Agostinho Neto

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Bust of Agostinho Neto in the park of the same name on the street and square of the same name in Windhoek , Namibia
Agostinho Neto Mausoleum in Luanda

António Agostinho Neto (born September 17, 1922 in Catete , Ícolo e Bengo district , Angola , † September 10, 1979 in Moscow ) was an Angolan doctor and poet. After the country gained independence, he was first president and nationalist leader from 1975 to 1979.

Life

In the 1940s, Agostinho Neto became a prominent figure when he became a key member of a movement that sought the liberation of Angola from Portuguese colonial rule. Because of his political involvement in anti-colonial movements, he was arrested by the Salazar regime in 1951 while studying medicine at the University of Lisbon . After his release in 1958, he was able to complete his studies and returned to Angola in 1959.

Agostinho Neto was one of the earliest members of the MPLA , the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola, and quickly became its chairman. He was arrested again on June 8, 1960, which led to protests among his patients, which were bloodily suppressed by the police. He was first exiled to the Cape Verde Islands and then imprisoned in Lisbon. Due to international protests, including the then founded organization Amnesty International , he was released from prison but placed under house arrest. From this he was able to flee to Morocco and then Zaire .

Agostinho Neto

When Portugal announced its intention to withdraw from its colonies after the 1974 Carnation Revolution , he returned to Angola and assumed the political leadership of the MPLA's armed struggle against two rival movements, FNLA and UNITA . Even before the MPLA had won this fight - not least because of Cuba's military intervention - it declared Angola's independence on November 11, 1975 and became the country's first president.

Within the MPLA, Agostinho Neto was always a very polarizing personality. His often rigid and authoritarian attitude led to the departure of various important founding members, such as Viriato da Cruz and Mário Pinto de Andrade . In 1974 the MPLA split into three wings because of him: “Ala Presidencialista”, “Revolta Activa” and “Revolta do Leste”. These could only be put back together with great difficulty and with considerable sacrifice. When in 1977 at the MPLA's first congress he succeeded in declaring Marxism-Leninism to be its official doctrine, but orienting itself towards the model of socialism and not that of communism, there was an attempt to do so (cited by Nito Alves ) Uprising which Agostinho Neto had bloodily suppressed.

Neto died of complications from cancer in a Moscow hospital. His body was by specialists from the Lenin mausoleum preserved and buried in a mausoleum. José Eduardo dos Santos , who served until 2017, took over Netos' functions as President and MPLA Chairman .

Agostinho Neto was also the first president of the Angolan writers' association "União de Escritores Angolanos (UEA)", which was founded in 1975.

Honors

On March 21, 2010, Agostinho Neto was posthumously awarded the highest medal in Namibia as part of the 20th anniversary of Namibia's independence. His wife Eugénia Neto accepted the Welwitschia Mirabilis Order, 1st class. On May 4, 2018, the unwinding area in Windhoek in Dr. Renamed Antonio Agostinho Neto Square . A street and a small park in the same place are already named after Neto. In the GDR, a school in Berlin-Buch was named after the politician.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Since in Portugal anyone who has a normal university degree is referred to as a “Dr.”, outside the Portuguese-speaking area it is often assumed that Agostinho Neto obtained a doctorate, which is not the case.
  2. ^ Benjamin Almeida, Angola: O Conflito na Frente Leste , Lisbon: âncora, 2011 ISBN 978-972-780-315-6
  3. ↑ See for example Fernando Tavares Pimenta, Angola no percurso de um nacionalista: Conversas com Adolfo Maria , Porto: Afrontamento, 2006.
  4. ^ Giovanni Moretto, Lenin and his body: A case of Soviet religiosity , p. 290 online . Retrieved November 10, 2012.
  5. ↑ Christopher Andrew , Oleg Gordievsky : KGB. The history of his overseas operations from Lenin to Gorbachev . C. Bertelsmann, Munich 1990, p. 718 ISBN 3-570-06264-3
  6. ^ Website of the UEA with a short historical overview ( Memento of December 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ^ Great reunion at the state banquet in Windhoek, Allgemeine Zeitung, March 24, 2010
  8. ↑ President Hage G. Geingob to host President of Angola HE João Gonçalves Lourenço on State Visit to Namibia from 3 to 5 May 2018. Office of the President, May 2, 2018.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Neto, Agostinho
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Neto, António Agostinho (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION first President of Angola (1975–1979), poet and nationalist leader
DATE OF BIRTH September 17, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Ícolo e Bengo , Angola
DATE OF DEATH September 10, 1979
Place of death Moscow