Rafael Marques de Morais (born 1971[1]) is an Angolan journalist and anti-corruption activist[2][3] who received several international awards for his reporting on conflict diamonds and government corruption in 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.

[5] On 3 July 1999, the weekly magazine Agora published an article by Marques entitled "The Lipstick of Dictatorship" (a play on words based on the Portuguese term for a police baton).

Marques called Dos Santos a dictator and charged him with destroying Angola and with promoting “incompetence, embezzlement and corruption as political and social values".

On that date, Cangato ordered spectators, including US and Portuguese embassy officials, human-rights activists, and journalists, to leave the courtroom, after which the trial continued in secrecy.

[5][7] Following the defamation incident, Marques focused on ending the Angolan Civil War, organizing a coalition of 250 civic and religious leaders to call for peaceful resolution.

According to his Civil Courage Prize citation, "his unvarnished criticisms of the Angolan army's brutality and the malfeasance of the government and foreign oil interests put him at extreme personal risk.

In several human rights reports, and in the September 2011 book Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola, he described the killing and terrorizing of villagers by private security companies and Angolan military officials in the name of protecting mining operations.

[16] In 2006, he received the Civil Courage Prize from the Northcote Parkinson Fund, which recognizes "steadfast resistance to evil at great personal risk — rather than military valor".

It also provides a ray of hope for Angolans who believe in the importance of exposing corruption as a criminal offense and the main scourge of society.”[20] Marches shared the 2014 Gerald Loeb Award for International business journalism for "The Shortest Route to Riches.