ELEPHANT EYE: Sousa Jamba reflects on what might be the last days of José Eduardo dos Santos, who spent almost four decades as President of Angola without the public knowing anything about him.
I first saw former Angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos in 2018 at my late brother’s funeral.
Jaka Jamba, my brother, had been ambassador to UNESCO in a government of national unity that had resulted from the peace agreement that ended the civil war in 2002.
Dos Santos had been out of power for a year after thirty-eight years, having been replaced by João Lourenço in 2017. Lourenço had Dos Santos’s blessing, but the two were to fall out in a big way, with the new president leading the accusations of rampant nepotism and corruption against his predecessor.
In the last years of his presidency, Dos Santos made regular trips to Spain, apparently to treat a mysterious health condition that the public was never told about. There were rumours that he had prostate cancer. He himself never said anything.
After almost four decades of being ruled by him, most Angolans know next to nothing about the 79-year-old.
The former president gave very few interviews and when he spoke, he revealed very little about himself. In 2011, he unexpectedly and uncharacteristically came out in public to deny that he was the father of a woman who claimed to newspapers that she was his daughter.
I have asked people who have known him what exactly he was like in private. Someone told me that he enjoyed his own company and playing the guitar. Another person told me that he had very simple tastes, and very Angolan habits: on weekends, he would have a lunch of chicken mwamba and enjoy watching sports with close relatives and friends.
But did he have any close friends? Another told me that he was a typical KGB-trained dour spy; he said very little but schemed a lot — he was always pitting everyone around him against each other. Sworn enemies often had only one thing in common: unswerving loyalty to Dos Santos.
In one rare interview Dos Santos said he was keen on sports and music. He did not mention the name of any musicians.
No one, however, knew whether he believed in God, what his favourite book was, and what he actually thought of the power he held for almost four decades.
When an aide of his told me that he often read my columns in a private newspaper, I asked for the opportunity to interview him. I wanted to meet President dos Santos to ask him about his life. I got no response.
By contrast, we have an idea of what Agostinho Neto, Angola’s first president, was like in private. The Marxist poet who was a medical doctor loved good Portuguese food and wine and the odd shot of Chivas (however, this is something his very loyal widow disputes).
In 1974, before the civil war, Neto would often invite my late brother and mother for lunch. They said Neto was highly congenial and had the people around him in stitches of laughter from his stories.
Eduardo dos Santos, contrastingly, was rarely seen laughing in public. In a nation of ebullient people, Dos Santos never lost his reserve.
Taciturnity, however, is not a trait his daughters inherited from their father. There is Isabel, the half-Russian former richest woman in Africa, who is not shy to tell people how bitter she is that Lourenço has undone her business empire.
Then there is Welwitschia dos Santos, commonly known as Tchize, a daughter from a relationship with a prominent lawyer Maria Abrantes.
In the last five years, Tchize has been issuing podcasts and YouTube clips disparaging Lourenço in colourful terms, accusing him of being deeply ungrateful for mistreating the family of the man who brought him to power.
Dos Santos himself has kept silent in Barcelona. He made a short trip to Angola; he was visibly ill and had a brief meeting with Lourenço. There was speculation that the two had made up, but Lourenço has continued to criticise the Dos Santos administration in the campaign speeches he has been making for the upcoming general elections this August.
Last week the news from Barcelona was that Dos Santos’s health had deteriorated; there were even rumours that he was dead. The exchange of accusations between his family members are truly saddening.
Some have been accusing his previously estranged wife, Ana Paula dos Santos, who turned up in Barcelona and insisted on tending to her ailing husband, of opportunism.
Some of Dos Santos’s children expressed concerns that his Angolan doctor was getting direct instructions from Lourenço. Isabel dos Santos posted a message saying she felt deeply betrayed without mentioning who had betrayed her.
Some Angolans are sympathetic to Dos Santos in what might be his last days.
When a matriarch or patriarch is about to depart from the world, family members usually unite — in some cases they pool whatever resources they have to keep their loved one alive.
The bitter rows are often left until after the burial. The belief is that closing ranks might actually improve the condition of the ailing relative.
I hope President Eduardo Dos Santos’s health improves, and that he finally agrees to my request to interview him. I would certainly welcome the opportunity to ask him the kind of questions many Angolans have been asking of their former president before he passes.
Image source: Serengeti Post
