José Eduardo dos Santos

José Eduardo Dos Santos (28 August 1942 – 8 July 2022) was the president of Angola from 1979 to 2017.

José Eduardo Dos Santos was born on 28 August 1942 in what is today the district of Sambizanga in Luanda, His parents, Avelino Eduardo Dos Santos and Jacinta José Paulino, had moved to Portuguese Angola from the then-colony of São Tomé and Príncipe.

His mother was a maid, while his father was a builder and construction worker.

He attended primary school in Luanda, and received his secondary education at the Liceu Salvador Correia, today called Mutu ya Kevela.

While in school, dos Santos joined the MPLA, which marked the beginning of his political career.

Due to repression by the colonial government, dos Santos went into exile in neighbouring Congo-Brazzaville in 1961.

From there he collaborated with the MPLA and soon became an official member of the party.

To continue with his education he moved to Azerbaijan, which was Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union, where, by 1969, he received degrees in petroleum engineering and radar communications from the Azerbaijan Oil and Chemistry Institute in Baku.

In 1970, dos Santos returned to Angola, which was still a Portuguese territory known as the Overseas Province of Angola.

He served for three years in the MPLA's EPLA guerrilla force (Exército Para a Libertação de Angola), later known as the People's Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA), the military wing of the MPLA, becoming a radio transmitter in the second political-military region of the MPLA in Cabinda Province.

In 1974, he was promoted to sub-commander of the telecoms service of the second region.

He was the MPLA representative to Yugoslavia, Zaire, and the People's Republic of China before he was elected to the Central Committee and Politburo of the MPLA in Moxico in September 1974.

As president, dos Santos was also the commander-in-chief of the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) and president of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the party that has ruled Angola since it won independence in 1975.

Following the Angolan War of Independence, Angola was constituted in 1975 as a Marxist–Leninist one-party state led by the MPLA.

Dos Santos held several positions including Minister of Foreign Affairs in the government of independent Angola's first president, Agostinho Neto.

In June 1975, dos Santos became coordinator of the MPLA's Department of Foreign Affairs; he

also coordinated the MPLA's Department of Health at this time.

Upon Angolan independence in November 1975, the MPLA held power in Luanda, but the new MPLA government faced a civil war with the other political formations, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA).

The same year, dos Santos was appointed as Angola's first Minister of Foreign Affairs upon independence, and in this capacity he played a key role in obtaining diplomatic recognition for the MPLA government in 1975–1976.

At the MPLA's First Congress in December 1977, dos Santos was re-elected to the Central Committee and Politburo.

In December 1978, he was moved from the post of First Deputy Prime Minister in the government to that of Minister of Planning.

Following Neto's death in 1979, dos Santos was elected by the MPLA as the country's new president, supported by the Soviet Union and inheriting a civil war against Western-backed anti-communist rebels, most notably UNITA.

After the death of Angola's first president, Agostinho Neto, on 10 September 1979, dos Santos was elected president of the MPLA on 20 September 1979, and he took office as President of Angola and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces on 21 September.

On 9 November 1980 he was also elected President of the People's Assembly.

The biggest issue dos Santos had to cope with was the ongoing conflict with the main rival liberation movement, the National Union for the Total Integration of Angola (UNITA).

UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi and supported by South Africa and the United States, never fully recognized the legitimacy of MPLA as the ruling government of Angola and triggered several armed conflicts over the years to express its opposition.

The war was also marked by intense foreign intervention, since the Soviet Union and Cuba backed the MPLA government and the U.S. and South Africa supported UNITA as a way to limit the expansion of Soviet influence in Africa.

By 1991, his government agreed with rebels to introduce a multi-party system, while changing the MPLA's ideology from communism to social democracy.

He was elected president in the 1992 Angolan general election over UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, and presided over free-market economic liberalization and the development of Angola's oil sector.

On 29 and 30 September 1992, after 16 years of fighting that killed up to 300,000 people, elections were held in Angola, under United Nations supervision.

Dos Santos led the field in the first round with 49.57%; his main rival, Jonas Savimbi, won 40.07%.

Under a constitution adopted earlier that year, since dos Santos finished just short of an outright majority, he would need to win a runoff against Savimbi to become Angola's first constitutional president.

In 1997, he contributed to a rebel invasion of neighboring Zaire during the First Congo War, leading to the overthrow of UNITA ally Mobutu Sese Seko and the installation of Laurent-Désiré Kabila as President later that year.

During the Second Congo War from 1998 to 2003 he supported Kabila's government and later that of his son Joseph against several rebel groups loosely allied with UNITA.

The MPLA achieved victory in the civil war by 2002 following Savimbi's death.

After winning a second presidential term in the 2012 election, he retired from the presidency in 2017, when he was succeeded by party-mate João Lourenço as president.

A controversial figure, dos Santos received many international awards for his commitment to anti-colonialism and promotion of peace negotiation with rebels to end wars, and was also praised for attracting significant foreign investment to Angola's economy.

He was criticized as having been a dictator and was accused of creating one of the most corrupt regimes in Africa, with a deeply-entrenched patronage network.

By the time he stepped down in 2017, he was the second-longest-serving president in Africa, surpassed only by Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea.

Dos Santos joined the MPLA, then an anti-colonial movement, while still in school, and earned degrees in petroleum engineering and radar communications while studying in the Soviet Union.