The government of Angola this Friday confirmed the death of former President José Eduardo Dos Santoswho remained hospitalized and on life support in Barcelona, Spain, since late June, EFE reported.
The Angolan Executive announced the news with a message on their social networks indicating that Dos Santos’ death occurred at 11:10 am local time at the clinic where he was admitted.
“It is with a feeling of great pain and dismay that the Government of Angola informs national and international public opinion Death of His Excellency the former President of the Republic, the engineer José Eduardo dos Santos“, the statement said.
“The executive branch of the Republic of Angola bows with the utmost respect and consideration to the figure of a statesman of great historical importance, who for many years guided the affairs of the Angolan nation with clairvoyance and humanism,” the embassy added.
That Angolan government, currently led by João LourençoHe also offered his condolences to the family and called for “everyone’s serenity” in these moments of “pain and dismay.”
Dos Santos ruled Angola with an iron fist between 1979 and 2017 and was one of Africa’s longest-lasting leaders.. His government was marked by high levels of corruption and nepotism.
The former president was admitted to a clinic in Barcelona – the city where he has lived since 2019 – at the end of June he was in an artificial coma after a respiratory arrest, combined with life-sustaining measures.
Since then, there had been sharp disagreements in his family about how to proceed, and one of his daughters even filed a complaint in Barcelona on Monday for a possible crime of attempted murder, failure to provide assistance, injury through gross imprudence and disclosure of secrets from them around them.
Part of the family suspects so The 79-year-old former Angolan president may have been the victim of a plot to kill him to prevent him from supporting the opposition in Angola’s next August elections.
Dos Santos resigned from power in 2017 after giving up running for a new presidential term in Angola.
Joâo Lourenço succeeded him in office after winning elections for his party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which has ruled the nation since gaining independence from Portugal in 1975.
Fidel Castro’s government sent soldiers to fight alongside the MPLA in the internal war in Angola. On the Angolan conflict Around 350,000 Cuban soldiers were mobilized. The government only acknowledges 2,000 deaths during these acts, a figure strongly questioned by historians who estimate between 10,000 and 35,000.
Cuban troops left Angola in the late 1980s, leaving a country ruled by Dos Santos.
The Dos Santos family has amassed a great fortune and their daughter Isabel is said to be the richest woman in Africa and a kind of ‘princess’ on the continent and ’empress in Portugal’.
During the 38 years of Dos Santos’ government, during which he was widely criticized for human rights abuses against activists and political opponents, Luanda and the Cuban government maintained high-level diplomatic relations.