Never directly elected by the people, the former Marxist rebel died at the age of 79 in the Barcelona clinic where he was hospitalized in June, more than five years after leaving power in May 2017.
Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who died on Friday, ruled Angola for 38 years and used oil windfalls to enrich his family while his country remained one of the poorest on the planet. Never directly elected by the people, the former Marxist rebel died at the age of 79 in the Barcelona clinic where he was hospitalized in June, more than five years after leaving power in May 2017.
He ruled over Angola with an iron fist but his mark did not survive his departure. His daughter Isabel, nicknamed the “princess” and bombed in 2016 at the head of the national oil company Sonangol, is now being hunted down by the judges and faces a host of investigations for corruption. And his son Filomeno has been in prison since 2019, also on corruption charges.
When José Eduardo dos Santos came to power in 1979, Angola had been in the throes of civil war for four years following its independence from Portugal. A long and difficult war – some 500,000 dead in 27 years – which he led, with the support of the USSR and Cuba, against Jonas Savimbi’s Unita, supported by the South African apartheid regime and the States -United.
A hot spot of the Cold War until the early 1990s, the civil war only formally ended in 2002, after Savimbi’s death.
Sounds then the hour of the oil boom. Dos Santos makes Angola the leading producer of black gold in Africa – neck and neck with Nigeria – but only to the benefit of a tiny part of the population.
Rare in public, he maintains total control over his party, the Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which earned him constant reappointment as head of the country where he heads the government, army, police and judges. Under his reign, the media were locked down and the rare outbreaks of popular protest suppressed.
Outside its borders, its longevity has allowed it to establish itself as a political pillar of the region, where it was a powerful supporter of Congolese President Joseph Kabila, his neighbor. “Against all odds”, Mr. dos Santos “managed to keep power despite the challenge of the war and the elections”, sums up Alex Vines, of the Chatham House study center in London.
He “has always been a great strategist”, adds Didier Péclard, professor at the University of Geneva. “He knew how to redistribute the favors made possible thanks to the oil rent in a rather restricted circle of political customers”. Born August 28, 1942 from a modest family, Mr. dos Santos grew up in the “barrio” or district of Sambizanga.
In this shantytown of the capital, the core of the struggle against the Potuguese colonial power, this son of a mason joined the MPLA in 1961 but only made a brief stint in the armed struggle. Two years later, he obtained a scholarship to study in Azerbaijan where he obtained an engineering degree and married a Soviet, Tatiana Kukanova, Isabelle’s mother. Then married to Ana Paula, an ex-stewardess 18 years his junior, he is the father of several children.
In the 1970s, he continued his political ascent by joining the Central Committee of the MPLA. Dauphin of the first Angolan president Agostinho Neto, he became his head of diplomacy at independence in 1975. On his death in 1979, he was invested head of state by the party, of which he took over the presidency.
Never directly elected
He then no longer let go of power according to the elections and changes to the Constitution, without ever being directly elected. In 1992, the presidential election was canceled between the two rounds after accusations of fraud by his rival Jonas Savimbi. Another election scheduled for 2008 will never take place and the 2010 Constitution allows him to be reappointed two years later as leader of the MPLA, winner of the legislative elections.
The police crack down on any attempt at a mass demonstration. His political adversaries cry “dictatorship”, he denies it. “We are a democratic country. We have several parties,” he said in 2013 in a rare press interview.
“He’s a real despot, a fake democrat,” said rapper Adao Bunga “McLife”, of the Revolutionary Movement for Angola.
A lover of music and poetry, Zedu, as he is nicknamed, divides his time between the very colonial pink presidential palace and a residence in the south of Luanda.
In 2013, he confided to Brazilian television his weariness of power, describing his reign as “too long”.
In December 2016, when it was rumored that he was suffering from cancer, he announced his retirement. As promised, he leaves his place a few months later to his runner-up Joao Lourenço.