Jose Eduardo dos Santos was generally known as a quiet autocrat. He was certainly one of Africa’s longest-serving heads of state and basically impacted Angola’s historical past.
He handed away on Friday, July 8, 2022, at a clinic in Barcelona, Spain, the place he was present process therapy after an extended sickness.
When dos Santos was born on August 28, 1942, Angola was nonetheless a Portuguese colony.
By the age of 16, he joined Angola’s liberation motion MPLA. After the MPLA took up the armed battle towards the colonizers in 1961, dos Santos went into exile.
Later, he studied within the former Soviet Union (USSR) and have become an oil engineer. Lastly, in 1970, dos Santos returned to his residence nation of Angola.
As soon as Angola grew to become unbiased in 1975, dos Santos took up the place of International Minister within the newly shaped authorities.
The MPLA transformed right into a political occasion. Together with fellow politicians, dos Santos established a one-party authorities impressed by the Soviet system.
It did not take lengthy till a civil conflict broke out with the conflicting UNITA motion. Whereas the us backed the MPLA, South Africa and america supported UNITA.
This didn’t hurt dos Santos’ profession, nonetheless. First, he grew to become minister of planning, then performing head of state.
Then, in 1979, he lastly reached his purpose when Agostinho Neto died, dos Santos grew to become each President of Angola and MPLA’s occasion chief.
The MPLA has ruled Angola since independence in 1975
Peace as a political mission
Within the meantime, Angola’s civil conflict continued. It was solely after insurgent chief Jonas Savimbi was killed throughout fight in 2002 that the nation had an opportunity to come back to relaxation.
Dos Santos additionally mediated conflicts within the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic.
“Eduardo dos Santos was an distinctive chief,” occasion colleague Joao Pinto stated of him. “Solely few African politicians adopted his instance. Most of them got here to energy via a coup d’etat or clung to their energy with out finishing up any vital reforms. However dos Santos was totally different.”
However critics oppose this view. As an alternative, they argue that dos Santos clung to energy like others.
In 2001, he declared for the primary time that he would not run for president within the subsequent elections. But, within the election seven years later, he nonetheless supplied himself as a candidate.
Angola’s parliament adopted a brand new structure in 2010. It stipulates that the chairman of the strongest occasion turns into the brand new president by default.
Within the 2012 parliamentary elections, the ruling MPLA occasion secured a majority of the votes – once more. Dos Santos stayed on because the president. Election observers criticize that the opposition by no means stood a good probability throughout this election.
It was solely in the 2017 elections that dos Santos didn’t search reelection.
On September 26, 2017, dos Sandos’ successor, Joao Lourenco, was inaugurated. Nonetheless, dos Santos stored his place as occasion chief even after his resignation.
He stored controlling the parliament, the courts, and the federal government utilizing the cash and energy he had collected over time. He intimidated the media and the opposition.
Angola’s opposition criticized dos Santos for the widespread prevalence of nepotism.
“In Angola, we now have a dictatorship masked as a democracy,” political activist Pedrowski Teca advised DW. “Once you wish to achieve success in your educational or skilled profession, you might have little selection however to turn into a celebration member.”
Angolan President Joao Lourenco went after the dos Santos household alleged corrupt wealth
Wealthy Angola, poor Angolans
Concerning political and financial choices, dos Santos additionally had a agency maintain on the reins. For the reason that Nineteen Nineties, he moved Angola away from Marxism and put the market financial system as an alternative. Because of this, Angola grew to become the third-largest financial system in Sub-Saharan Africa till Kenya overtook it in 2020.
Nonetheless, Angola stays the second-largest producer of crude oil and the third-largest producer of diamonds within the continent.
In 2014, Africa World Journal declared him “man of the 12 months” for his companies to the financial improvement of his nation.
Angola additionally grew to become standard with buyers, with China its favourite buying and selling accomplice as it’s the major purchaser of Angolan crude oil. As well as, Beijing gave credit value billions of {dollars} for important infrastructural initiatives.
In contrast to Western nations, China doesn’t voice criticism concerning human rights points and the dearth of transparency in authorities spending.
Giant revenue shares from the crude oil enterprise ended up in dos Santos’s pockets or these of his benefactors. In line with the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency Worldwide, Angola ranks 136 out of 180 nations.
The federal government in Luanda has repeatedly confronted accusations of embezzlement. At one time, $31 billion (€30 billion) went lacking from Angola’s nationwide oil firm Sonangol.
However dos Santos dismissed the accusations through the 2013 State of the Union tackle. “Western organizations purposefully unfold this picture of wealthy, corrupt Africans to intimidate these individuals who want nothing however to have entry to their very own nations’ wealth.”
He accused American, English, French, and Portuguese oil firms of taking away billions from Angola yearly. “Why can non-public firms earn in such dimensions however not us Angolans?” dos Santos requested.
The truth is that almost all Angolans don’t revenue from crude oil cash. Greater than half of Angolans dwell under the poverty line. Mass unemployment is rampant. Practically 87% of individuals dwelling in city areas reside in slums.
Furthermore, a couple of third of the inhabitants relies on overseas meals assist. “We had been doing higher underneath Portuguese colonial rule than underneath the MPLA’s,” Julio Baiao, a veteran who used to battle the MPLA with the Portuguese military, advised DW.
As soon as Angola grew to become unbiased, he joined the UNITA opposition motion. “At the very least all Angolans had meals through the colonial rule. The struggling that MPLA brings over our folks is greater than any struggling we confronted through the colonial rule.”
Isabel dos Santos is taken into account certainly one of Africa’s wealthiest girls
The dos Santos dynasty
The struggling doesn’t apply to dos Santos’ household, although. Eduardo dos Santos began taking on many firms through the civil conflict. When the Angolan parliament later prohibited the president from holding firm shares, dos Santos transferred them to his daughter Isabel dos Santos. In line with the US journal Forbes, Isabel is Africa’s first billionaire. Out of the ten richest Africans, she is the one lady. Isabel had stakes in a number of banks, a soccer membership, and Angola’s nationwide oil firm as a part of her empire.
Isabel’s father operated the nation like a household enterprise, placing his youngsters in lots of key positions.
However this modified when dos Santos’ successor, Lourenco, took energy.
His first official act after taking workplace was dismissing Isabel dos Santos who her father had put accountable for the nationwide oil firm Sonangol.
The Angolan prosecutor’s workplace investigated the enterprise relations between Isabel dos Santos’ varied non-public companies and the state. Because of this, a number of contracts had been canceled. In 2020, the Angolan authorities introduced legal costs of fraud and cash laundering towards the billionaire.
Her brother Jose Filomeno dos Santos was sentenced to 5 years in jail in 2020. President Lourenco dismissed him as chairman of Angola’s sovereign wealth fund, valued at $5 billion. By then, the ex-president’s household had misplaced most of its credibility.
Edited by: Chrispin Mwakideu