Biography
1922 – Agostinho Neto was born at 5 o'clock of the seventeenth day of September, in Kaxicane, parish of S. José, council of Icolo and Bengo, District of Luanda, son of Agostinho Neto, a catechist of the American Mission in Luanda who later became a priest and teacher in the Dembos, and of Maria da Silva Neto, a teacher1937 – His parents move to Luanda, where Agostinho Neto attends the Liceu Salvador Correia highschool.
-As a health service worker, he leaves Angola and goes to Portugal to pursue his studies at the Faculty of Medicine of Coimbra.
1950 – Publication, in Luanda, of the magazine Mensagem, which was a management organ pertaining to the Association of the Natives of Angola, of which 4 editions were published (2 books, the last one in 1952, in which Agostinho Neto participated).
1951 - Youth Representative of the Portuguese colonies for the Portuguese Youth MUD (youth democratic unity movement).
1951 - The police authorities close the African Studies Centre, founded in the previous year.
- In Lisbon, “along with Angolan maritime workers, he founds the African Seamen Club, which is a link between the Angolan patriots in Portugal and those who, in Angola, were preparing the foundations for the liberation movement”.
1955 - Arrested in February and later sentenced to eighteen months in prison.
-The 1st Black Artists and Writers Congress is held in September, in Paris, where writers from the Portuguese colonies, such as Marcelino dos Santos, participated and where the absence of Agostinho Neto was felt.
- The People’s Liberation Movement - MPLA is founded on the 10th of December as a merger of several patriotic movements. Agostinho Neto was still in prison, in Lisbon.
1958 - On the 27th of October, he graduates in medicine by the University of Lisbon and marries Maria Eugénia Neto on that same day.
- His first son, Mário Jorge Neto, is born in Lisbon on 9/11/58
- On the 22nd of December, 1959, together with his wife and young son Mário Jorge, he leaves Lisbon and returns to Luanda, where he opens his private practice.
1960 – He is elected Honorary President of the MPLA.
- He is arrested in Luanda on the 8th of June, 1960. Solidarity protests in front of his office and in his village are violently scattered by the police. He is transferred to Portugal, to a prison in Algarve. Later he is deported to Cape Verd, where he stayed at the Ponta do Sol Village, island of Santo Antão; he is then transferred to Santiago until October 1962.
1961 - On the 4th of February, MPLA initiates armed fights, with raids to the jails in Luanda followed by strong repression.
- The funerals of the policemen killed during the raids to the prisons in Luanda take place on the 5th of February, and a plot for a massacre over Angolan patriots starts taking shape.
- Agostinho Neto is arrested in the city of Praia, island of Santiago, Cape Verd and is transferred to the prison of Aljube, in Lisbon, where he enters on the 17th of October, 1962.
1961 - International Campaign for the release of Agostinho Neto. The Présence Africaine magazine dedicates a special edition to Angola and harshly condemns the Portuguese fascist authorities, revealing their fear for the life of the prisoners, including that of Agostinho Neto, making an international plea against PIDE's torturers.
- The Times publishes protests against the arrest of Agostinho Neto, signed by highly renowned intellectuals, such as historian Basil Davidson; novelists – Day Lewis, Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch, Angus Wilson, Alan Silitoe; poet John Wain; English theatre critic Kermeth Tynan; dramatists John Osborne and Arnold Wesker.
- Due to Portugal’s unacceptable answer to the protest made by those intellectuals, the latter attempt a new and vehement protest.
- Penguin Books releases the book Persecution 1961, by Peter Benenson, about the situation of nine political prisoners, among which is Agostinho Neto, through press articles and by letter to the embassy in Portugal, requesting that urgent care be taken as to Agostinho Neto’s health condition, in fear that he might catch tuberculosis.
- He continues in Aljube prison, in Lisbon, until March 1963.
- He is released from prison, and decides to stay in Lisbon. In June 1963 he escapes from Portugal with his wife Maria Eugenia Neto and children, Mário Jorge and Irene Alexandra, towards Léopoldville (Kinshasa), to MPLA’s International Headquarters.
- He is elected President of the MPLA during the Movement’s National Conference.
1963 - The MPLA moves to Brazaville due to being expelled from Congo (Rep. of Zaire), which now fully supports FNLA.
- Opening of a front in Cabinda – the Second most important Political and Military Region in Angola.
1966 – Opening of a new front in East Angola - the Third Region
1968 – He sends his family to Dar-es-Salaam, where they remain until 1975.
1970 – Winner of the Lotus award, granted by the 4th African-Asian Writers Conference.
1974 – The colonial war, a crucial factor, leads to the Captains’ Revolution in Portugal, on the 25th April.
- Only in October did the new Portuguese Government acknowledge the colonies’ right to independence, after which MPLA signs the cease-fire.
1975 – He returns to Luanda on 4th February.
- He attends the Alvor meeting, in Portugal, where a “transition Government” is agreed to be created, and which includes MPLA, Portugal, FNLA and UNITA.
- He is received by the Portuguese Writers’ Association, in their headquarters in Lisbon, which thus wishes to honour him. The President and Vice-President then were José Gomes Ferreira and Manuel Ferreira, respectively. In the company of his wife, Agostinho Neto thanks the tribute given to him by José Gomes Ferreira, and asks the Portuguese writers to remain faithful and interested in the revolutionary process in Angola.
- In March, FNLA declares war to MPLA and gives way to the massacre of the population of Luanda. Agostinho Neto is leader of the people’s resistance and appeals to the general call-up of the people to oppose to the country’s North and South invasion by foreign forces which tried to stop MPLA from proclaiming the independence.
1975 - On the 11th of November, he is proclaimed president, remaining Commander-in-Chief of the Angola‘s Popular Liberation Armed Forces and President of the MPLA.
- He is a Founding Member of The Angolan Writers Union, created on the 10th of December 1975.
- He was the first Dean of the Agostinho Neto University .
- President of the General Assembly of the Angolan Writers Union, a position he held until the day of his death.
- Recognition of the Popular Republic of Angola by over one hundred countries.
1976 - The invading South-African army is expelled from Angola on the 27th of March.
1977 - On the 10th of December, he creates the MPLA Labour Party
1979 – He hosts the closing ceremony of the 6th African-Asian Writers Conference, from the 26th of June to the 3rd of July, delivering the closing speech.
- On the 10th of September, Agostinho Neto dies in Moscow.