Angola: Former president’s eldest children want father’s funeral after elections

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Angola: Former president’s eldest children want father’s funeral after elections

3:30 CAT | 19 Jul 2022

File photo: Lusa

The oldest children of former Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos pledged on Tuesday to collaborate in holding a national funeral, but after the August 24 elections and are calling for a mausoleum to house their father’s body.

In a letter to which Lusa had access and signed by five of his descendants (Isabel, José Filomeno “Zenu”, Welwitschea “Tchizé”, Joess and José Eduardo Paulino “Coreon Dú”), the children of the former president express “deep gratitude to the people of Angola” and to all those who share their sadness, calling for respect for mourning.

“Whatever the result of the next elections, in the future, we, the family, together with the institutions and the elected president, will collaborate in the union of the Nation and, with the necessary time, organize the conditions for the homage and the national funeral of the father of the nation, our father, José Eduardo dos Santos, so that one day he may rest in dignity and respect in peace in the land of his ancestors,” the eldest children promise in the letter.

“We, the children of José Eduardo dos Santos, call on everyone to respect our customs, our ancestral values and our religious beliefs. Our father has this right and no one can contest it,” they appeal, stressing that in African tradition the time of mourning is “a time for reflection and reconciliation.”

The family of José Eduardo dos Santos, who died on 8 July in Barcelona, and the Angolan government are involved in a legal dispute over the delivery and transfer of the body of the former head of state, who has eight children by five women.

On one side are the five older children who, in this letter, reject holding the funeral rites before the elections in Angola, where legal proceedings are underway against Isabel dos Santos; on the other side is the widow and mother of three other children of José Eduardo dos Santos, Ana Paula dos Santos, who had been estranged from her husband for some years, reappearing at his side in recent months.

Ana Paula dos Santos was the interlocutor for the Angolan government when her husband was interned in a clinic in Barcelona, where he eventually died, and is supported by the Angolan government, which intends to hold a state funeral in Luanda, but has seen the seven days it decreed for national mourning without the presence of the body in the wake come to an end, being dependent on the decision of the Spanish courts.

Source: Lusa