Sindika Dokolo, Congolese Businessman and husband of Africa’s richest woman’s husband, Isabel Dos Santos has died at the age of 48. According to several media sources, the avid African Arts Collector drowned while diving in Dubai on Thursday, October 29.
The news about the passing away of Mr. Dokolo was first reported in tweet by Africa Fact Zone
He owned one of the most contemporary African art collections, which included over 3,000 pieces of art and together with his wife are under investigation for embezzling state property in Angola. Mr. Dokolo strongly opposed the third of Joseph Kabila in his native Democratic Republic of Congo.
On Thursday, Isabel dos Santos posted a family picture on Instagram of herself, her husband, and son with the caption “My love…”
The personal assistant to the Congolese president, Felix Tshisekedi, wrote on Twitter: “It was during a dive that he left for eternity, a habitual activity that took him away from his struggle and his loved ones”.
Africa Insight has also confirmed the death of Mr Sindika Dokolo in a tweet
Who was Sindika Dokolo? (Source: Sábado via Tek Deeps)
Sindika Dokolo was born in 1972 in the former Zaire, the son of a Congolese father and a Danish mother, but spent most of her childhood in Europe, especially in Belgium and France. His father, Augustin Dokolo, was the first black man to set up a bank in Africa in the late 1960s. “He is known as the most successful businessman in Congo since his independence,” Sindika said in an interview with Business Journal.
He inherited from his father not only money but also a taste for art, which he would later dedicate to collecting. In an interview with TPA, said that the mother made a point of taking him to all museums in Europe and that the father already had several works of African art. It was also his father who led him to pursue training in economics, commerce, and foreign languages in Paris.
The businessman advanced in the field of art as early as 15 years old, when he started building a collection of African art with the help of his father. Later he inherited some of the pieces from his collection and ended up creating the Sindika Dokolo Foundation, in Luanda, to promote culture and art on the continent.
In October last year, its Foundation bought and repatriated to Angola 20 pieces of art that had been taken from Angolan museums to foreign collections and prepared to deliver to the Kinshasa museum the first recovered Congolese piece, according to an interview granted at the time. to the Lusa agency.
Critic of the nearly 20 years of President Joseph Kabila’s regime in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sindika Dokolo spent about five years in exile, due to the lawsuits brought against him in Kinshasa, having only returned in May 2019, already after he came to power Félix Tshisekedi, who took office as Congolese head of state in January.
In February 2016, still with José Eduardo dos Santos as President in Angola, the Sindika Dokolo Foundation handed over to the head of state, at the Presidential Palace, in Luanda, two masks and a statuette of the Tchokwe people (eastern Angola), who they had been plundered during the armed conflict, recovered after several years of negotiation with European collectors.
