Angolan President Joao Lourenco has dismissed Isabel dos Santos as chair of the country’s state oil company Sonangol, the president’s spokesperson said on Wednesday.
Dos Santos, Africa’s riches woman and daughter of former leader, will be replaced by Carlos Saturnino, a former Sonangol executive who was most recently secretary of state for oil.
The children of former Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos are have been facing increasing pressure to step down from key posts after the first leadership change in Africa’s second-biggest oil producer in almost four decades.
Since replacing Dos Santos at the helm of Angola in September, Joao Lourenco, 63, has fired the governor of the central bank, the head of diamond company Endiama and the boards of all three state-owned media companies. The string of dismissals has earned Lourenco the nickname “relentless remover.”
It was reported last week that the two most prominent children of the Dos Santos clan have come under fire for acting as barriers to reforms because of the huge sway they hold over sub-Saharan Africa’s third-biggest economy. Dos Santos’ eldest daughter, Isabel, 44, in a country where oil accounts for more than 90 percent of exports. Her brother, Jose Filomeno, 39, is the head of Angola’s $5 billion sovereign wealth fund.
“They’re clearly under a lot of pressure to step down,” Gary van Staden, an analyst at NKC African Economics in Paarl, South Africa, said by phone. “Whether Lourenco aims to clean up the place or simply make it cosy for himself, the Dos Santos family is always going to be in the line of fire because of the key positions they hold in Angola.”
When Lourenco became president many thought he would become a puppet to the 75-year-old Dos Santos, who ruled Angola for 38 years and remains the head of the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola party.
Yet, the 63-year-old former army general has signaled he is nobody’s marionette. In his state of the union speech on Oct. 16, Lourenco vowed to fight corruption and end monopolies in the cement sector. Isabel’s husband, Sindika Dokolo, is the chairman of one of the biggest cement factories in Angola.
Lourenco also appointed Carlos Saturnino, who was fired from Sonangol by Dos Santos last year, as his secretary of state for oil, putting him in charge of a 30-day review of the industry.
