When longtime dictator Omar Bongo died last week, he left behind at least 66 bank accounts. The first family owned 45 homes in France, including at least 14 in Paris and 11 on the French Riviera. And they boasted of 19 or more luxury cars, including a Bugatti sports model that cost the Republic of Gabon $1.5 million.
But most of the country Bongo governed for 41 years is still covered in jungle. A third of its people live in poverty so dire that some dig through the trash dump to feed their children. The contrast makes it all the more striking that hundreds of thousands of those people lined the streets of the capital this week to bid goodbye to the 73-year-old ruler who bled their country dry.
Women wept and waved signs that said, "Merci Papa" - thank you, father. Businesses put up billboards with messages of loss, such as: "Gabon weeps." On a continent that has seen more than its share of presidents-turned-dictators, Gabon is perhaps one of the best examples of what analysts call "the chief complex." So long was Bongo in power that his countrymen came to view him as a hereditary chief, a man whose authority is unquestioned. |