Parties want news on Dos Santos’s health

ANGOLA’S opposition has called on the government to reveal the state of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ health amid reports that he is seriously ill at a hospital in Spain.

Dos Santos, 74, left Angola at the beginning of the month on what was officially billed as a two-week “private visit” but is yet to return.

State media have maintained silence on the issue, despite a report on an Angola-related Facebook page last week saying Dos Santos had died.

His daughter, Isabel, took to Instagram at the weekend to reject the report, dismissing it as “fake news”, but did not provide any additional information, fuelling more rumours and speculation.

“Someone has gone so low as to invent information about the death of a man in order to create confusion and turmoil in Angolan politics,” Isabel dos Santos, who is also head of state oil firm Sonangol and apparently the richest woman in the country, said.

Attempts to obtain comment from Dos Santos’ spokes- man were unsuccessful.

Raul Danda, parliamentary president of Unita, said the lack of clarity about the health of the man who has been central to Angola’s stability since the end of a long civil war in 2002 was becoming a national security issue.

“The health of the president is a matter of concern to everyone, but the problem is that everything about the health of the president is top secret,” he said.

Dos Santos rarely appears in public but the last time Danda saw him, he did not look well, he said.

“I think that his health is not okay. Knowing him as I do you can easily notice that the man is not okay. He was meant to be back on Monday and it’s now Friday and he’s not here.”

The Maka Angola website run by journalist Rafael Marques, a rare dissident, said Dos Santos had suffered a “transient ischemic cerebral accident” – essentially a stroke.

Angola is due to hold a general election on August 23 that will mark the formal end of Dos Santos’ 38 years at the helm. – Reuters