Nouvelles Affaires Africaines
REVIEWS, 9 Feb 2015
René Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service
Pierre Péan, Nouvelles Affaires Africaines (Paris: Fayard, 2014, 254 pp.)
Pierre Péan has written a lively book on palace intrigue in Gabon. Péan is considered an “investigative journalist” and has published some 34 books on African and French politics. His writings are not so much the result of investigations as writing up what some people know but are not saying publicly.
Pierre Péan and I were both in Libreville, Gabon at the same time, just after the August 1960 independence − he working as an editor and speech writer at the Foreign Ministry while I was attached to the Ministry of Education. I do not recall meeting him, but from his comments, we knew some of the same Gabonese in government positions. He stayed on longer than I did and kept in closer contact with some Gabonese, especially those in opposition and in exile.
I was last in Gabon in 1966, the end period of Leon M’Ba, the first president. At the time Albert Bongo was chief of the President’s secretariat and was spoken of by those close to power, as “the rising star”. As M’Ba’s health declined, Bongo replaced the figure-head Vice-President and became President in 1967 on M’Ba’s death. Bongo remained President of Gabon from 1967 until his death in 2009. The only noticeable change was of his first name from Albert to Omar after a trip to Libya where (it is said in exchange for money) he became a Muslim. His son, Ali Bongo, became president in 2009 and still holds the post.
At the time of Omar Bongo’s death, when all pointed to the election of his son, who was then Minister of Defense; a slogan was going around that “Gabon is not a monarchy” – a not very subtle indication that a son should not inherit a post. However, the only other real candidate was Ali Bongo’s sister who had been the head of the secretariat of her father − and rumor has it − is a good deal brighter than her brother.
One factor in the anti-monarchy campaign was the fact that Omar Bongo was not the biological father of Ali. As Péan points out at some length, Ali was born in a part of Nigeria which became for a while, Biafra. During the late 1960s Nigeria-Biafra war, some 5000 children were flown to Gabon by the French Red Cross as there was famine and lack of medical facilities in Biafra. At the end of the Nigeria-Biafra war, most of the children were returned to Nigeria. However, some had been integrated into Gabonese families and stayed on. During the Nigeria-Biafra war, when the first children started to arrive, some, particularly French advisors to Bongo thought that it would be good public relations to have the President and his wife adopt some children, an encouragement for other Gabonese families to do the same, since no one knew how long the war would go on or its outcome. Thus, Albert Bongo and his wife adopted several children including one who became Ali Bongo. As Albert Bongo’s wife was sterile, Albert Bongo’s other children were born of the two sisters of his wife, a relatively common practice in Gabon where the rate of sterility is high.
For political reasons, today the foreign birth of Ali Bongo is stressed by some −though not in print. Moreover, Ali Bongo’s “right hand man” who runs much of the day-to-day decisions is Maixent Accrombessi, born in Benin. There have always been French advisors in the President’s office, which was rather taken for granted, but now there are also non-Gabonese Africans, referred to as “la légion étrangère”.
Péan paints a good picture of the palace intrigue, economic corruption and struggles for a place in the sun − nothing very different from the years of his father’s rule. What is new is the close friendship between Ali Bongo and the King of Morocco. The King, Mohammed VI (called in Gabon by those who know M6), bought an island off the coast of Libreville and has turned it into his pleasure hide-a-way. Can this sort of North Africa-Equatorial Africa friendship have political consequences more than just a good time among rulers?
The basic criticism of Ali Bongo’s government, which comes out only indirectly in the book, is that Ali Bongo has done nothing to modify the policy of his father to focus all development on the coastal area − the two cities of Libreville and Port Gentil. Beyond a little development in Albert Bongo’s home area, Franceville on the frontier with the Congo-Brazzaville, the rest of the interior has been neglected, much of it turned into national parks for Eco-tourism. There has been a massive migration to Libreville, which had some 20,000 people in the early 1960s and to Port Gentil − center of the oil industry. The north of Gabon, largely neglected, has been economically integrated into the Cameroon and to a lesser extent into the oil-rich Equatorial Guinea.
Ali Bongo has enough wealth from oil to surround himself with “yes men” and to pay for a favorable public relations image. However, real development, meeting the basic needs of all the Gabonese, still needs to be undertaken. This will require real debate as to priorities and popular participation. For the moment, there is little indication that Ali Bongo will provide leadership in this direction.
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René Wadlow, a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and of its Task Force on the Middle East, is president and U.N. representative (Geneva) of the Association of World Citizens and editor of Transnational Perspectives. He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 9 Feb 2015.
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