A few days before leaving the presidency of Angola, in September 2017, José Eduardo dos Santos inaugurated, as one of his last official acts, a monument in Cuito Cuanavale, in the east of the country.
The structure pays tribute to the heroes of one of the most famous battles of the civil war, in 1988. Epic, the confrontation that pitted Marxists in government and anti-communists with the support of South African apartheid ended with no clear winner and became a kind of founding myth of the independent Angola.
By associating himself with such a symbolic event, the president who left office after an impressive 38 years in power sought to shine his credentials as father of the nation, as a last act before forced retirement.
Dos Santos, who died this Friday (8), never had personality as a trump card, which makes him an exception among the long-lived African leaders of the post-African decolonization period. In this respect, he was never in the same league as Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania) or Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), not to mention Nelson Mandela (South Africa), able to mesmerize crowds with their oratory.
The thin voice, the engineer’s mannerisms—his academic background and what he liked to be called—and the Soviet bureaucrat’s style were the antithesis of charisma. Behind his back, opponents mocked him with the nickname “Zédu”. It was these characteristics, in a way, that catapulted him to the command of the country in 1979, after the sudden death of the first Angolan president, Agostinho Neto.
At that time, Dos Santos was a rare figure of consensus, which did not threaten any internal faction of the dominant MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola). He was seen as a transitional leader, but his ability to balance the country’s ethnic, regional and ideological mosaic kept him in power for four decades, a feat even on a continent accustomed to long political reigns.
As president, “the engineer” managed and plundered state resources, building a vast clientelistic network that smothered opponents and rivals. The long civil war, resolved only in 2002, in a certain way helped him, narrowing the margin for disputes within the regime in the name of the effort against the enemy led by Unita (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola).
His regime was never particularly bloodthirsty, at least compared to what was seen in other African nations, despite occasional purges and repression of dissent.
Dos Santos ruled more as a manager of the natural wealth provided by oil and diamonds. Its modus operandi was to co-opt institutions and release the brakes on buying support from the elites, which made Angola for a long time one of the most corrupt countries in the world. In the first decade of this century, the oil boom made Angola the fastest growing country on the planet, with annual rates above 20%. The then president’s position never seemed safer. Large works, many of which were carried out by Brazilian contractors, became a brand of the country, driven by bribery and overpricing.
But the global crash that followed ten years later had the opposite effect, bringing recession, currency crisis, poverty and even the birth of a small movement of protest in civil society.
The magic formula that allowed the engineer such longevity gradually faded, and the qualities that brought him to power ended up becoming a burden to the regime. Corruption accusations involving his own family mounted, contributing to his decision to finally get out of the picture.
The promise that the new head of state, João Lourenço, would preserve the privileges of the presidential clan did not materialize, despite nominally being allies. With an instinct for survival, Lourenço distanced himself from the former statesman and let a kind of Angolan Lava Jato run wild.
The physical decline culminated in the former president’s death less than two months before an election in which his legacy could be an embarrassment to the current government, criticized by the economic crisis. In a way, it was a last service rendered by Dos Santos to the party he commanded for so long.
The question now remains as to how the population will cultivate the memory of the man who most contributed to the creation of modern Angola and whether the image of the father of the country will finally stick to it.
