Agostinho Neto
Agostinho Neto led Angola to independence and was its first president. Born in 1922 in Bengo province, the son of a Methodist pastor and a teacher, he worked in the colonial health service before winning a scholarship to study medicine in Portugal in 1947. He became active in student anti-colonial circles in Lisbon and Coimbra, published poetry, and was arrested by the PIDE, Salazar's secret police, in 1951 and again in 1955, serving two years. International protest — Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and others signed petitions — secured his release. He qualified as a doctor in 1958, returned to Angola in 1959, and opened a practice. He was arrested in his consulting room in June 1960. When villagers marched to demand his release, troops fired on them; the episode is remembered as the Massacre of Icolo e Bengo. He was deported to Cape Verde and then to Lisbon, escaped to Morocco in 1962, and became president of the MPLA. The armed struggle began in 1961 and ran for thirteen years, fought by three rival movements — the MPLA, Holden Roberto's FNLA and Jonas Savimbi's UNITA — as much against each other as against Portugal. The Portuguese revolution of April 1974 ended the war, and the MPLA took Luanda at independence in November 1975 with Cuban troops, while the FNLA and UNITA had South African and American backing. The civil war that followed lasted twenty-seven years. He was a considerable poet, and his verse is taught in Angolan schools. He died of cancer in Moscow in 1979. His birthday is Angola's National Heroes Day.
- Lived: 1922 CE – 1979 CE
- Nationality: Angolan
- Roles: head_of_state, revolutionary, writer
