A video of the outgoing Gabonese President Ali Bongo is circulating, in which, apparently, he asks that a lot of noise be made to restore republican order in Gabon which has fallen prey to a coup d’état.                                                                                                

He should ask Pastef’s communications unit for the recipe for a casserole concert…  Let’s start with the beginning of the Gabonese vaudeville, whose current upheavals are only the colourful episodes of an endless soap opera.

At the beginning, it was Léon Mba who obtained independence against his will on August 17, 1960, because he preferred that his piece of land of 267,668 square kilometers, Gabon, remain a French department.                                                                                                                  De Gaulle refuses the offer politely, but firmly.                                                                         In short, Léon Mba, reluctantly, must contend with the presidency of the Gabonese Republic. Dog of life!

This seminarian who obtained his elementary certificate, then entered the colonial administration as a customs clerk, came a long way to get there, after many adventures including a conviction in 1931, to three years’ imprisonment, for embezzlement on the back of the taxpayer, in his capacity as head of canton.

But he knows how to do it, clearly supported by the powerful European foresters established there. In short, he was elected against his competitor Jean Hilaire Aubame, the former collaborator of Governor Félix Eboué, who became a deputy, close to his honourable colleague… Léopold Sédar Senghor.                                                                                      

However, it was Aubame who won the 1957 election, for the first Governing Council resulting from the Cadre law. However, Léon Mba succeeded in poaching MPs (yes, transhumance is not a Senegalese monopoly!) and that’s it: he miraculously becomes the majority and the august Parliament takes him to the pinnacle…

Tampering with results in Gabon goes back a long way, doesn’t it?

In short, here is Léon Mba President of Gabon and it runs smoothly, until February 18, 1964: disaster, it’s the coup d’état. One hundred and fifty soldiers overthrew him and deported him to Lambaréné: Jean Hilaire Aubame became head of government.

A circus that lasted twenty-four endless hours!

The French Army, whose battalion bivouac in the area, some of which disembarked from Dakar, brought Mba by the scruff of the neck to the Palace and reinstalled him with firm authority. Of course, it is Aubame who will take his place at Lambaréné.

No but! Honestly, are any floats getting lost?

Two precautions are better than one, the Pope of Françafrique Jacques Foccart, who has a nose, sticks to him as director of Cabinet a former agent of the Ptt, intelligence agent in the service of France in his spare time, as tall as three apples, Albert Bernard Bongo.

Léon Mba’s health is more than shaky. He is dying. However, we still keep it cool in our Palace…

In any case, it is France that governs and lil Bongo, the chief of staff who became vice-president, wisely asks permission, even to go to the little corner.

In 1967, Mba was re-elected with fingers in his nose and IVs in his veins, on his deathbed.

He died on November 27 of the same year. Vice-President Albert Bernard Bongo succeeds him with the height of his heels and his height of one meter and fifty-one.

There, fasten your seat belts, it’s… great art ahead!

The former French intelligence agent who became President of the Republic of Gabon will reign with absolute power, with the right of life and death, and without interruption for forty-two interminable years over Gabon which he transforms into a tropical emirate.

He commits the sublime feat of making Libreville the capital of French political intrigues with the help of distributing briefcases to its politicians, from the Far Right to the Bobo Left, including the centrists…

Making Good Use of a Putsch!

Albert Bernard Bongo was baptized Catholic in 1968, just before meeting Pope Paul VI. And then, a few years later, his name was Omar, following the oil crisis and his conversion to Islam in 1973, just to make a good impression within OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Producing and Exporting Countries.

We can never say it enough: it’s not the weather vanes that turn, it’s the direction of the wind that changes!

Omar Bongo Ondimba died in Barcelona on May 6, 2009, almost banned from staying in France where his accounts were seized and his property described as “ill-gotten”. In France alone, there are thirty-three apartments and mansions worth 98.400 billion CFA francs. Above all, Bongo bequeaths to posterity fifty-four recognized children of thirty-three mothers, only two of whom were officially married.  Excuse me a little…

Unholy question: with a harem like that, how do you find time to devote to affairs of state?

It is his son Ali, born Alain-Bernard, his last Minister of Defense, who succeeds him. He is the offspring of Patience Dabany, a musician who divorced to settle in the USA and relaunch her career.

Senegalaiseries: Madiambal, Will You Allow Me the Floor

For the record, Ali Bongo is the husband of his brother-in-law’s daughter. Explanation: his wife’s father, Edouard Valentin, a successful insurer, now deceased, will marry his half-sister Flore Bongo for the second time… His father-in-law and his brother-in-law are one and the same, in short.

When on September 4, 2009, Libé, the Frecnh daily, headlined «Ali Bongo and the 40%» at the end of the elections, there was no doubt, it was a bad start for the future. Some observers sneezed, just after a glance at the figures: out of a population of one million three hundred thousand inhabitants, there must be eight hundred thousand voters registered on the lists…

Since then, so many emotions including a failing state of health, a stroke and a citation among the figures suspected of tax evasion in the Pandora Papers scandal.

In all of this, I only remember one certainty: we are certainly not bored in Gabon, but the happiness of being Senegalese is ineffable.

I can never thank Senghor enough…

By Ibou FALL