Eduardo dos Santos was given a state funeral on August 28. He ruled Angola for 38 years and died in Spain in July 2022, five years after leaving office.
His legacy is mixed. He helped the rebels of Laurent Kabila to topple Mobutu Sese Seko, the quintessential African tyrant. Dos Santos defeated right-wing warmonger Jonas Savimbi, ending Angola’s long and brutal civil war.
Opinion is divided about his later foray into the Democratic Republic of Congo to shore up Kabila’s government against rebels backed by Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame. However, he led one of the most corrupt administrations in post-independence Africa. Dos Santos, his family, relatives and cronies amassed fabulous fortunes.
His daughter, Isabella dos Santos, was for long reputed to be Africa’s richest woman.
The country under Dos Santos was characterised by corruption, mismanagement, and human rights abuses. Ironically and shamefully, many of its poor people risk everything to escape to former colonial power Portugal, or to Brazil.
African leaders seem to follow a cursed script whose three themes are corruption, longevity in power and gross human rights violations.
Robert Mugabe clung on to power by brute force, cynically couched as a continuing struggle against imperialism. He and his cronies amassed considerable wealth, contrary to his false socialist ideal.
At 95, he devised a plot to have his wife succeed him in power. Mugabe was finally forced to step down by the army before he could actualise his evil plot. By the end of his long reign, Zimbabwe, a country that should have been the bread basket of southern Africa and one endowed with mineral wealth, had become yet another African basket case, where the poverty-stricken population risked everything to escape to South Africa and to former colonial power, Britain.
One could argue that it was Mobutu Sese Seko who wrote this evil script. Mobutu clung to power for decades through brutal suppression of dissent. In the meantime, Mobutu, his family and his cronies amassed great wealth.
By the time he was forced from power by rebels, DR Congo, a country with great mineral wealth, was a shambolic, chaotic, poverty-stricken country. Many of the migrants risking everything to get to former colonial power, France, are Congolese.
Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang now holds the record for the longest-serving African leader. For the past 41 years, he has used the country’s great oil wealth as his personal ATM.
His regime is riddled with nepotism and cronyism. His relatives, including his son, hold powerful positions in government. The impoverished citizens make a significant number of desperate migrants trying to escape to Spain, the former colonial power.
There are other examples of leaders who have — to greater or lesser degrees — followed this evil script. The important question is: When will this end? Dear African Union, are you listening?
Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator
