The death of Omar Bongo on 7 May caused ripples across Franco-Africa. The late Gabonese president was a central figure in this shady web of political and economic ties. During his 41-year rule, he was able to weave and consolidate ties between France and Africa. He built his power base upon Gabon’s oil revenues. His past ties with the French secret service gave him the means to play his opponents against one another. His death seems to signal the collapse of his ‘empire’, although the cracks had appeared long before.

In the last few years Franco-Africa has come under attack. In both France and Africa, civil society groups and intellectuals had initiated legal proceedings against the pillage of national resources by petroleum and arms multinationals based in Paris and certain African capitals.

Bongo’s last few months were the hardest. His death comes at a time when he stands accused in the French court of having diverted public funds to acquire luxury goods and property. Congo’s Sassou-Nguesso, and Equatorial Guinea’s Obiang Nguema have also been implicated in the lawsuit.

Omar Bongo may be dead, but the monster lives on. Several reactions to his death touch on this dubious legacy of his 41 years in power. Pambazuka News explores some of these.

THE DEATH OF OMAR BONGO, PILLAR OF FRANCO-AFRICA

France has lost one of most formidable analysts of her political life. El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba knew better than anyone else the habits and customs of the fifth Republic. Her brighter side – characterised by alliances and grand electoral meetings – as well as her darker side, characterised by shady financing, covert assassinations, and petroleum corruption.

THE DEATH OF BONGO: “WE SHALL NOT MOURN A CROOK”

There were two kinds of reaction in France following the announcement of Omar Bongo’s death. The solemn ones of Sarkozy, Chirac and Kouchner, that honoured a ‘sage’, a “’friend’. Also the blunt ones, like Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who recalled how Bongo had backed Chirac financially in the 1981 election. Even more cutting was that of Green Party MP Noël Mamère on France Inter: ‘We shall not mourn another crook disappearing from the planet. All those who cherish democracy shall not mourn president Bongo, the embodiment of everything we have fought against the last 30 years, in other words, Franco-Africa, the incestuous and sinister relationship between certain African governments and France, both left and right.’

BONGO’S DEATH REVIVES THE DEBATE ON “FRANCO-AFRICA”

According to Eva Joly, a former French magistrate and now a member of the European parliament, who presided over political and financial cases such as the Elf affair, Franco-Africa ‘was alive and well’. On 17 March, Sarkozy visited President Bongo, just before his election, ‘to seek advice’. She adds, ‘If France returned all the irregular payments made to our politicians by Bongo for imaginary services, we could build maternity hospitals in Gabon and lower the infant mortality rate’.

BONGO IS DEAD, LONG LIVE BONGO?

It would be interesting to find out how the Bongo family’s circle of patronage, and by extension the country’s political and economic elite, will react to his death. Whereas democratic ideals have developed in Gabon, it is unlikely that those who have grown accustomed to power will easily give up part or all of their slices of the national cake. One could therefore envisage a Togolese scenario, in this small oil-producing nation. There is little hope for a democratic process in the current African scenario where violent coups are becoming more common.

THE WEST AFRICAN PRESS COMMENTS ON BONGO’S DEATH

Comment in the African press varies from deference to denunciation of an outdated political system. The private Malian daily Le Républicain led with: ‘Death of Bongo: The Control Tower is no longer responding’. In Burkina Faso, the government daily Sidwaya spoke of ‘The end of an Era’. Benin’s Fraternité evoked a ‘master of behind-the-scenes diplomacy, who gave good advice to all former leaders of Benin’.

* Tidiane Kassé is editor of the Pambazuka News French edition
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