Omar Bongo Ondimba, President of Gabon from 1967 to 2009, who has died aged 73 in a Barcelona hospital following a heart attack, was, with 42 years in power, Africa’s longest-serving president.
He was one of those dinosaurs who had ruled dictatorially for too long, classic examples being Mobutu in Zaire and Eyadéma in Togo, both of whom were so fixated on power they nearly brought their countries down with them. Bongo may have been in a slightly different category, as Gabon had known no major civil conflict during his rule, and in spite of early brutalities in power, he tended to seek solutions to political problems through dialogue and, it has to be said, the illimitable power of money to purchase politicians.
He was born Albert-Bernard Bongo, the youngest of nine children, in the village of Lewai near Franceville in the Upper Ogooué. His father died when he was seven and he was sent to school in Brazzaville, capital of French Equatorial Africa (of which Gabon formed a part), where relatives lived. He went on to secondary school there at the Lycée Technique Savorgnan de Brazza, and obtained a diploma in commerce, before returning to Gabon in 1958, to a job in posts and telecommunications.
He found a godfather there in the shape of a French chief postal inspector called Naudy, a militant socialist and dedicated freemason. He introduced the young Bongo to both, but only the freemasonry stayed with him, continuing as an important part of his power networks.
Ambitious and restless (he had been in trouble at school and in the civil service), Bongo volunteered late in 1958 for the French air force, where he stayed three years and reached the rank of second lieutenant, travelling in the region and completing his baccalaureat. He also had experience in military intelligence, although he strongly denied ever working for the French security services.
While still a serving officer, he was posted to the ministry of foreign affairs, created on Gabon’s independence in 1960, and came to the attention of the country’s first president, Léon M’ba, who in 1962 brought him into his private office. There, Bongo rose rapidly to be directeur de cabinet and, after the thwarted coup of February 1964, was given crucial responsibilities for national defence. At this time the French were greatly concerned to keep Gabon in the French sphere of influence because of the country’s concentration of wealth, notably its potential in the oil sector.
De Gaulle’s African grey eminence Jacques Foccart was casting around for a possible successor to M’ba, who was in his 60s and known to be ailing, and the Machiavellian young apparatchik with military connections seemed a potential willing ally. The fact that he was not from the majority Fang ethnic group, and had no political base, was thought a positive advantage, and he seemed potentially a good protector of French interests. In the presidential elections of March 1967 Bongo was elected vice-president (and thus constitutional successor) to M’ba, who was already suffering from cancer, and died in November that year.
Bongo learnt the power game fast, mastering the mechanisms of the single-party state, backed up by the security of a French military base and a defence agreement, which had been used when French troops reversed the overthrow of M’ba in 1964. He was also the beneficiary of an oil business just coming on stream, which tripled in value after the 1973 global crisis. This facilitated political control, but also gave Gabon a reputation for extravagance, seen in the luxurious presidential palace built in the mid-1970s.
Bongo’s own involvement in corruption was legendary, as was his wealth, but if it was occasionally exposed internationally from the Lockheed scandal of the 1970s, through the huge scandal of Elf, the French state-owned oil company, this had little effect on his domestic political position. The Gabonese political class were all enjoying the benefits. He was not known for sound economic management, however, and was often in deep trouble with the Washington institutions, especially over the Transgabonais railway linking his home region to the sea, which mainly benefited timber companies exploiting Gabon’s quality hardwood.
It soon became clear that, from having been seen as a French puppet, Bongo had in fact built a powerful network of allies in all parties in Paris, and was able to use his influence to secure the removal of unwelcomingly reforming ministers, both under Mitterrand in 1983 and Sarkozy in 2008. In 1990, with the end of the Cold War and Africa’s democracy wave, his position was uneasy for a time and he was obliged to accept multi-partyism, but his instinct for political survival was strong, and if French troops were briefly used in domestic unrest in 1991, it was officially only to protect French citizens. In recent years there was little serious political trouble in Gabon, and his experienced hand was on occasion directed to mediation in other African countries.
With his height-enhancing heels and his talent for a whimsical turn of phrase, Bongo came across as a comedian. His pragmatic opportunism was seen in his conversion to Islam and adoption of the name El Hadj Omar in 1973, although his view of religion was inclusive, especially in a country where traditional ways still had strong roots. He added the name Ondimba only at the beginning of this century, perhaps an indication of a turning towards his ancestors.
The unpleasant side of the Bongo regime was exposed in Pierre Péan’s 1983 book Affaires Africaines, and regular attacks on the president appeared in Parisian media, to which he seemed for the most part impervious. He once told an interviewer: “Don’t speak to me about corruption. That is not an African word.” But even as he was critically ill, he was being pursued by French magistrates, and in February nine bank accounts in Paris were frozen.
Early in his career opponents were wont to disappear, and it was not advisable to be too closely connected to his flamboyant first wife, Josephine, who eventually divorced him and went to live in Hollywood, launching a career as a pop star under the name of Patience Dabany. In the worst years of marital stress, warnings against bad behaviour would appear under the appropriate zodiac sign in the astrology columns of the government newspaper. The marriage produced a son, Ali, and two daughters, Pascaline and Albertine: Ali is currently defence minister and Pascaline served in the government in the 1990s. He was deeply attached to his second wife, Edith (daughter of President Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville), and her death in March is said by some to have brought on his illness.
His own death may come to be seen as marking the end of the era of cronyism between France and Africa known as Françafrique: Bongo was the greatest living symbol of much that was wrong in the relationship. There are inevitably fears of what might happen now he has gone, so absolute and durable has been his rule, but it may be the moment when Gabon, at last, begins to grow up. – guardian.co.uk