Angola’s former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled Africa’s second-biggest oil producer for nearly four decades, has died aged 79, the Angolan presidency said on Facebook on Friday.
Jose Eduardo dos Santos ruled Angola for 38 years.
He died in the Barcelona clinic where he was hospitalised in June, more than five years after he left power in May 2017, according Africanews.
He late ruled Angola with an iron fist but his imprint did not survive his departure.
His daughter Isabel, dubbed the “princess” and tapped in 2016 to head the national oil company Sonangol, is now being hounded by judges and faces a slew of corruption investigations.
According to reports, his son, Filomeno has also been in prison since 2019, also for corruption.
When José Eduardo dos Santos came to power in 1979, Angola had been in the throes of civil war for four years, following its independence from Portugal.
Some 500,000 deaths have been recorded in 27 years in the war that he led, with the support of the USSR and Cuba, against Jonas Savimbi’s Unita, supported by the South African apartheid regime and the United States.
His successor, President Joao Lourenco, declared five days of national mourning and described dos Santos as a “unique figure of the Angolan homeland.”
Despite being handpicked by dos Santos to succeed him, Lourenco swiftly moved to investigate allegations of multi-billion dollar corruption during the former president’s era.