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Agostinho Neto

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António Agostinho Neto (17 September 1922 – 10 September 1979) was an Angolan communist politician and poet. He served as the first president of Angola from 1975 to 1979, having led the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the war for independence (1961–1974). Until his death, he led the MPLA in the civil war (1975–2002). Known also for his literary activities, he is considered Angola's preeminent poet. His birthday is celebrated as National Heroes' Day, a public holiday in Angola.

Agostinho Neto
Neto in 1975
1st President of Angola
In office
11 November 1975 – 10 September 1979
Prime MinisterLopo do Nascimento (1975–1978)
Preceded byOffice established
Succeeded byJosé Eduardo dos Santos
President of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola
In office
10 December 1956 – 10 September 1979
Preceded byIlídio Machado
Succeeded byJosé Eduardo dos Santos
Personal details
Born
António Agostinho Neto

(1922-09-17)17 September 1922
Ícolo e Bengo, Angola
Died10 September 1979(1979-09-10) (aged 56)
Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union
Cause of deathPancreatic cancer
Political partyMPLA
Spouse
​
(m. 1957)​
[1]
RelationsAntónio Alberto Neto (nephew)
Ruth Neto (sister)
Deolinda Rodrigues (cousin)
Roberto Francisco de Almeida (cousin)
ChildrenMário Jorge da Silva Neto
Irene Alexandra da Silva Neto
Leda da Silva Neto
Mihaela Radkova Marinova[2]
Alma materUniversity of Lisbon
Military service
Allegiance People's Republic of Angola
Years of service1961–1979
Battles/wars

Early life

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Neto was born at Ícolo e Bengo, in Bengo Province, Angola, in 1922. Neto attended high school in the capital city, Luanda; his parents were both school teachers and Methodists; his father, also called Agostinho Neto, was a Methodist pastor. After secondary school he worked in the colonial health services, before going on to university. The younger Neto left Angola for Portugal, and studied medicine at the universities of Coimbra and Lisbon. He combined his academic life with covert political activity of a revolutionary sort; and PIDE, the security police force of the Estado Novo regime headed by Portuguese Prime Minister Salazar, arrested him in 1951 for three months for his separatist activism. He was arrested again in 1952 for joining the Portuguese Movement for Democratic Youth Unity. He was arrested again in 1955 and held until 1957. He finished his studies, marrying a 23-year-old Portuguese woman who was born in Trás-os-Montes, Maria Eugénia da Silva, the same day he graduated. He returned to Angola in 1959, was arrested again in 1960, and escaped to assume leadership of the armed struggle against colonial rule. When Angola gained independence in 1975 he became president and held the position until his death in 1979.[1][3]

Political career

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In December 1956, the Angolan Communist Party (PCA) merged with the Party of the United Struggle for Africans in Angola (PLUAA) to form the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola with Viriato da Cruz, the President of the PCA, as Secretary General and Neto as president.[3][4]

The Portuguese authorities in Angola arrested Neto on 8 June 1960. His patients and supporters marched for his release from Bengo to Catete, but were stopped when Portuguese soldiers shot at them, killing 30 and wounding 200 in what became known as the Massacre of Ícolo e Bengo.[4] At first Portugal's government exiled Neto to Cape Verde. Then, once more, he was sent to jail in Lisbon. After international protests were made to Salazar's administration urging Neto's release, Neto was freed from prison and put under house arrest. From this he escaped, going first to Morocco and then to Congo-Léopoldville.[1]

In 1962, Neto visited Washington, D.C., and asked the Kennedy administration for aid in his war against Portugal. The U.S. government turned him down, because it had oil interests in colonial Angola, choosing instead to support Holden Roberto's comparatively anti-Communist National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA).[5]

Neto met Che Guevara in 1965 and began receiving support from Cuba.[6] He visited Havana many times, and he and Fidel Castro shared similar ideological views.[7]

 
Neto and Sietse Bosgra in Netherlands, 1975
 
Official Yugoslav-Angolan talks with Marshal Tito in the White Villa, Brijuni Islands, during Neto's visit to SFRY in 1977

In February 1973 Neto and MPLA visited Romania to meet with President Nicolae Ceaușescu on a four day official trip between the 12-16th of February, to discuss political matters in Africa.[8] On the 17th of February Neto visited Bulgaria[2] along with Lucio Lara, Ruth Neto and other party officials where he would also seek support from the Bulgarian authorities, as well meeting with some of the MPLA students in Bulgaria amongst them was also Dino Matrosse - who later would become the MPLA General Secretary. The MPLA delegation will then continue with their official trip to Yugoslavia on the 18-22nd of February to meet with President Josip Broz Tito.[9] Agostinho Neto spends most of his time in 1973 in Europe, where he visits Oslo, in Norway, and on the 2nd of July he is in Geneva. The same year on the 15-16th of July 1973 Tito and Ceausescu meet in Yugoslavia to discuss the situation in Angola,[10] whilst the leader of MPLA attended the 17-19th of July 1973 for the Bulgarian Communist Party Plenum Comitee,[11] joined by his sister Ruth Neto and Dino Matrosse, who was studying engineering in Bulgaria.[12]

Following the Carnation Revolution in Portugal during April 1974 (which deposed Salazar's successor Marcelo Caetano), three political factions vied for Angolan power. One of the three was the MPLA, to which Neto belonged. On 11 November 1975, Angola achieved full independence from the Portuguese, and Neto became the nation's ruler after the MPLA seized Luanda at the expense of the other anti-colonial movements. He established a one-party state and his government developed close links with the Soviet Union and other nations in the Eastern Bloc and other Communist states, particularly Cuba, which aided the MPLA considerably in its war with the FNLA, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and South Africa. Neto made the MPLA declare Marxism-Leninism its official doctrine. As a consequence, he violently repressed a movement later called Fractionism which in 1977 attempted a coup d'état inspired by the Organização dos Comunistas de Angola. In December 1977 at their first congress, they changed their name to MPLA-PT (MPLA Partido do Trabalho) officially adopting the Marxist-Leninist ideology, requested by Nito Alves.[13] Tens of thousands of followers (or alleged followers) of Nito Alves were executed in the aftermath of the attempted coup, over a period that lasted up to two years, although Agostinho Neto only ratified the death sentence of Nito Alves. After corresponding with several relatives of the disappeared, Neto decided to dissolve the Directorate of Information and Security for the "excesses" they had committed.[14][self-published source?]

According to his sons, President Neto never assigned business or privileges to them, suggesting that despite a controversial presidency he never forgot his humble origins.[15]

Literary career

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Agostinho Neto's poetic works were written chiefly between 1946 and 1960, largely in Portugal. He published three books of poetry during his lifetime. Several of his poems became national anthems.[16] Poems included collections like Sacred Hope, which was published in 1974 (Titled Dry Eyes in the Portuguese Version). Also, he was the first member voted into the Anglo Writers Union and The Center for African Studies in Lisbon. He was later awarded the Lotus Prize presented by the Conference of Afro-Asian Writers'[17]

Death

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Neto in 1978

Agostinho Neto died on Monday, 10 September 1979 in Moscow after travelling to the Soviet Union to undergo surgery for cancer and hepatitis. He was a week shy of his 57th birthday at the time of his death. Neto had a long battle with pancreatic cancer, as well as chronic hepatitis that ultimately took his life. Neto had been to the Soviet Union multiple times for treatment because of the high level of medical professionals there. Few people knew about his failing health because he and his colleagues thought it was better to hide this information, as to not show weakness.[18]

Legacy

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The Neto mausoleum and memorial in Luanda

The Soviet Union awarded Neto the Lenin Peace Prize for 1975–76.

The public university of Luanda, the Agostinho Neto University, is named after him. A poem by Chinua Achebe entitled "Agostinho Neto" was written in his honour.[19] An airport in Santo Antão, Cape Verde, is named after him, due to the beloved work he performed there as a doctor. For the same reason, the main hospital of Cape Verde in the capital Praia is named "Hospital Agostinho Neto" (HAN). There is also a morna dedicated to him. A street in New Belgrade in Serbia is named after him, the Dr Agostina Neta street.[20]

 
A bust of Neto

A street in Ghana (Agostinho Neto Road), which can be found in Airport City in the capital, is named after him.

On the 17-19th of July 1973 was held The Congress The July Plenum in Sofia organised by the Bulgarian Communist Party leader Todor Zhivkov, and also attended by Dr.Neto who at the time stayed in Hotel Rila. During that period he had a brief relationship with Bulgarian woman with whom he had met earlier in the same year on the 17th of February and they had a daughter Mihaela, born in February 1974. Dr. Neto passed away in 1979 and the fate of his daughter was doomed in the orphanages. Neto's family are refusing to recognise his child despite the involvement of the Angolan Authorities for her recognition. A DNA test performed in 2013 concluded with 95% confidence that she is Neto's daughter.[21]

Foreign honours

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References

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  1. ^ a b c James, W. Martin (2004). Historical Dictionary of Angola. p. 110.
  2. ^ a b "Mihaela Marinova é filha de Agostinho Neto". Público. 29 October 2010.
  3. ^ a b Tvedten, Inge (1997). Angola: Struggle for Peace and Reconstruction. pp. 29–30.
  4. ^ a b Africa Year Book and Who's who. 1977. pp. 238–239.
  5. ^ Walker, John Frederick (2004). A Certain Curve of Horn: The Hundred-Year Quest for the Giant Sable Antelope of Angola. pp. 146–148.
  6. ^ Abbott, Peter; Manuel Ribeiro Rodrigues (1988). Modern African Wars: Angola and Mocambique, 1961–74. p. 10.
  7. ^ Chazan, Naomi; Robert Mortimer; John Ravenhill; Donald Rothchild (1992). Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc. p. 392. ISBN 1-55587-283-2.
  8. ^ Delegação do MPLA, chefiada por Agostinho Neto, na Roménia. Arquivo Lúcio Lara/ATD. February 1973.
  9. ^ Delegação do MPLA,chefiada por Agostinho Neto, na Jugoslávia. Arquivo Lúcio Lara/ATD. February 1973.
  10. ^ Tito and Ceausescu Confer. The New York Times. 16 July 1973.
  11. ^ Стенографски протокол от пленум на ЦК от 17, 18 и 19 юли 1973 г. (том III). Politiburo Archives.
  12. ^ Estudantes bolseiros na Bulgária. Arquivo Lúcio Lara/ATD. 1972.
  13. ^ Guardiola, Nicole (6 December 1977). "El MPLA angoleño se transforma en partido para superar problemas, políticos". El País.
  14. ^ bambaramdipadida.blogspot.com/2017/06/sita-valles-foi-fuzilada-pelo-mpla.html
  15. ^ "Família de Agostinho Neto indignada com associação a processos de corrupção". CLUB-K ANGOLA – Notícias Imparciais de Angola (in European Portuguese). 4 September 2020. Retrieved 21 July 2021.
  16. ^ Abdala, Benjamin, Jr. "Agostinho Neto." In African Lusophone Writers. Detroit: Gale, 2012, pp. 120–125. (Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 367).
  17. ^ "Agostinho Neto". Poetry Foundation. 18 May 2019. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  18. ^ Thomas Johnson, "Agostinho Neto, 56, Angola's Leader, Dies in Moscow After Surgery". The New York Times, 12 September 1979.
  19. ^ Achebe, Chinua. "Agostinho Neto". Archived from the original on 15 October 2012. Retrieved 14 May 2008.
  20. ^ "Google Maps". Google Maps. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
  21. ^ Público (Maia, Portugal), 29 October 2010. "36 anos de uma história agitada: Mihaela Marinova é filha de Agostinho Neto". Retrieved 15 October 2015.
  22. ^ "2016 Condecorações, Fundação Dr. António Agostinho Neto". Archeofactu. Retrieved 8 July 2021.
  23. ^ a b "Agostinho Neto condecorado na Namíbia". Jornal de Angola. 23 March 2010. Retrieved 8 July 2021.
  24. ^ "2004 National Orders awards". southafrica.info. Brand SA. Archived from the original on 4 February 2016. Retrieved 8 July 2021.
  25. ^ "2016 Condecorações, Fundação Dr. António Agostinho Neto". Archeofactu. Retrieved 8 July 2021.
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Political offices
Preceded by
Position created
 President of Angola
1975–1979 		Succeeded by
Lúcio Lara (Acting)
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