He ruled Angola for nearly four decades with an iron fist, but his mark did not survive his departure from power in 2017. Former President José Eduardo dos Santos died on July 8, 2022, in late morning, at the age of 79 in Spain, the Angolan presidency announced on its Facebook page. He had been hospitalized in a clinic in Barcelona since a cardiac arrest on June 23. In the press release, the Angolan authorities bow “with the utmost respect and consideration” before a statesman who governed with “clairvoyance and humanism” his country “at difficult times”. A five-day national mourning, which will start on July 9 at midnight, has been decreed.
Born on August 28, 1942 from a modest family, José Eduardo dos Santos grew up in the “barrio” (Sambizanga district). The shantytown of the Angolan capital, Luanda, was then the center of the struggle against the Portuguese colonial power. son of a mason, Jose Eduardo dos Santos joined the Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in 1961 but only makes a brief passage 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, the mother of his daughter Isabel. 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..
When José Eduardo dos Santos came to power, 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 leads, with the support of the Soviet Union (USSR) and Cuba, against Jonas Savimbi’s Unita, supported by the southern apartheid regime -African and the United States. Hot spot of the Cold War until the beginning of the 90s, the civil war did not formally end until 2002, after the death of Savimbi. “He led the process that culminated in the signing of the peace accords on April 4, 2002,” recalls the Angolan press agency, Angop.
Over the years, he maintains full control over the MPLA. What is worth to him to be constantly renewed at the head of the country of which he directs government, army, police force and judges. Under his reign, the media were locked down and the rare outbreaks of popular protest suppressed. He thus remains in power according to the elections and the changes of 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 are crying out “dictatorship”he denies it. “We are a democratic country. We have several parties”, he underlined in 2013 in a rare interview with the press. That year, he also 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. He leaves his place as promised, a few months later, to his runner-up Joao Lourenço. José Eduardo dos Santos thus transmitted power as he had received it.
Economically, the former Marxist rebel had made 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. In particular from his family while his country remained one of the poorest on the planet. 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.