Political fortunes are as shifty and ephemeral as the wind, a fact which the once invincible Dos Santos clan of Angola has now certainly become keenly aware.
Angola was a colony of Portugal until the corporatist Estado Novo in Lisbon was overthrown in the Carnation Revolution. The fall of the Portuguese government led to Portugal withdrawing her military and colonists from the once formidable Portuguese colonial empire. With that, Angola was a free nation.
As was common in Africa at the time, Angola devolved quite quickly into a thirty year civil war, with the nation continuing to reel from the abject devastation.
Amid the civil war, a man named José Eduardo dos Santos, the second President of Angola, solidified his own control over Angola. His Presidency, which could be more aptly described as a reign, lasted from 1979 until just recently in 2017, when he announced his retirement. His Presidency was marred by corruption, with as much as half of the federal budget disappearing the hands of his cronies yearly.
Thus, with his tenure completed, Angola seems keen to undo the years of damaging corruption wreaked upon them by the Santos clan. Arresting his son, who oversaw the financial investments made by the Angolan government, may just be the first step in an overarching war on corruption.
The current President, João Lourenço, has vowed to stamp out corruption and has been praised for his efforts in his first year of tenure in cleaning up the mess left by his predecessor.
In my opinion, as Africa enters the second and first worlds, there will be more movements like those of Lourenço. Africa is blessed with massive natural resources and population, what holds them back is in part government mismanagement of those resources. This trend is being seen elsewhere in leaders like Emmerson Mnangagwa in Zimbabwe, who has also vowed to clean up the corruption left by his predecessor Robert Mugabe.
As Africa reforms and moves forward, they will become a force to contend with on the world stage. It will get to that advanced station through the reforms of leaders like João Lourenço, and it is in the interests of the United States to aid them in this process.