Not Just an Autocrat: The Mixed Legacy of President Bongo
After vehemently denying what French media were reporting since last Sunday, Gabonese authorities finally admitted the death of President Omar Bongo Ondimba in Barcelona on Monday.
After vehemently denying what French media were reporting since last
Sunday, Gabonese authorities finally admitted the death of President
Omar Bongo Ondimba in Barcelona on Monday. This notoriously
unprofessional management of government communication around the
president’s illness and death is representative of both the void left by
Bongo and the panic of Gabonese authorities regarding the future of the
country without him.
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President Bongo was the longest serving leader on the continent,
enjoying 41 years in power after he surprisingly succeeded to the first
President Leon Mba in 1967. Presiding over a country that is small, with
only 1,2 million inhabitants, but rich according to African standards,
Bongo managed to maintain his grip on power beyond the democratisation
process that swept away many of his fellow African presidents. This
unusual political longevity has made him the symbol of a generation of
post-independence African leaders and certainly one of the last
dinosaurs of African politics. Now that the “Ueberfigur” is no more, it
is time to interrogate his legacy.
President Bongo was certainly an autocrat who ruled his country with
an iron fist for more than 4 decades. He has been successful in either
eliminating substantial opposition or co-opting opposition leaders into
government so as to silence them. His profound knowledge of the ethnic
composition and traditional alliances of his country, coupled with a
huge ‘war treasury’ allowed him to form a wide network of support
throughout the country and beyond. In that sense, Bongo was relying more
on patrimonialism than on sound institutions to manage Gabon. The
enrichment of his family and network of supporters, who grew wealthy out
of proportion compared to the appalling poverty of the majority of the
population, will remain his biggest social failure. Although an
autocrat, Bongo was certainly not a tyrant a la Mobutu or Idi Amin.
Since the country re-established multi-partism in the 1990s Gabon’s
prisons were not full with political prisoners and opponents didn’t have
to leave the country out of fear to be killed by state security. But
although he had endorsed pluralism Bongo didn’t fight for the
entrenchment of democracy in Gabon.
President Bongo will also go down in history as the symbol of ‘la
Francafrique’, this very special, almost fusional relationship between
France and its former colonies based on a complex web of strong personal
relationships, economic links and geostrategic interests. Together with
Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, Gabon formed the nucleus of this dispositif
that allowed France not only a substantive political and security
leverage in African countries but also quasi-monopolistic positions for
its companies. This is certainly best illustrated by the story of
Total-Fina-Elf’s involvement in Gabon’s oil sector. In the 70s and the
80s Gabon produced huge amounts of crude oil under the control of the
state controlled French group without translating this wealth into
substantive development. While the multi-national was amassing huge
benefits, a small local elite was getting outrageously rich and the
government didn’t deem it necessary to build roads and other economic
infrastructure. Gabon is therefore a perfect illustration of the
controversial theory of ‘resource curse’ or ‘Dutch disease’. However,
the recent charges raised against presidents of 3 African countries
(including Bongo, Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo and Theodore
Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea) in Paris for alleged embezzlements
indicates more than anything else the end of an era in which an elitist
group of African leaders, together with their French counterparts, could
decide over the fate of the continent.
Despite his dubious French connections and his paternalistic
governance style Bongo was also an infatigable peace broker in the
region. His most recent success on this field is the agreement he
facilitated in the war-torn Central African Republic (CAR), which led to
a substantive appeasement of the security situation in the country. The
very first peacekeeping initiative for the Central African region in
the CAR is also to be credited to him. Before that, President Bongo was
critical in mediating between warring parties in Chad, Congo-Brazzaville
and even the West African Cote d’Ivoire where his advice was held in
very high esteem. There is hardly another Central African leader who can
claim a similar diplomatic influence on the continental scene.
Today, the biggest challenge for the Gabonese authorities will be to
learn to manage the country without the dominant figure of Bongo. Even
though the scenario of a chaotic and violent succession battle is rather
unlikely, the perspective of Bongo’s son Ali Ben Bongo succeeding his
father indicates how monarchic the country had grown under the
patriarch. A couple of years down the line, one can expect new fights
erupting both within the ruling RPG and opposition parties for the
control of the country’s huge mineral, gas and other natural reserves.
The ultimate judgement about the sustainability of Gabon’s political
stability under Bongo will then be made.
Paul-Simon Handy, Head of the African Security Analysis Programme and Nadia Ahmadou, Junior Researcher, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)
