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This was the case of Lopo do Nascimento, a story of the MPLA that, having been Prime Minister of Angola between 1975 and 1978, was seen at the height of Agostinho Neto’s death as his natural successor. As a consolation prize for his patience and discretion, Lopo do Nascimento became secretary general of the MPLA, between 1993 and 1998. But, when the party chose precisely João Lourenço to succeed him, Lopo do Nascimento definitely lost the leading role in politics. Angolan, reduced to a silence that was often broken, but always without fanfare.
Louder was Marcolino Moco, Angola’s prime minister between 1992 and 1996. After being ousted by José Eduardo dos Santos, Marcolino Moco became an uncomfortable voice within the party. He came to attribute himself to the quote that “the MPLA and UNITA are flour from the same bag”, a phrase that he himself says was misrepresented by the journalist who heard it, but that João Lourenço did not forgive anyway. At that time, Marcolino Moco accused João Lourenço of yelling at him “as if he were a child” at a party meeting. “He treated me like a child and told me to shut up,” Marcolino Moco told Rádio Ecclesia in March 2001. In August of the same year, João Lourenço told the same radio station: “While he [Marcolino Moco] in order not to retract us, we will not have a judgment on him identical to that of other militants ”.
Who knew João Lourenço and deprived him with him during his years as secretary general of the MPLA remembers a man “very close to José Eduardo dos Santos”, who was his emissary for the most delicate and complex matters. “I once had lunch with him and with other people, a restricted group,” says one of those people. “At the end of lunch, João Lourenço came up to me, touched my arm, excused the others and took me to a corner to talk alone. He gave me a message directly from José Eduardo dos Santos ”.
In those years, João Lourenço became the eyes and ears of José Eduardo dos Santos, nurturing a relationship of trust and complicity with him, which allowed him to leave the management of the match to his trust, which at that time was already synonymous with status. This relationship was evident inside and outside the MPLA, so much so that João Lourenço was included in the recurring lists of possible successors to José Eduardo dos Santos. Semanário Angolense even included him in the list of “men of the president”, highlighting João Lourenço as one of the “indefectible of the boss.”
Until, in 2001, José Eduardo dos Santos announced in a meeting of the MPLA that in the following elections “the candidate [dessa] José Eduardo dos Santos will not be called ”. At that moment, after listening and reading so much that he was one of the supposed successors, João Lourenço came to believe that. Several sources who spoke to the Observer, some from the MPLA and others that were private with his secretary general at the time, indicate that João Lourenço told several people that he was really willing to move on. That promise of José Eduardo dos Santos could even have a vague horizon, since at that time the war was still underway and, as such, there would hardly be any elections. However, when Jonas Savimbi was killed in an ambush in February 2002, everything seemed to go ahead. João Lourenço was ready and the way seemed to be open.
In 2003, with his possible succession to the marinade of José Eduardo dos Santos, João Lourenço made in an interview with the Angolan newspaper “A Capital” that it would become his biggest political mistake. The interviewer, referring to José Eduardo dos Santos’ promise to withdraw, asked “once and for all” if there was really going to be another MPLA candidate in the next elections.
João Lourenço buried himself with these words: “I think society should do its analysis. The president of Santos is well known to the Angolan people and people have an opinion about him, whether he is a serious president or not. We, as MPLA, think it is serious. And being serious we believe that you will keep your word ”.
Mimoso, the boy who never left the yard and who always obeyed his parents, dared to do it for the first time in his life. Taken to believe the words of the man who had served the MPLA in his best years yet, and driven by his own ambition, João Lourenço pointed out two things. First, he was ready to move on. Second, he suggested that if José Eduardo dos Santos continued in power he would cease to be “a serious president.”
After a calculated climb that took decades to build, in an oversight, João Lourenço stumbled and fell into the void. “José Eduardo dos Santos identified João Lourenço as an internal enemy”says Filomeno Vieira Lopes, economist and member of the Democratic Bloc. “When we want to cross the river, we don’t know where the alligator is, do we? So we are throwing stones here and there and when he raises his head we know that he is there and passes to the other side, ”says the opponent. That is what José Eduardo dos Santos did.
That same year, João Lourenço was commissioned to organize the V Congress of the MPLA, which was also the first after the end of the war. It was like digging your own grave, and João Lourenço knew it. José Eduardo dos Santos, forgetting the promise made two years earlier, ran for president of the party.
Days before that congress, an event that would be held with restricted access to members of the central committee, the Luanda MPLA organized a demonstration in support of José Eduardo dos Santos in the Sports Pavilion of the Citadel. It was an event of authentic worship to José Eduardo dos Santos – with 10,000 people watching everything, between speeches and concerts, with posters that evoke “Dos Santos the peacemaker”, “Dos Santos the correct choice”, “Dos Santos our candidate” or “Dos Santos our strength for victory”. On stage, the person who spoke on behalf of the MPLA women’s wing, the Angolan Women’s Organization (OMA), decided to “thank God the Creator, on behalf of Angolan women, for the achievements of Eduardo dos Santos.”
Of the remaining photographs of this event, there is one that focuses on João Lourenço. Dressed like everyone else: black pants, red sweater, cap with those two colors and an MPLA flag in hand, he was just one of many, with his tired air and hunched posture.
Days later, the MPLA would hold its V Congress and João Lourenço would be removed from the post of Secretary General. From then on, he became the first vice president of the National Assembly. “It was shelved,” sums up an opponent in Angola. A person familiar with the complexities of the MPLA prefers to describe that episode in a euphemistic way: “The party regulated its ambitions”.
It is here where the period of João Lourenço’s life begins, which many describe as his “crossing of the desert”. But if the term seems correct with respect to the political ambitions of João Lourenço, the truth is that he never stopped being a person present in the political life of Angola and in the MPLA. Only, being present, it is no longer important. “It was almost anonymous,” says Vítor Ramalho, secretary general of the Union of Portuguese-Speaking Capitals.
Whoever deprived with João Lourenço at that time, guarantees that he did not hear any complaint. “I did not complain”, guarantees this source. “He realized what they had done to him and it didn’t seem strange to him. The people who are into these things understand ”. Others point out that, at that time, João Lourenço could no longer be a Josédardiano, but he never stopped being a man of the MPLA apparatus. “Was a apparatchik, both from the party and the Armed Forces ”, assures a source with knowledge of Angolan politics. “In those years, I knew everything that was happening and it never got worse,” says the same person, referring to the years of easy money in Angola.
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