Africa’s tyrants two down and one to go

Press, 21 August 1979, Page 17

Africa’s tyrants two down and one to go

By

COLIN LEGUM,

“Observer,” London

“Two down, one to go,” was the immediate and simultaneous reaction of two African Foreign Ministers attending the Commonwealth summit at Lusaka on hearing the news of the overthrow of another black tyrant, President Francois Macias Nguema of Equatorial Guinea. “Let’s wait and see who this colonel is who has overthrown him before we rejoice,” said a third African Foreign Minister. The scepticism is right but, as the other two argued, it is inconceivable that there could be anything worse than Macias,

the monster of Equatorial Guinea — a former Spanish possession and not to be confused with the Guinea Republic further up the West African coast or its close neighbour, Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony. Macias’s overthrow, following closely .on that of Idi Amin of Uganda, has left just ■ one other especially notorious African tyrant — Emperor Bokassa of the benighted Central African Empire. Public opinion in Africa has grown strongly in recent years against this trio of tyrants who, it has increasingly come to be felt, have not only grossly misused their own subjects but also the rest of the continent. When the Organisation of African Unity, at its summit in Monrovia last month, adopted a new charter of African human rights, it was particularly the regimes of Macias and t Bokassa that the architects of the charter had in mind. If the signs are to be read correctly, the days of the vainglorious Emperor Bokassa are also numbered. Bokassa’s most recent villainy — the brutal killing of perhaps 100 schoolchildren, after arresting several thousand for refusing to buy school

uniforms from the imperial clothing factory — alienated important figures in his Government. It is, in fact, extremely doubtful whether Bokassa would still be occupying his shaky throne were it not for the substantial economic and other aid provided by the French Government. For reasons not altogether clear. President Giscard d’Estaing has shown a personal interest in helping to protect Bokassa. It is difficult to believe that one of the reasons could be the big business interests of the President’s brother in

Bokassa’s empire, since these would probably be safer under the rule of a less eccentric despot. A coherent and responsible .opposition has begun to develop against Bokassa, led by one of his former Prime Ministers and several former diplomats. The French are likely to find it increasingly difficult to continue to prop up the last of the evil trio. Nothing much is known about Lieutenant Colonel Terodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who led the coup against President Macias. He has described his new regime as “revolutionary” — but that is now standard practice among army leaders who managed successful coups in the Third World. About 400,000 Equatorial Guineans — possibly a third of the population — have been forced into exile since independence to escape the nightmare rule of . MaciSs. Most have found a precarious refuge in Gabon and the Cameroon Republic. It is impossible to estimate how many thousands have been tortured and killed in Macias’s prisons. Most of ministerial colleagues at the time of independence have been killed off. The bulk of the country’s educated elite

have either been killed, imprisioned, or have fled into exile. The churches of the once predominantly Catholic country have been converted to other uses. Despite his bloodthirsty rule, opposition never ceased in Equatorial Guinea, forcing the paranoid Macias to withdraw increasingly behind the walls of his island palace where he brooded suspiciously about plots against him. especially fearing the Fang tribesmen on the mainland, the worst sufferers of his years of persecution.

Having quarrelled with Spain soon after indepen-

dence, Macias next alienated another of his close neighbours, Nigeria, by expelling thousands of mainly Ibo tribesmen who had

traditionally worked on the once-flourishing sugar plantations. The plantations, like most of the poverty stricken territory’s economy, have been run down to the point where Equitorial Guineans have found it hard to survive. Macias’s main aid in recent years came from the Russians, Cubans, and Chinese, but all these Communist nations became increasingly disenchanted with his rule. Only the Russians appear to have obtained some advantage from the facilities available to their fishing fleets and for the few Soviet Navy units of their Atlantic patrol, which call there on their normal operations between Conakry and Angola. Equatorial Guinea consists of a group of islands and a 10,000-square-mile territory on the mainland. The task of the new rulers will be to establish some unity between the Bobos of the main island and the Fangs of the mainland, to rescue the country’s economy and attract back the i- educated elite from exile. Hopefully, they will establish some system of law and order after freeing the hundreds of political prisoners who have survived the tortures and other hardships of Macias’s jails. O.F.N.S. copyright