Jose Eduardo dos Santos, a former president of Angola who presided over the continent’s second-largest oil producer for over four decades, passed away on Friday at the age of 79, the Angolan presidency announced on Facebook.
For 38 years, Jose Eduardo dos Santos presided over Angola.
More than five years after leaving office in May 2017, he passed away in the Barcelona hospital where he was being treated in June.
Although he had an iron grip on Angola, his influence was short-lived.
His daughter Isabel, known as the “princess” and chosen in 2016 to lead the national oil corporation Sonangol, is currently the target of judicial harassment and is the subject of numerous corruption investigations.
His son Filomeno has reportedly been imprisoned since 2019 for corruption as well.
Following its independence from Portugal, Angola had been embroiled in civil war for four years when José Eduardo dos Santos became office.
The fight he commanded against Jonas Savimbi’s Unita, which was backed by the USSR and Cuba and the South African apartheid system, resulted in roughly 500,000 deaths over the course of 27 years.
Molten gold
The oil boom was in effect at this time. Angola is now Africa’s top producer of black gold, neck and neck with Nigeria, according to Dos Santos, but only for the benefit of a small portion of the population.
He is rarely seen in public, but he maintains complete control over his party, the Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which results in his continual reappointment as president, where he oversees the nation’s government, army, police, and judicial system.
– The princess and the strategist
Under his rule, the media is controlled, and the few uprisings of the populace are put down.
His longevity has allowed him to become a political stalwart outside of his country’s boundaries, where he was a staunch ally of his neighbor, the president of the Republic of the Congo, Joseph Kabila.
According to Alex Vines of the London-based Chatham House study center, Mr. dos Santos “has managed to hold on to power despite the struggle of war and elections against all odds.”
He has always had excellent strategic skills, “Professor Didier Péclard from the University of Geneva states. “In order to benefit a very small group of political clients, he knew how to redistribute the favors made available by the oil rent.
Developing years
Mr. dos Santos, who was born on August 28, 1942, to a humble family, grew up in Sambizanga’s “barrio” or neighborhood.
This bricklayer’s kid joined the MPLA in 1961, but he only participated in the violent conflict for a short while.
He received a scholarship to study in Azerbaijan two years later, when he earned an engineering degree and wed Tatiana Kukanova, Isabelle’s mother. After that, he had several children with Ana Paula, a former air hostess who was 18 years his junior.
He joined the MPLA Central Committee in the 1970s, continuing his ascent through politics. After Angola gained independence in 1975, he took over as the country’s first leader, Agostinho Neto, and later served as his main diplomat. When Neto passed away in 1979, the party he led as president invested him as head of state.
The term “false democrat”
After then, although never having been directly elected, he never gave up his position of authority while elections and constitutional amendments took occurred.
In 1992, his competitor Jonas Savimbi accused him of fraud, and the election was called off in the middle of the two rounds.
A second election that was supposed to be held in 2008 never happened, and the 2010 Constitution permitted him to be re-elected as MPLA leader two years later, when the MPLA won the parliamentary elections.
