Angola’s José Eduardo dos Santos: The flawed ‘architect of peace’

Dos Santos died in Spain, where he was treated after suffering a cardiac arrest. His death was announced on Friday.

Having graduated in petroleum engineering in the Soviet Union in 1969, Dos Santos was only 37 years old when he became Angola”;s president a decade later, following the death of the first president, Agostinho Neto.

At the time, just four years after gaining independence in 1975, the country was wracked by a civil war between two of the groups that had fought Portuguese colonisation – Dos Santos”; MPLA and Unita.

The war lasted for 27 years and ravaged the country. About 500 000 people are believed to have died in the conflict.

It also drew in foreign powers, with South Africa – then under white-minority rule – sending troops to support Unita, while Cuban forces intervened on the Angolan government”;s side.

Dos Santos presided over a Marxist-oriented one-party state until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War led to the MPLA and Unita signing a peace accord.

It saw Dos Santos and Unita”;s leader, Jonas Savimbi, face off against each other in the first multi-party elections in Angola since independence.

Dos Santos defeated Savimbi by a narrow margin in the election in September 1992, resulting in a second round being called, but Savimbi boycotted it, choosing to take up arms again.

Nearly a decade later, in February 2002, Angolan government troops killed Savimbi and a peace deal was later negotiated with the new Unita leadership.

Thus, a new country was born.

Reconstruction and reconciliation were Dos Santos”; main goals, and his supporters dubbed him the “architect of peace” for his role in ending his country”;s civil war.

At the time, he enjoyed considerable popularity, as demonstrated by the victory of the MPLA in the 2008 elections with 82% of the vote.

However, in subsequent years, accusations of high-level corruption, especially in the oil sector, mismanagement of the economy and a crackdown on political dissent dogged his administration.

Dos Santos, who gained a reputation of being a cold and distant president, would say very little on these matters publicly, while discontent against his regime grew. It led to an increase in his personal and family security.

With nepotism becoming rampant, Dos Santos appointed close family members and friends to prominent positions in government, including his son José Filomeno dos Santos, also known as Zenu, as head of Angola”;s Sovereign Wealth Fund, and later, his daughter Isabel dos Santos as head of the state oil company Sonangol. She was said to have become Africa”;s richest woman.

Increasingly, it appeared as though Angola was turning into a dictatorship, with opposition politicians, civil rights activists and journalists persecuted and even killed.

One of the cases that became well known around the world, and certainly affects Dos Santos”;s legacy, was the arrest of 17 activists who were accused of “crimes of rebellion” and of plotting a coup.

Their crime? They were found reading the book “;From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation”; by American writer Gene Sharp in 2015.

In 2017, 38 years after first taking the oath of office, Dos Santos surprised many Angolans by stepping down. He chose his former defence minister, João Lourenço, as his successor.

A year later, Dos Santos also resigned as leader of the MPLA. In his last speech to the party, he admitted that he had made mistakes during his long time in power.

Dos Santos also said he left office with his head held high – and was accorded the title of “emeritus president” by his party.

But his position was fragile.

Reportedly determined to fight corruption in Angola, the newly elected Lourenço turned on his former boss and targeted Dos Santos – not directly, but through his children.

His son Zenu, for example, was jailed for five years for fraud after US$500 million was transferred from the national bank of Angola to an account in the United Kingdom.

His daughter Isabel has been banned from entering the United States for “involvement in significant corruption”, according to the US state department.

In 2020, the BBC reported on leaked documents that revealed how she had made her fortune through allegedly exploiting her own country and corruption.

At the time, Isabel dos Santos said the allegations against her were entirely false and that there was a politically motivated witch-hunt by the Angolan government.

Soon after he left power, Dos Santos went into exile in Barcelona, Spain, where he was reportedly treated for a long-term health condition that was never officially confirmed by his family members, despite having been reported in the Angolan press for many years.

He last visited Angola in September 2021, and stayed in the country until early 2022. During this time, he met Lourenço twice at his official residence.

However, these meetings did not bring any reprieve for the Dos Santos dynasty, nor erase the stain on his legacy.

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