What warning signs: Basically a break in Commodity prices (in this case oil) which followed a massive borrowing drive for big time projects (in this a series of sports events, and building real estates/new towns). the first warning sign was inability of people to get their own hard currency (USD and EURO) from their own bank accounts, then people travelling had their allowance progressively reduced from 10000$ to 5000$, then any sort of business allowing particulars to import mechandise from abroad was drastically reduced: from unlimited number of cars per per person to 2 cars per person per year.
what the talking heads reported on tv: from the point of view of a normal person (ie someone paying moderate attention and not actively researching about it), , the talking heads on TV justified the whole thing in the beginning by saying that denying access to USD was because the AOA was becoming a hard currency so you didn't need USD anymore: " You can just travel with AOA and exchange on arrival!". then saying that we have a terrorism problem: "Lebanese merchants are recycling Hezbollah money to finance terrorism."
Then when lack of USD became ever more pressing, they just started to deny any news relating to the matter, going as far as enlisting the US Embassy in denying any restriction on American sales of USD to Angola, Banks ensuing denial after denial.
how this has effected your neighbors and family: Because so many things are imported people just started spending a LOT less of everything (food, cars, fuel). All the service industry and commercial areas have taken a bit hit and are laying off people, for example Toyota laid off half its workforce due to poor sales (from 50 cars per month in their lead shop to 3 cars per month) and are now accepting to do maintenance on cars they have sold(meaning lots of people are forgoing car maintenance).
I took a pay cut, most of my family and friends is suffering stress from job threats of lay off.
Crime is getting worse these days as said earlier, USD exchange points are targeted by armed criminals, banks are targeted and Chinese construction workers are also being targeted since the like to keep liquid USD on them to do remittance.
Real prices of land is cheaper now because people are taking pay cuts at work and are conservative with their cash reserves, Houses are still a bit expensive. So this is a good moment to buy.
One thing I am looking into, is to diversify my assets, since I managed to get some assets out of country to some places (can't say because of OPSEC), both in USD in accounts and Gold in storage at dealer, but I am looking for maybe putting some in the Permanent Portofolio or similar product to reduce exposure to the banks holding my funds.
One advice: There is always some ways to circumvent the capital controls at a cost(monetary, convenience, safety), but the window of opportunity might be limited.
For example we had a 8 month period in which we could exchange AOA for Namibian Rands, which allowed me to buy Kruggerands coins at but now no longer possible. Also beware of the asset you are buying, because now the Namibian Rand/SA Rand is collapsing against the dollar.
My idea is to diversify from the weak asset(AOA) to hard assets : USD(liquid), Physical Gold(iliquid), Land(Semi-liquid), House for Rental(cash flow source), and Paper gold (liquid/use as bank account)
Namibian rands just allowed me to convert from AOA to Gold, since buying gold with USD was a hard to hard conversion.
wow, Sams, I just went back and read your posts. Sounds like you have been prepping for this (and the rest of life) for a while. Would love to hear a more detailed account of how this went down. What warning signs, what the talking heads reported on tv, what you saw actually happening, how this has effected your neighbors and family, etc.
ps - one man's junk is another man's treasure - I love the cheap oil 
