The 79-year-old former president had been hospitalized in an induced coma for a week, and his family points to poisoning as the cause of death.
Former Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos, 79, who was hospitalized at the Teknon Clinic in Barcelona in an induced coma for a week, died this Friday, as announced by the Government of his country. “We inform with great pain and consternation of the death,” reads a statement published on the official page of the Executive on Facebook.
The hospitalization of Dos Santos, in addition to the political repercussions, had acquired overtones of a black chronicle or a Hamletian tragedy. His daughter Welwitschia, also known as Tchizé, had denounced a plot to end the president’s life before the Mossos d’Esquadra and this Friday she has asked that her father’s body not be delivered until an autopsy is carried out for “fear that he can be transferred to Angola’.
The second woman and the personal doctor of Dos Santos are, according to their testimony, the culprits of an alleged poisoning that would have ended the life of the former president. The family accuses them of committing the crimes of attempted homicide, omission of the duty of assistance and injuries due to serious negligence. In addition, the relatives have also filed a complaint for a possible revelation of secrets, which implies their distrust of the entourage that surrounds the old leader and the political background of the event.
José Eduardo dos Santos, in any case, is not the first African dictator to expire in Barcelona. In 2009, the Gabonese Omar Bongo died at the Quirón Clinic, but he, cautious, had already chosen the replacement within the home. His son Ali continues today in command without the risk of unpleasant surprises.
The suspicion of a conspiracy against the father of the Angolan country reveals, above all, the fall from grace of the clan that ruled the former Portuguese colony for almost four decades. José Eduardo dos Santos, a petrochemical engineer, was a qualified member of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), a militia affiliated with the USSR that achieved independence. Antonio Agostinho Neto, its first president, died four years after assuming power and dos Santos replaced him, remaining at the head of the Executive for 38 years.
a kleptocracy
The political evolution of Angola exemplifies what has happened with other African republics that emerged from a war process in which a guerrilla movement triumphed. The establishment of an apparently socialist regime led to the establishment of formal democracy in 2002, after the end of the long struggle against the pro-Western Unita militia. In reality, his critics claim that the State has become a kleptocracy, in the private estate of President dos Santos and his family. In this regard, the luckiest member is her daughter Isabel, considered today the richest woman in Africa, with a fortune that varies, depending on the sources, between 3,000 and 20,000 million dollars.
Nepotism was the method with which the alleged victim concocted this looting of the State and its natural resources. Her children were placed in high positions in the Administration and the eldest daughter, especially, benefited from the granting of finger contracts and the granting of non-reimbursed credits. Estimates from ‘Luanda Leaks’, a leak of her business documents, say that she and her husband have created 200 companies in 40 countries with special emphasis on sectors such as banking, telecommunications or transport.
The suspicion that the cause of the death of José Eduardo dos Santos was poisoning is motivated by the misfortune that befell the family after the patriarch’s retirement in 2017. His dolphin, José Lourenço, betrayed the trust placed by the mentor and began a strategy designed to eliminate their privileges. Isabel dos Santos was removed from her position as president of Sonangol, the state oil company, and José Filomeno, another of the scions, was imprisoned, accused of diverting 500 million from the sovereign fund that she directed.
The march of the father of the country to Barcelona, where he lived, was motivated by this Lourenço policy, aimed at ending the previous MPLA hierarchy. Africa’s second largest oil exporter is due to hold elections next month and there are fears that the population, with 40% below the poverty line, will withdraw its support for an extraordinarily corrupt regime. The dos Santos family assures that the father had contacts with the opposition, another reason, in their opinion, to eliminate him.
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