Dos Santos, José Eduardo 1942–

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José Eduardo dos Santos 1942–

Politician

José Eduardo dos Santos became president of Angola in 1979 and was one of the African continent’s longest serving leaders at the onset of the twenty-first century. Dos Santos heads the Movimento Popular de Libertçaão de Angola (MPLA), the party that led the country in its prolonged and contentious struggle for independence from Portugal in the 1960s.

The son of a bricklayer, dos Santos was born in Luanda, the capital of what was then Portuguese West Africa, on August 28, 1942. As a teen, he won admittance to the prestigious Liceu Salvador Carreia, where the Portuguese elite sent their offspring and which admitted only a small number of African students. The Angola in which dos Santos grew up was an overseas province of Portugal, but there was widespread dissatisfaction, and several resistance groups emerged in the late 1950s, inspired and aided by other African nations’ successful campaigns for independence. In 1961 dos Santos joined one of these groups, the MPLA, as the opposition movement in Angola grew in strength and fervor. For his role in the movement, he was forced to flee the country, and in Kinshasa, Zaire—later the Democratic Republic of the Congo—he became a key player in the formation of the MPLA Youth organization.

The MPLA was a dedicated Marxist organization at the time, and in 1963 dos Santos won a party scholarship for study in the Soviet Union. He trained as a petroleum engineer at the Institute of Oil and Gas in Baku, graduating in 1969, and returned to Angola the following year. He immediately resumed his political activities there, joining a guerrilla unit of the MPLA that was active in the oil-rich area of Cabinda. The war against Portuguese colonial rule finally ended in 1974, when a coup in Lisbon ousted the military dictatorship and the new government declared a truce with the Angolan rebels.

In 1974 dos Santos went from a post as second in command of telecommunications services in Cabinda to the MPLA’s coordinator for foreign affairs. That same year he was elevated to the MPLA Central Committee, and became an active participant in the formation of the first Angolan government. The country formally became the People’s Republic of Angola on November 11, 1975, and dos Santos became the first minister for foreign affairs in the new government of President Antonio Agostinho Neto. In 1978 he also

At a Glance…

Born José Eduardo dos Santos, on August 28, 1942, in Luanda, Angola; son of a bricklayer; married Ana Paula dos Santos; three children. Education: Institute of Oil and Gas in Baku, graduated, 1969.

Career; Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA), Youth organization leader, early 1970s, second-in-command of telecommunications services in Cabinda, 1974, coordinator of the Foreign Affairs department, 1974; Angolan government, foreign minister, 1975-78 minister for economic development and planning, 1978, president, 1979-.

Addresses; Office —Cabinete do Presidente, Luanda, Angola.

became minister for economic development and planning.

The road to independence had been a long one for Angolans, but the various resistance groups remained at odds after 1975, and the conflict quickly turned into a civil war. The country was a strife-ridden, dangerous place when dos Santos became president after Neto died of cancer in September of 1979. The National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the Uniao Nacional para a Independencia Total de Angola (UNITA) took control of various parts of the country, and over the next decade the world’s superpowers, specifically the United States and the Soviet Union, provided aid to the warring factions and turned the country into a Cold War battleground. The MPLA received assistance from the Soviets, and a large Cuban military also battled UNITA forces, which were receiving covert aid from the United States as well as from South Africa’s apartheid regime. For years, dos Santos and UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi were avowed mortal enemies.

In 1991 dos Santos announced that the MPLA was abandoning its Marxist platform, and elections were held the following year. He was one of 11 candidates for the presidency, but his main opponent was Savimbi, whom he beat in the polls by nine percentage points. In response, Savimbi claimed vote fraud, and refused to take part in a runoff election. The civil war resumed, and by law dos Santos remained as interim president. He and Savimbi continued their mutual enmity, despite the signing of the 1994 Lusaka Protocol between the two and the subsequent government of national unity formed between the MPLA and UNITA in 1997. Savimbi died on the battlefield in February of 2002, and the following month UNITA and Angolan army commanders announced a cessation of the fighting, which by then had endured for some four decades.

Dos Santos is president of a nation of ten million inhabitants, which exports oil, coffee, and diamonds. Its economy, however, remains in shambles and it must import food to feed it citizens. The offshore oil reserves of Cabinda provide about 85 percent of government revenue, but observers charge that the government skims about $1 billion of the $7 billion it receives annually. The 1992 election remains the only one ever held in Angolan history, but dos Santos has said that when the country stabilizes, he will set a date for new elections. In late 2003 he asserted that elections would take place before 2005. Having dismissed his prime minister some years earlier, dos Santos has served in that role, as well as that of president and head of the MPLA party. That situation could leave a potentially disastrous power vacuum if dos Santos should step down prematurely. “If… I were to nominate someone for the position of prime minister, the current government will consider itself dismissed and this prime minister would propose his own government to the head of state,” he was quoted as saying in 2001 in a BBC News report by Justin Pearce. “It is evident that not all people that have the confidence of the prime minister are the same ones that have the confidence of the head of state.”