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The news of the death of the Congolese businessman was confirmed to Lusa by a source linked to the family. Condolence messages have multiplied on social media. The personal assistant to the Congolese president, Felix Tshisekedi, wrote on Twitter: “It was during a dive that he left for eternity, a habitual activity that took him away from his struggle and his loved ones”.
This Thursday, businesswoman Isabel dos Santos placed a photo next to the couple’s husband and son on social media. On Instagram you can read the description “My love …” . Sindika Dokolo and Isabel dos Santos met in 1999. Since them, they were often seen together at various social and business events.They married in 2002 and had several companies together.
C’est au cours d’une plongée sous-Marine que tu es parti pour l’éternité. Une activité habituelle qui t’a arraché de ton combat, de tes proches…Repose en paix, cher @SindikaDokolo! pic.twitter.com/8wnQv3DKtw
— Michée Mulumba (@mimul20) October 29, 2020
@sindika_dokolo Il était d’une simplicité désarmante. Habité par une rage sourde quand il s’agissait d’histoire, d’identité, de culture. L’art était son véritable combat. Celui d’une dignité retrouvée à travers 1patrimoine culturel revalorisé.
Vie abrégée. Repose en paix ! pic.twitter.com/6tAY2ntH9g— Avenir de la Jeunesse congolaise (@DaltonMatungul1) October 30, 2020
Who was Sindika Dokolo?
Sindika Dokolo was born in 1972 in the former Zaire, the son of a Congolese father and a Danish mother, but spent most of his childhood in Europe, especially in Belgium and France. His father, Augustin Dokolo, was the first black man to set up a bank in Africa in the late 1960s. “He is known as the most successful businessman in Congo since its independence,” Sindika said in an interview with Business Journal.
He inherited from his father not only money, but also a taste for art, which he would later dedicate to collecting. In an interview with TPA, Sindika Dokolo said that his mother made a point of taking him to all museums in Europe and that his father already had several works of African art. It was also his father who led him to pursue training in economics, commerce and foreign languages in Paris.
The businessman was only 15 years old when he started building a collection of African art with the help of his father. Later he inherited some of the pieces from his father’s collection and ended up creating the Sindika Dokolo Foundation, in Luanda, to promote culture and art on the continent.
In October last year,his Foundation bought and repatriated to Angola 20 pieces of art that had been taken from Angolan museums to foreign collections and prepared to deliver to the Kinshasa museum the first recovered Congolese piece, according to an interview granted at the time. to the Lusa agency.
A critic of President Joseph Kabila’s regime of nearly 20 years in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sindika Dokolo spent about five years in exile, due to the lawsuits brought against him in Kinshasa, having only returned in May 2019, already after Félix Tshisekedi taking office as Congolese head of state (in January).
In February 2016, still with José Eduardo dos Santos as President in Angola, the Sindika Dokolo Foundation handed over to the head of state, at the Presidential Palace, in Luanda, two masks and a statuette of the Tchokwe people (eastern Angola), which had been plundered during the Angolan armed conflict, recovered after several years of negotiations with European collectors.
The Dokolo family, his wife, children, mother, brother and sisters have the deepest sorrow and immense sadness to announce the passing of Sindika Dokolo,which occurred on October 29, 2020 in Dubai.We thank all who have expressed their sympathy and kindness and who share our grief pic.twitter.com/r5VgCt3P9V
— Sindika Dokolo (@sindika_dokolo) October 30, 2020
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