Angolan president waged brutal civil war and plundered his country’s wealth
Jose´ Eduardo dos Santos, who has died aged 79, presided over Angola during a brutal civil war and navigated the cross-currents of the Cold War to last 38 years as president, becoming one of Africa’s longest-serving and most rapacious tyrants.
During his nearly four decades in power, from 1979 to 2017, dos Santos led his resource-plentiful nation through seemingly endless conflict and an uneasy peace marked by corruption that funnelled vast riches to his family and a favoured few while leaving most Angolans in dismal poverty.
More than half a million people were killed in a civil war that displaced more than 3 million and left much of the country in ruins or pocked with land mines, even as Angola became Africa’s second-largest oil producer and third-largest producer of diamonds.
A fiercely private, even reclusive figure, dos Santos largely eschewed any cult of personality. Even his image on the country’s currency was partly concealed by another portrait. He gave few speeches or interviews, revealing little of his personal life.
He was eventually forced into exile – to a $7.2m mansion in Barcelona – after his successor, Joa˜ o Lourenc¸ o, unexpectedly launched an anti-corruption crackdown that closed in on the long-untouchable dos Santos family and its associates. The chief target was Isabel dos Santos, the former president’s eldest daughter, who was charged in 2020 with money laundering, forgery and other crimes stemming from her tenure as head of Angola’s national oil company, Sonangol.
Prosecutors relied in large part on a massive trove of leaked financial and business records revealed by news organisations working with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The ‘‘Luanda Leaks’’ scandal tied Isabel dos Santos or her husband to more than 400 corporate entities in 41 countries and offshore tax havens.
She had opulent homes in London and Dubai and built a business empire worth an estimated $3.5 billion. Two of her half-siblings fled abroad. A half-brother, Jose´ Filomeno dos Santos, was arrested in 2018 and later sentenced to five years in prison for embezzling up to $500m from Angola’s sovereign wealth fund, which he had led.
In all, the Lourenc¸ o government estimated that more than $24b was looted during dos Santos’ rule, allegedly through illegal diversion of oil revenue, sweetheart government contracts, deeply entrenched patronage and other schemes.
Despite his understated public image, dos Santos held nearly unfettered power. He headed the armed forces, oversaw security agencies and led the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA, the forces that have dominated nearly every facet of Angolan life since the Portuguese colony won independence in 1975.
At that point, dos Santos’ faction was backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union. The United States and apartheid-era South Africa supported the MPLA’s chief military rival, known as Unita, fuelling a ruinous proxy war for control of Angola. The civil war outlasted the Cold War, ending only in 2002.
During his long tenure, dos Santos’ regime relied on what State Department human rights reports described as arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings, as well as a murky judicial process and limits on free assembly, speech and the press.
Ashrewd dealmaker, dos Santos achieved his political longevity by swapping allies and ideologies as the world changed around him. As the Soviet Union began to implode, he permitted a partial market economy, as US firms tapped Angola’s vast offshore oil fields.
In time, he abandoned Marxism-Leninism, expelled Cuban forces and allowed the first multiparty elections. The US became Angola’s largest trading partner, and dos Santos made four visits to the White House by 2004.
Since then, an increasing share of the country’s oil has gone to China, which has invested more than $20b in roads, schools, power plants and other infrastructure in Angola. Nevertheless, the World Bank estimates that more than half of Angola’s population of more than 30m survive on less than US$2 a day. Life expectancy remains among the world’s lowest, and infant mortality ranks among the highest.
Jose´ Eduardo dos Santos, the son of a bricklayer, was born in Luanda. His high grades secured him one of the few spots available to African students at a school attended by children of the Portuguese elite. He enlisted in the MPLA’s army at age 20 determined to end four centuries of Portuguese rule.
Like many African militants, he found support in Moscow. He received a degree in petroleum engineering in 1969 from a college in Baku, Azerbaijan, then a Soviet republic.
The death of first post-independence president Agostinho Neto in 1979 elevated dos Santos – then a key cabinet member – to president, commander of the armed forces and head of the People’s Assembly.
Dos Santos was married to Ana Paula dos Santos, a former fashion model and flight attendant. He was reported to have fathered up to eight children by various wives and relationships, but no official list of survivors was immediately available.
He died in a Barcelona clinic, where he was said to have been having cancer treatment for several years.