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Former Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled Africa’s second-biggest oil producer for nearly four decades, is in intensive care at a clinic in Barcelona, Portuguese news agency Lusa has reported, citing a source close to him.
Dos Santos, 79, has been receiving medical treatment since 2019, but his health deteriorated and he was admitted to an intensive care unit, Lusa reported, without saying when it happened.
After a 38-year stint in office that made him one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders, dos Santos stepped down in 2017.
His rule was marked by a brutal civil war lasting nearly three decades against the United States-backed UNITA rebels — which he won in 2002 — and a subsequent oil-fuelled boom that enriched elites but did little to alleviate widespread poverty.
He was replaced by Joao Lourenco, who despite being from dos Santos’s People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), swiftly moved to investigate the allegations of multibillion-dollar corruption during the latter’s stint, targeting the former leader’s children.
The assets of his daughter Isabel dos Santos, often feted as Africa’s richest woman with an estimated worth of $3.5 billion as of 2013, have also been frozen by the Angolan government.
Last year, the elder dos Santos returned home for the first time since he went into exile in Barcelona in April 2019.
Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter