PRETORIA, August 28. /TASS/. The funeral ceremony of former Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos started in the Angolan capital Luanda on Sunday, according to a live broadcast on the Public Television of Angola.
Covered with the national flag, the coffin has been put on a pedestal in the Republic Square in the center of Luanda. The top leadership of Angola, including President Joao Lourenco, arrived at the square. The ceremony is taking place outdoors.
More than 20 state delegations - many of them headed by the presidents of African countries - came to the Angolan capital for the funeral. Russia is represented at the mourning ceremony by Russian Ambassador to Angola Vladimir Tararov, TASS was told. The day of the funeral coincides with the birthday of dos Santos, who would have turned 80 years old.
After the ceremony, the coffin with the body of dos Santos will be delivered to the memorial center of the first President of Angola, Agostinho Neto, which faces the Republic Square. There, it will be interred in the presence of family members and the next of kin.
Dos Santos died in a Barcelona hospital on July 8. He was taken to the hospital on June 23, after a cardiac arrest. According to the doctors at the hospital, the former Angolan president developed neurological complications. His family members immediately after his death disagreed about where and how dos Santos should be buried. As a result, the case went to the court of Barcelona, which ruled to repatriate the body to his widow in Angola. The body arrived at Luanda on August 20.
Dos Santos was president of Angola for 38 years, from 1979 to 2017. Since 2019, he had spent considerable time in Barcelona, where he had been undergoing treatment.
Close ties with the USSR
Dos Santos knew and highly appreciated the USSR. The People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola sent in 1963 sent to study in the USSR, where six years later he graduated from the Azerbaijan Institute of Oil and Chemistry in Baku and then took a course in Military Means of Communication at a special school for a year. Returning to Angola, dos Santos worked as a radio operator in units of the People's Liberation Army of Angola.
During the civil war, which lasted 27 years, dos Santos relied on the help from the USSR in the fight against the rebels that were supported by the government of the white minority of South Africa and by Western countries. He openly said that without multilateral assistance from the Soviet Union and the countries of the socialist camp, Angola would not have survived as a united independent state.
While serving as president of Angola, dos Santos often visited the USSR. It was accepted by all Soviet leaders, starting with Leonid Brezhnev. The close interaction between the Soviet Union and Angola largely determined the development of events in southern Africa and the balance of power in this part of the world.
Dos Santos was fluent in Russian. He was married three times. The future president of Angola met his first wife Tatiana in the USSR during his studies. Their marriage lasted from 1966 to 1979. The couple had a daughter in Baku in 1973, named Isabel dos Santos, who holds both Angolan and Russian citizenship, in Baku.