Johannesburg/Luanda - Angolans go to the polls later this month in the first national election in the war-scarred country in 16 years. President Eduardo dos Santos' party is expected to win easily.

Dos Santos, 68, who has maintained a tight grip on power for 29 years, had repeatedly delayed parliamentary and presidential elections on the grounds that the country's ruined infrastructure made them unfeasible.

The elections to the 220-seat National Assembly on September 5 and 6, while deemed unlikely to dent the majority of dos Santos' MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), are seen as a dry run for presidential elections scheduled for next year.

As such, the MPLA is campaigning vigorously to ward off any surprises from UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), the lacklustre opposition party against which it fought a 27-year civil war.

At independence from Portugal in 1975 Angola became a front in Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States.

UNITA rebels, backed by the US and apartheid South Africa, took up arms against the Soviet- and Cuban-backed ruling MPLA.

As election day draws near, some Angolans are remembering with nervousness the last time country voted.

It was 1992 and the MPLA and UNITA had just agreed a peace deal, paving the way for presidential elections. UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi rejected his narrow defeat by dos Santos and resumed his guerrilla war that ended with his death a decade later.

All told, at least half a million people are thought to have died in the war and millions were displaced.

Six years and a multi-billion-dollar credit line from China later Angola has begun rebuilding the country, using its considerable oil reserves as collateral.

After Nigeria, Angola is now Africa's second-largest oil producer, pumping out close to 2 million barrels of crude a day.

A member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) since 2007, Angola is also now China's number-one source for the fuel.

High oil prices are fuelling breakneck growth that was predicted to exceed 20 per cent in 2007, against 5.7 per cent for the continent as a whole.

The petrodollars and the Chinese credit are funding new roads, clinics and expanded electricity and mobile phone networks, but observers say the trickle-down effect of the boom for the country's around 17 million people has really been minimal.

Angola actually dropped two places on the United Nations human development index between 2006 and 2008, falling to 162 out of a total 177. The country also has one of the worst child mortality rates in Africa. One child out of every four (260 out of 1,000) does not live to see its fifth birthday.

While plush new housing developments shoot up along the Golden Mile of sandy beaches and palm trees in the capital Luanda, the rubbish-strewn slums that house most of the city's around 5 million people continue to mushroom.

And while analysts say the government has made some progress in reining in corruption, graft in the public service and public companies is still rife.

An online poll by Portugal-based news portal AngoNoticias in the week before the election showed 61.5 per cent of 917 respondents saying fighting corruption should be the main priority of the next government. Fighting poverty was number two.

Campaigning in the election has been largely peaceful although Human Rights Watch, in a report earlier this month, sounded the alarm over sporadic attacks by MPLA supporters against mainly UNITA supporters.

The New York-based rights watchdog also raised concerns over suppression of media freedoms and the lack of independence of the National Electoral Commission in wondering whether the polls were likely to be truly free and fair. (dpa)