government spending to defense and security during the war, and it continues to maintain a strong security apparatus ready to block domestic and foreign threats. Angola ostensibly has a multiparty political system, but the MPLA holds opposition party members in deep suspicion and employs a series of techniques to keep itself and its elite in power. Dissenters are initially offered patronage appointments before being subjected to stronger methods, such as security raids, arrests and abductions. Internally, the MPLA also is dealing with competition over who will succeed President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. The 69-year-old dos Santos has ruled Angola since 1979, and there are occasionally reports that he is ailing, as well as debates over when and how he will manage his exit from the presidency and successor. He rules a few steps ahead of his top lieutenants, who lead competing but overlapping factions within the MPLA. Gen. Helder Vieira Dias (aka "Kopelipa") commands the powerful military apparatus, Casa Militar, from within the Office of the President. The other leading faction involves Manuel Vicente, chairman of state-owned oil company SONANGOL. Both factions are powerful in their own right, overseeing the two main levers that maintain political stability in the country (the stick and carrot, respectively). Dos Santos has regularly shuffled his effectively lower-ranking Cabinet to keep aspiring politicians on the defensive, but Kopelipa and Vicente are powerful enough that they must be managed much more carefully. The emergence of protests, especially amid a weak political opposition and possibly with UNITA participation, may indicate that one of the MPLA factions is trying to engineer unrest in its favor in the context of the succession issue. Factions in the MPLA have orchestrated the removal of powerful political forces before, notably with the 2006 firing and arrest of Gen. Fernando Garcia Miala, then head of Angola's External Intelligence Services, over coup-plotting accusations. Sizable protests may not take place in Luanda despite the call by the Angolan People's Revolution, but this will not be for lack of effort to achieve genuine change from dissenters and opposition figures. It is unclear how many people responded to the call to protest — the MPLA's tight grip on Angolan media has meant information on actual protests has not emerged yet, other than arrest reports and statements of condemnation. But the MPLA, ceaselessly on alert for domestic and foreign threats, will utilize its levers of power to prevent the threat of social protest from emerging.