Jose Eduardo dos Santos
José Eduardo dos Santos (Luanda, August 28, 1942-Barcelona, July 8, 2022) was an Angolan politician. He served as president of Angola from 1979 to 2017. As president, he was also the commander-in-chief of the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) and president of the MPLA (People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola), the country's ruling party. since the country's independence in 1975. During the last years of his tenure he was the second longest-serving head of state in Africa, surpassed only by Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea.
Biography
Early Years
He was the son of Avelino Eduardo dos Santos, and his wife Jacinta José Paulino, originally from São Tomé and Príncipe. He attended elementary school in his neighborhood in Luanda, and did his baccalaureate at the Salvador Correia High School.
At the age of 18, he joined the MPLA, which was then one of the anti-colonial movements fighting for the independence of Angola. Due to the repression of the colonial government, he went into self-exile in the Republic of the Congo in 1961. There he collaborated with the MPLA which had its leadership in Brazzaville. To continue his education, he moved to the Soviet Union, where he received his bachelor's degree in the petrochemical specialty of his profession in Baku, Azerbaijan. During his studies, he married Azerbaijani Tatiana Kukanova, with whom he had a daughter, Elizabeth dos Santos.
Independence of Angola
In 1970 he returned to Angola, which was still a Portuguese territory, and joined the armed forces of the MPLA, the EPLA (People's Army for the Liberation of Angola, from 1974 called FAPLA, Popular Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola), becoming a radio transmitter in the second political-military region of the MPLA which organized, from the Republic of Congo, guerrilla activities in the province of Cabinda. In 1974, he was promoted to deputy head of the second region's telecommunications service. He served as a representative of the MPLA in Yugoslavia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the People's Republic of China, before being elected to the Central Committee, and the Political Bureau of the MPLA in the province of Moxico, in September 1974.
He was appointed Coordinator of the Foreign Department of the MPLA in 1974, officiating as a kind of chancellor who exercised the diplomatic representation of that revolutionary movement in several African capitals. His task was to get international support for the independence claims with which Luanda was pressuring Lisbon.
President of the People's Republic of Angola (1979-1992)
Rise to power
Without abandoning his political activity in the MPLA or his task as Angolan foreign minister, dos Santos added to his concerns a hard work for the development of culture, education and the reconstruction of his country, devastated by famines, plagues and civil war. This earned him the appointment as Minister of Planning in 1978. In 1979, after the death of the first president, Agostinho Neto, Dos Santos assumed the Presidency on an interim basis, until his official appointment on September 21.
Government during the civil war
The newly appointed president had to devote himself to the urgent problem of reaching a peace agreement between the two armed organizations. Both armies were supported by troops from various foreign countries: the MPLA for Cuba and the UNITA for South Africa. At the same time, a transition period led by President Dos Santos began, which in theory includes a progressive step towards an open democracy, with political pluralism and the abandonment of the communist system to enter a true market economy.
Pretoria launched a large-scale air strike on September 26, 1979, six days after dos Santos assumed the presidency of the Republic of Angola. The city of Lubango, located 350 km from the border, was bombed (infrastructure, bridges and railway tunnels were destroyed, as well as the Serra da Leba highway). With the arrival of Ronald Reagan to power in Washington, South Africa intensified its offensive in Angola. In December 1980, Operation "Smokeshell" against the southern provinces of Angola, Cunene and Kuando-Kubango, with means comparable to those of the 1975 invasion.
Starting in the mid-1980s, Eduardo Dos Santos sought diplomatic solutions. In March 1984, he traveled to Cuba and issued a joint communiqué with Fidel Castro in which they demanded, in exchange for the withdrawal of the Cuban troops from Angola, the withdrawal of the South African military forces from Angola, the independence of Namibia ((colonized by South Africa) and the end of political and logistical support for UNITA. However, this communiqué had the opposite effect, and Ronald Reagan intensified his support for UNITA. In 1986, the United States even delivered surface-to-air missiles to the rebels FIM-92 Stinger, which were used to shoot down two UN aircraft in the 1990s.
On May 31, 1991, José Eduardo dos Santos signed a peace agreement with his opponent. In the first free and multiparty elections organized in 1992 under the supervision of the United Nations, after 16 years of fighting in which up to 500,000 people died, dos Santos led his side to victory in legislative elections against the main party of the opposition, UNITA. In the presidential elections held that same year, Eduardo dos Santos prevailed over Jonas Savimbi, leader of UNITA, but did not obtain the necessary absolute majority in the first round (49.57% of the votes for dos Santos compared to 40.6% of Savimbi). Savimbi refused to concede defeat to him and took up arms again, sending Angola into a new civil war in which 30,000 people died.
On May 19, 1993, the US authorities decided to suspend their support for UNITA and officially recognize José Eduardo dos Santos and the MPLA government as the official executive bodies of the Republic of Angola. In April 1997, the "legal" joined the Government of National Unity (GURN), which ruled the country until the 2008 elections. One of the former Unita leaders, Geraldo Sachipengo Nunda, was promoted to Chief of Staff of the new national army and remained in office for ten years.
President of the Republic of Angola (1992-2017)
The death of Savimbi and the end of the violence
The definitive truce between the MPLA and UNITA could only be reached in 2002, when the leader of the latter, Jonás Savimbi, once again denying the electoral results that had given a clear victory to the MPLA, was killed by the Angolan Armed Forces, formed by the former FAPLA (MPLA army). With the bellicose leader gone, dos Santos was finally able to propose and reach a ceasefire with the guerrilla organization, which in turn, greatly weakened by desertions and a bad image due to the crimes committed under the inspiration of Savimbi, reciprocated by officially abandoning the armed struggle and becoming an opposition political party.
In 1990, with the end of the Cold War, the MPLA adopted social democracy as its official ideology and pursued a liberal economic policy sponsored by the IMF, while integrating senior FNLA officials into its leadership.
The country emerges from decades of civil war in economic ruin: triple-digit inflation, devaluation of the national currency, high debt, dependence on food imports, opacity in the management of oil revenues.
Future challenges
The task of dos Santos or the rulers who replace him will not be easy due to the serious problems that afflict the country.
Among them stands out the very serious humanitarian crisis, product of the prolonged civil and international war that Angola endured, the abundance of minefields for the same reason and the actions of the guerrilla groups that still fight and insist on the independence of the northern Cabinda exclave. The latter (especially the Front for the Liberation of the Cabinda Enclave, FLEC) are supported by Congolese troops, which introduces an additional element of disturbance in the region.
He led an ambitious national reconstruction plan that included the construction of dozens of factories in the Viana Special Economic Zone (several of these factories were inaugurated on May 26, 2011) and the promotion of the construction of more than 200,000 houses in the country, with an emphasis on the poor, although at the same time, new and lavish buildings are erected in Luanda by Chinese and Brazilian companies. Companies from all over the world invest in Angola, in mining, oil and in businesses where the Angolan government reserves the largest share.
Government Corruption
The chaotic liberalization of the economy since the 1990s has led to increased inequalities. Skyscrapers and "bling-bling" destined to satisfy the new bourgeoisie flourish in the capital, to the detriment of improving the quality of life of the population. The new elite linked to oil profits invests little locally and prefers to inject billions of dollars into speculative operations abroad or in the acquisition of shares of international financial groups.
Dos Santos has been accused of leading one of the most corrupt political regimes in Africa, ignoring Angola's social and economic needs, focusing his efforts on amassing a fortune for his family and silencing the opposition, while that 70% of the population lives on less than 2 dollars a day.
He became wealthy when he came to power, but only began to amass his incredible wealth during and after the Angolan civil wars. When the ceasefire took place and large sectors of the economy were privatized, dos Santos took control of various companies and industries, also managing the disposition of various industries in the natural resources sector.
Exile
After his resignation as president in October 2017, he chose to go into exile in Spain, establishing his residence in the Barcelona neighborhood of Pedralbes in Catalonia.
Death
José Eduardo dos Santos died on July 8, 2022 in a clinic in Barcelona where he was hospitalized after suffering a heart attack on June 23. The Angolan government decreed five days of national mourning. His body was transferred to Angola to give him burial and honors in Rwanda. The transfer occurred after the Investigating Court number 11 of Barcelona authorized the return of the body to Ana Paula, widow of Dos Santos, after the complaint of the five children of dos Santos against her and the personal doctor on suspicion of murder. After the autopsy, which ruled the natural death of dos Santos, the judicial decision was made. The children of dos Santos stated that
that at the state funerals "the conditions must be given for the participation of all his family, heads of State from all over the world, several of which already publicly manifested their intention to pay tribute to two Saints. a last tribute and this is what Angolans of good faith in fact deserve and want and not the global shame to which the head of government of Angola exposes us to use the body of their predecessor as tools political campaign activities and/or coverage of electoral fraud.
although some of them wanted an intimate funeral in Barcelona and not a state one "which could favor the current government" in the elections of August 24, 2022, other children were in favor of a state funeral, but after the elections to respect neutrality.
| Predecessor: Himself |  President of the Republic of Angola 1992-2017 | Successor: João Lourenço |
| Predecessor: Lúcio Lara (Interino) | .png){kind=small} President of the People ' s Republic of Angola 1979-1992 | Successor: Himself |