A plane from Barcelona, Spain, with the body of the former president on board landed in the Angolan capital in the evening, AFP journalists found.
Twenty people were present at the airport to welcome the coffin of Mr. dos Santos.
Several children of the late president and his widow Ana Paula dos Santos were also present. Onlookers applauded as the coffin covered with an Angolan flag passed.
“We Angolans are proud to welcome the remains of President dos Santos and that he can have a dignified funeral,” Telma Pilartes told AFP.
A lawyer for the widow of Mr. dos Santos confirmed on Saturday that the body of the former head of state had left Barcelona and was on its way to the Angolan capital.
“On Friday we prepared everything, the body was embalmed, all the papers were done, and so this morning (Saturday) the body leaves for Angola,” Josep Riba Ciurana, lawyer for the state, told AFP. widow of the former president, Ana Paulo dos Santos.
Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who led Angola unchallenged from 1979 to 2017, died on July 8, aged 79, in a clinic in Barcelona where he was hospitalized after suffering cardiac arrest on June 23.
Since then, a quarrel opposed his widow and the Angolan government on the one hand, who wanted to repatriate the body and offer him a state funeral, and some of his children who opposed it, including his daughter “Tchizé” dos Santos, 44. , born of the first marriage of the former president.
She wanted a family funeral in Spain, where he had been living since 2019, accusing the current Angolan government of wanting to politicize the burial of her father before the elections scheduled for August 24.
But a Spanish court had finally decided to hand over the body of the former leader to his widow, Ana Paulo dos Santos, to be repatriated and buried in Angola. The daughter of the late president had appealed this decision on Thursday, which does not seem to have suspended the repatriation.
“We are the first to be surprised,” Tchizé’s lawyer, Carmen Varela, told AFP, adding that her client had heard the news on television.
The repatriation of the body comes just days before the presidential election scheduled for Wednesday and could favor incumbent President Joao Lourenço.
The latter, the favorite according to the latest polls, held a campaign rally in Luanda on Saturday in front of thousands of supporters of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), his party in power since independence in 1975.
In a message posted on Instagram on Saturday, “Tchizé” accused President Lourenço of using his father’s body as a campaign tool, calling his repatriation a “world disgrace”.
The late president’s reign, which lasted nearly 40 years, was marred by corruption cases involving his family.
When he left in 2017, Mr. dos Santos handed over power to Mr. Lourenço, the former defense minister. But Mr. Lourenço had launched as soon as he came to power a vast campaign against corruption targeting the family of his predecessor.
The campaign had notably targeted a sister of “Tchizé”, Isabel, the eldest daughter, nicknamed “the Princess” and considered the richest woman in Africa, but today hunted by the judges.
“You accompanied me to the altar and (…) I will not be able to take you to your final resting place”, lamented on Instagram Isabel dos Santos about the death of her father.