Angola is expected to
formally announce the end of President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos’ controversial
37-year rule Saturday, and name a successor to lead the ailing African
oil-producing country.
News of the veteran
leader’s impending retirement, announced on state radio on December 2, has made
front page news in Angolan newspapers all week.
But the ruling Popular
Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), in power since 1975, has
officially remained silent on the matter.
On Saturday, on the 60th anniversary of its founding, the party is expected to
confirm that Dos Santos, 74, will not seek another term as president in the
2017 party elections.
It will also likely
announce that he will be succeeded as head of the party by his current defence
minister, Joao Lourenco, 62.
Angola does not
directly elect a president, but rather the leader of the winning party
automatically becomes head of state.
In all likelihood, the
retired general Lourenco will succeed Dos Santos -– one of the longest ruling
leaders in Africa -– after the party elections next August.
The departure,
announced in a closed-door meeting of the MPLA’s central committee last week,
does not come as a complete surprise.
Dos Santos himself
announced in March his intention to end his political career.
“President dos Santos
had been planning to step down in 2018,” said Alex Vines, Africa program
director at the British think tank Chatham House.
“But I think a
combination of Angola’s economic conditions and less good health brought his
plans forward.”
After years of
spectacular growth thanks to an oil boom, like many crude-producing nations
Angola has suffered a sudden downturn in the last two years due to a prolonged
drop in oil prices.
Last week, national oil
company Sonangol, managed by Dos Santos’ daughter Isabel, announced it would
not be paying out dividends to the state this year -– a first for the country’s
main source of foreign currency.
– ‘Nothing will change’
–
While it will be a new page in the history of Angola, the departure of the
former Marxist guerilla fighter is unlikely to shake up the running of the
country.
This is to the chagrin
of critics who have been denouncing Dos Santos’ “dictatorship” for years.
“Nothing will change
with people who, when they could have, didn’t dare –- whether out of fear or
self-interest -– to make a difference,” said journalist William Tonnet, a
critic of Dos Santos.
Expected successor
Lourenco is an ex-artillery general who was trained in the former Soviet Union.
He is seen as a true son of his party, as is interior minister Bornito de
Sousa, who is expected to become his deputy.
“These are two
apparatchiks, two pure products of the party who remain under its control,”
said Benjamin Auge of the French Institute of International Relations.
“The room to manoeuvre
will be extremely limited. They will defend the president’s record, without
starting a revolution.”
However,
Angola-watchers notice both men do not have ties to the oil industry, a sector
considered to be closely guarded by the president’s family.
“Joao Lourenco is one
of those rare leaders in the MPLA who hasn’t dirtied his hands in this
corruption business,” said activist Nuno Alvaro Dala, who was recently
convicted and then pardoned for an alleged coup attempt.
Some have suggested
that Dos Santos’s retirement was purposefully instigated by a hostile faction
within the MPLA.
The announcement could
be “the expression of discontent within the party, particularly over the
position of the president’s children,” said Didier Peclard, a professor at the
University of Geneva.
“If that were the case,
then hypothetically it could be a way of precipitating a transition.”
Award-winning
journalist and writer Rafael Marques refuses to believe this, and disputes the
idea of a more palatable faction within the inner circle of the MPLA.
“Angolans will move
from one dictator to the next,” he said. “Change is not coming tomorrow.” - The Guardian
