Agostinho Neto

Biography

António Agostinho Neto was born in 1922 at Caxicane in Ícolo e Bengo, Portuguese Angola, to Methodist schoolteachers; his father was also a pastor. After secondary school in Luanda and work in the colonial health service, he went to Portugal to study medicine at the universities of Coimbra and Lisbon. His activism against Salazar's regime led to repeated arrests by the PIDE secret police, including two years in prison from 1955 to 1957.

When the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) was formed in December 1956 he became its president. He returned to Angola as a doctor in 1959 and was arrested again in June 1960; troops fired on villagers marching for his release. Exiled and then confined in Portugal, he escaped to Morocco and the Congo and led the MPLA's armed struggle, seeking help from the United States in vain and then from Cuba and the Soviet bloc.

After Portugal's Carnation Revolution the MPLA seized Luanda, and when Angola became independent on 11 November 1975 Neto became its first president, as civil war began against the FNLA, UNITA and South Africa. He made the MPLA a Marxist-Leninist party and, after the failed coup of 27 May 1977 linked to Nito Alves, presided over a harsh purge in which many thousands were killed.

Neto was also Angola's leading poet, writing mostly between 1946 and 1960 and receiving the Lotus Prize. He died of cancer in Moscow on 10 September 1979. His birthday is a national holiday, and Luanda's university and new airport bear his name.