14 FACTS
Exit Dos Santos & Mugabe
A more promising future for democracy in Angola and Zimbabwe?
In recent months, the African continent has witnessed several surprising political shake-ups. Two of the world’ s longest-serving presidents— José Eduardo dos Santos of Angola and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe— both resigned in late 2017, the former bowing to pressure to step aside and the latter under the duress of what has been called a bloodless coup. And in February of this year, the scandal-plagued president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, resigned following a vote of no-confidence from his own party. All three leaders had risen to power with popular support resulting from the roles they played in their respective countries’ liberation wars; all three also presided over contested political systems marked by accusations of corruption and suppression of opposition. While it may be too early to declare the end of an era— in all three countries, though the leader in question is out, their political party remains in power— such events may signal a changing landscape for democracy in sub-Saharan Africa. In what follows, we reflect more closely on the rise and fall of dos Santos and Mugabe, and consider the legacy of these two leaders who both ruled for nearly forty years.
Exchange to change June 2018
José Eduardo dos Santos, President of Angola 1979-2017
Angola won independence from Portugal in 1975, only to be plunged into a decades-long civil war. The conflict was between the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola( MPLA), which had gained control of the country upon independence, and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola( UNITA), a rebel group led by Jonas Savimbi. The civil war lasted until Savimbi’ s death in 2002 and had a devastating effect on the country’ s social, political, and economic development.
Dos Santos rose through the ranks of the MPLA during the struggle for liberation against Portugal in the 60s and early 70s, even though he spent most of this period in exile. When
Angola’ s first president, Agostinho Neto, died from cancer in 1979, dos Santos was chosen by the MPLA to succeed him. Allegedly, the MPLA selected him as a compromise; he was neither too radical nor too conservative and known for being mild-mannered, which gave the impression that he could be easily manipulated by party elders 1. Despite his lack of charisma, dos Santos quickly consolidated power— and held on to it for thirtyeight years.
These thirty-eight years witnessed the rise of Angola’ s spectacular natural resource wealth, mainly in diamonds and oil. This fueled economic growth and turned Luanda into one of the world’ s most expensive cities. Yet in a classic‘ resource curse’ scenario, much of Angola’ s resource wealth was not distributed equitably across the population. At the same time, the civil war displaced nearly one-third of the population, many of whom fled the fighting in the countryside to resettle in increasingly overcrowded cities. At the end of the war in 2002, dos Santos embarked on a massive reconstruction effort to rebuild the country’ s infrastructure. Western donors were reluctant to offer funding due to the lack of transparency and high level of corruption, while the Angolan government would not accept the imposition of any conditionalities, leading to an impasse. The rise of China on the international scene provided a solution, in the form of a‘ resourcesfor-infrastructure deal’. Throughout