José Eduardo dos Santos

Biography

José Eduardo dos Santos was born in Luanda in 1942 to parents who had come from São Tomé and Príncipe. He joined the MPLA as a schoolboy, went into exile in Congo-Brazzaville in 1961, and was sent to the Soviet Union, where he qualified in petroleum engineering and radar communications at the oil institute in Baku by 1969. Back in Angola from 1970 he served in the MPLA's guerrilla army as a radio operator in Cabinda.

At independence in November 1975 he became Angola's first foreign minister and worked to win recognition for the MPLA government; he later held the posts of first deputy prime minister and minister of planning. When Agostinho Neto died in September 1979, the MPLA chose dos Santos as its president, and he took office as President of Angola and commander-in-chief on 21 September 1979.

His presidency was dominated by the civil war with UNITA, in which Cuba and the Soviet Union backed his government. He signed the Bicesse Accords with Jonas Savimbi in 1991, moved the country to a multi-party system and led the first round of the 1992 election, but the war resumed when UNITA rejected the result. It ended only after Savimbi's death in 2002. Angola's oil sector boomed under his rule, while critics accused him of running an authoritarian and deeply corrupt patronage system that enriched his family.

After the 2010 constitution he was returned as president through the 2012 election, and he stepped down in September 2017 in favour of João Lourenço, keeping the MPLA leadership until 2018. He died in Barcelona in July 2022.