By Abdul Karim Bangura,
Department of Political Science,
Howard University,
Washington, DC, USA.
When the death of President El Hadj Omar (formerly Albert) Bongo of Gabon was announced on June 8, 2009, his country was enjoying a per capita income ($14,400) four times that of most Sub-Saharan countries. Gabon’s official GDP exchange rate was $15.91 billion, real GDP rate was 3.6 percent, current account balance was $2.026 billion, reserves of foreign exchange and gold totaled $1.859 billion, literacy rate was 63.2 percent (73.7 percent male, 53.3 percent female), and the net migration rate was -3.48 migrants per 1,000 population. Yet, the pundits who hit the media circuit after the announcement were not interested in these facts. Instead, their focus was on how to characterize Bongo and his type of rule. While a few pundits acknowledged Bongo’s benevolence toward victims of war (e.g., the Nigerian-Biafran War) and peacemaking efforts in Africa, the majority dubbed him a “dictator” and an “idiot.” But do these pedestrian characterizations actually capture the essence of Bongo?
The answer is no, based on the most objective and authoritative study on Bongo’s political career titled “Ideological Manipulations and Political Longevity: The Power of Omar Bongo in Gabon since 1967” that appears in the African Studies Review journal (2000:55-71) written by Professor François Ngolet. According to the professor, Bongo’s political longevity (from 1967 to 2009) was not due solely to his efficient use of economic and military resources, as previous observers had postulated, but also in his ability to establish domination over the symbolic spheres of Gabonese society. Bongo’s manipulation of such religious institutions as Christianity, Freemasonry and traditional secret societies allowed him to gain control over the minds of the Gabonese by convincing the masses that he was the ideal leader for the country. Ngolet adds that despite these manipulations by Bongo, the Gabonese masses were also able to use this same symbolic system to challenge his power and threaten the lives of members of his government. What follows is a summary of Ngolet’s rendition of the invention and resistance of Bongoism: i.e. the ideological system invented by Bongo to maintain and perpetuate his domination over the people of Gabon.
Ngolet begins by acknowledging that Bongo’s political longevity can partly be explained by the political support of France. Indeed, Jacques Foccart (French President Charles de Gaulle’s and then George Pompidou’s spin-doctor for African policy, who founded in 1959 the Gaullist organization Service d’Action Civique (SAC) with Charles Pasqua, which specialized in shady operations) falsified the Gabonese Constitution to enable Bongo to assume power on November 28, 1967, a day after President Léon Mba (Gabon’s first president) died of an illness. Foccart also helped Bongo to establish a one-party system, which became an important tool for the latter’s political survival.
France maintained a permanent military base in Gabon and helped to organize the country’s secret service, the Gardé Présidentielle (CEDOC), a force of 2,000 troops that was an intimidating army for any opposition group in Gabon. Bongo used Gabon’s economic resources to win supporters who held 50,000 administrative positions. Even members of the Parti Démocratique Gabonais (PDG), Bongo’s party, whose number exceeded that of the administration, were on the government’s payroll. Nonetheless, Ngolet argues that Bongo’s military, economic and political strategies do not account for how Bongo’s emergence as a leader of the Gabonese state was interpreted by peasants through their ancestral system of meaning.
The Gabonese population, mostly peasants, have utilized all of the symbolic and ideological resources of the pre-colonial system of signifying in order to make Bongo’s rise to power intelligible. In the collective memory of the people of Gabon, Bongo was known as a member of the Bateke ethnic group, which achieved recognition through their king, Makoto (Onko), who signed a treaty in 1883 with Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza-best known as Pierre Paul François Camille Savorgnan de Brazza, he was a Franco-Italian explorer, born in Italy and later naturalized French. With the backing of the Société de Géographique de Paris, he opened up for France entry along the right bank of the Congo that eventually led to French colonies in Central Africa. Nonetheless, the Bateke are generally perceived as being Pygmies (Babongo or Tswa) and, therefore, considered a backward and primitive group. Small in size, Bongo reinforced this popular notion.
In Gabon and more generally in Central Africa, the Pygmies are marginalized groups. Most of them live in isolated rural areas and maintain permanent camps near Bantu villages with which they have economic ties. Pygmies barter their game meat and honey for manufactured goods such as tobacco and sugar from the Bantu. By controlling such European products, the Bantu feel a sense of superiority over and scorn for the Pygmies. The peasants’ acceptance of Omar Bongo, thus, constituted an “ideological inversion” that can be understood only through other hidden perceptions relating to these “people of the forest.”
Generally regarded as the first human settlers of the rain forest and, as a result, its masters, Pygmies are sought by the Bantu to help them during migrations and teaching them to adapt to their new ecosystem. In addition, the peasants usually seek the knowledge of Pygmies in matters of magic and divination in resolving their societal contradictions. The Bantu believe that Pygmies “keep in reserve an obscure, decisive and silent sacred force.” The Bantu are therefore in constant fear of the Pygmies and would seek “their help as a profound, nocturnal, mystical and unsurpassable force.” It is in this ideological framework that the Gabonese peasantry found signs, symbols and codes to explain Bongo’s ascension to power. For the peasants, it was simply a continuation of the ideological domination of the Pygmy over the Bantu. Through this affiliation with the Pygmies, Bongo was perceived as a mystical individual capable of “seeing the invisible and detecting the undetectable, a providential being.” Since traditionally, only an individual of this nature could be a ruler, it was easy for the peasants to accept Bongo’s leadership.
To capitalize on this perception, Bongo sought to reinforce his power by controlling traditional secret societies like the Bwiti, a traditional religion involving ancestral worship that was tremendously influential in the Gabonese system of representation. Its celebrations provided villages or clans the opportunity to recall their past and to reconnect with their ancestors. The Mbandja, or the temple where ceremonies are conducted, has a central column around which ancestors’ relics are placed in an attempt to resurrect and reintegrate them into the community. As this association became a place where history was kept alive and where identities were preserved and constructed, it also became a site of potential political subversion.
Bwiti is also a space for providing knowledge. Its members claim to have special awareness of the invincible. Initiation into Bwiti is done slowly in order to allow members to gain the knowledge that will integrate them into the world of magic and divination. High ranking members are believed to have Nganga, the capacity to predict future events and to detect hostile forces. Thus, Bwiti is a potent force for social regulation. As a place where power is redistributed, leaders can be installed and challenged through magic and sorcery. Enmeshed with these attributes is “the night world” where sorcerers (Bayemba) release their doubles to fly off into the evening sky and inflict death on their enemies by consuming their souls.
All important members of a village are usually members of Bwiti.
During celebrations, problems concerning the village, clans, and families are discussed. Thus, in societies threatened by crisis, Bwiti serves as an instrument for restoring social order. The people of the Ogooué River basin, for example, employed Bwiti to re-appropriate the past in order to comprehend the state of depression and discomfort that affected them during colonial rule. This allowed them to defeat the upsurge of witchcraft, gambling, drinking and laziness that resulted from the destruction of pre-colonial forces of social regulation. As alternatives to these social discrepancies, Bwiti proposed fertility, well-being, harmony and good fortune. In essence, Bwiti became the edifice for resisting the colonial system and its values and suggesting a traditionally-ordered model. This also allowed Bwiti to serve as a space for political production.
Just as Bwiti, Ndjobi, a secret society known mostly in southwest Gabon, has played a significant role in the politics of modern Gabon. Ndjobi surfaced among the Obamba people of Okondja in 1943 as a means to resolve problems introduced by colonialism: degradation of material life, dismantlement of the social order, and the onset of hopelessness that led to an explosion of insecurity and witchcraft. Ndjobi’s main goal was to fight sorcery, thereby placing more emphasis on divination, magic and oracles. It was employed to anticipate and stop evil actions and to protect potential victims. In essence, Ndjombi’s main focus became the manipulation of the supernatural.
Due to the close relationship between the supernatural and political power in the public imagination, Gabon’s political leaders became quite active members of Bwiti and Ndjobi. In 1940, when he was fighting for territorial autonomy, Léon Mba helped to launch the Comité Mixte Gabonais (CMG), which later became the Bloc Démocratique Gabonais (BDG). Certain branches within the CMG were dominated by Bwitists, who provided groups for Mba’s political party. Mba used the Bwiti potential to engineer social change, to remake a society based on Gabonese traditions, and to heal the unrest precipitated by the colonial order. Mba himself used magical forces and charms to ensure his political longevity.
When Bongo succeeded Mba, he followed the same path as his predecessor by making Bwiti and Ndjobi two important sources of his power. Bongo especially understood the subversive character of the two societies and used their mystical functions to establish and protect his power. To rule Gabon, Bongo needed allies in the night world. The Bwiti and Ndjobi were among the symbolic territories where these allies could be tapped. Bongo’s membership in these societies made it easy for him to harness their traditional potential for change and to provide protection and mystical reinforcement for his regime.
Bwiti and Ndjobi on his side, Bongo decided to extend his control over imported religions. To begin with, Christian discourse in Gabon has traditionally placed greater emphasis on salvation of the spirit rather than the body. Catholic and Protestant churches worked to develop a spiritual dimension within the lives of the Gabonese, leaving the management of more temporal affairs to other institutions. Churches provided education and social services, paid more attention to matters dealing with faith and morality, and participated less in political matters. The result was the disengagement of the Church from economic and social problems, thereby tacitly accepting the status quo. The Catholic Church and Bongo maintained strong links, as the Church focused on nourishing the spirit and left the temporal order to Bongo. The Church provided a sound education for the youth and taught resignation and passivity. It did not speak out against corruption, social inequalities, economic mismanagement, and political assassinations. In return, Bongo provided the Church with funding, land, and labor to build new churches.
To further consolidate his power, Bongo capitalized on the divisions within the Église Évangélique du Gabon, the main Protestant Church in the country. The divisions occurred in 1969 during the general synod between supporters of Pastor Nang-Essono, president of the Protestant Church, and his opponents, who were close to Bongo’s government. Attempts by other African and European churches to resolve the conflict proved fruitless. The conflict became explosive when Daniel Sima Ndong, the leader of the dissident group, was ousted from the Church. It took two decades for the two groups to reach a power-sharing agreement in 1989, an agreement perceived by the Bongo government as dangerous.
At the same time, Bongo was facing a political challenge from Father Mba Abessole, a Fang, and the Église Évangélique was dominated by the Fang and was also emerging as a powerful voting bloc. This political situation revived the conflict between the two groups. The tension reached its height during the 1992 extraordinary synod held in Libreville where Molotov cocktails of unknown origin were tossed into the meeting place, seriously injuring many participants. The dissension between the groups became so profound that a pastor from Benin was brought to Gabon to head the Église Évangélique until the conflict could be resolved. These conflicts served Bongo quite well, as they allowed him to secure his influence within a weakened Protestant Church.
As both the Catholic and Protestant churches came under Bongo’s control, Christian discourse dealt less with the Gabonese people’s economic and social realities and more with Bongo’s political rationale. During Eucharistic celebrations, Bongo’s name was frequently mentioned with applause. Also, during the traditional exchange of New Year’s wishes, religious institutions would proclaim their fidelity and allegiance to Bongo’s government. Bongo’s conversion to Islam in 1973 allowed him to further influence the political elite. Many high-ranking Gabonese officials followed suit in adopting Islam. Bongo also used Islam as a mystical shield by acquiring the services of a personal Marabout whose magic powers countered the occult spells spread by his enemies.
The next institutions Bongo brought under his control were the two Masonic lodges in Gabon: Dialogue and Rite Equatorial. Lodge membership is restricted to a small, but powerful, group of political elite. Bongo was the leader, or “Great Master,” of Dialogue and indirectly controlled Rite Equatorial, since the Grande Loge du Gabon is a fusion of the two lodges. A fundamental principle of Bongo’s political party, the PDG, is the concept of dialogue. Consequently, his political speeches and slogans frequently included the word dialogue. In addition, all members of his government must join the lodge. Once admitted, a member is to follow specific esoteric rituals and respect the principles of the lodge. Foremost among its principles is the belief in the brotherhood; therefore, a lodge member considers himself to be a part of a family.
Another important principle of the lodge is that a member is expected to obey the Great Master and other high-ranking members. Combining this requirement with Bongo’s dual roles as head of state and leader of the Masonic lodges meant that no member of Bongo’s government could criticize him in public. To do otherwise would be considered as an affront to Bongo’s authority and a violation of Masonic law that could result in severe punishment. As members of the administration and the Masonic lodges, the political elite, which is the social group that is best positioned to challenge Bongo’s regime, found itself trapped and obliged to serve him. By controlling the two lodges, Bongo also enhanced his standing with French Masons who are prominent in both the socialist and conservative political parties of France.
By taking control of traditional, Christian and esoteric ideologies, Bongo himself emerged as a cult figure and produced a new political dogma. His attempt to reshape and dominate Gabon’s entire ideological space can be traced back to 1968 when he imposed a one-party political system. The PGC’s political doctrine, the “Progressisme Démocratique et Concrete,” was invented by Gabon’s intellectuals and explained in Bongo’s Green Book, Le Petit Livre Vert. It is a conservative ideology that emphasizes Gabonese nationalism and preeminence, free enterprise, and a market economy, all to be pursued in the spirit of “Dialogue, Tolérance, Paix,” which are also the three key principles of the PGC.
Armed with these new political tenets, Bongo emerged as the “Guide Eclairé,” the Enlightened Guide of Gabon. He became the person who must lead the country from darkness to light and from the grim past of “tribalism” to the bright future of “national unity.” He positioned himself as “father” of the nation of Gabon, père de la nation. He, nonetheless, managed to present his government as non-ideological and “pragmatic.” His mantra to foreign investors was that Gabon was not part of the ideological debate taking place in other African nations and that his country was pragmatic in its economic and international politics. He avoided imported Western ideological systems and maintained that what the people of Gabon needed were concrete economic and social achievements.
In reality, however, Bongo bombarded the people of Gabon with political slogans in all the mass media. By penetrating the people’s psyche, Bongo’s political mantra began to seem like the only truth. Songs praising him were frequently broadcasted on the radio and television. Musique du PDG (“the PDG music”) became Gabon’s national music and popularized by the singer Joséphine Bongo, the president’s former wife. In such an atmosphere of adoration and celebration, Challenging Bongo’s regime became a daunting task.
Yet, despite Bongo’s control over key elements of Gabonese society, the people found ways to use various elements of his own program to challenge his ideological hegemony. For example, Bwiti members threw curses on Bongo’s regime, despite his control over traditional secret societies. In the 1970s, some of Bongo’s enemies, probably the Fang, frequently sent Bwiti curses to his office via the postal service. The action led Bongo to order the post office to insure that any mail addressed to the president’s office be accepted only as registered mail, hoping that the added expense would discourage the senders. But the volume of hate mail did not decline until 1974, when the president’s office instituted a specified punishment for the senders.
Another challenge to Bongo’s ideological domination came from the lower Catholic clergy who launched the Union Gabonaise de Recherche Pastorale (UGRP), based on the belief that the Church should focus on changing life on earth rather than the spirit alone. The UGRP preached that Jesus’ message was to be integrated with the daily lives of the Gabonese people to strengthen their connection to God. The group also believed that Christianity should be adapted to Gabonese cultural realities, which meant that the Gabonese Church should be Africanized. It then proposed ways through which Christianity and Gabonese traditional religions could be synthesized.
Two of the UGRP founders, Father Noel Ngwa-Nguema and Father Paul Mba-Abessole, believed strongly that an interpretation of the Gospel of Jesus must not sidestep the concrete problems the Gabonese people were facing. Bongo’s regime and the political crimes sweeping across the country influenced the two priests’ outlook. These factors prompted them to organize the Mouvement de Redressement National (MORENA), among whose activities included the writing of a Livre Blanc (“White Book”) to denounce Bongo’s abuse of power and demand radical political reforms such as instituting a multiparty system.
Bongo, for his part, continued to strengthen his regime by investing the PDG with constitutional support; and by 1983, he had managed to make the PDG the virtual representative of national sovereignty. The party must confer its approval on a person before s/he could become a deputy, a member of the economic and social council, a member of local or departmental assemblies, or a holder of any other public office. Furthermore, Bongo included military officers in the party’s central committee. After MORENA organized a peaceful demonstration at the Libreville bus station and distributed tracts hostile to the government in 1981, all of the organization’s leaders were arrested and tried. Many were sentenced to life imprisonment, among them Father Noel Ngwa-Nguema. Father Mba-Abessole had fled Gabon earlier in 1980 and so was not affected by this persecution. From 1981 to 1989, he was a prominent figure in the Gabonese opposition movement in France.
In 1985, the Gabonese people’s ideological resistance to Bongo’s power took a different turn. Captain Alexandre Mandja Ngokouta of the Gabonese army and a member of the Mbahwin ethnic group of Haut-Ogoouté, Bongo’s native province, attempted a coup against the president and his regime. The economic crisis that developed that year due to the fall in oil prices led to social unrest and moral confusion. It also led to a proliferation of religious sects, among which was the Christianisme Céleste. Touched by and concerned about the social crisis affecting his nation, Ngokouta joined this sect in search of emotional and social support. He found the sect to be concerned with both religious and socio-political issues. As Ngokouta was leading the coup in August of 1985, the operation was stopped at the last minute by the French secret service; Ngokouta was then arrested and executed in Libreville.
This failure to remove Bongo from office did not dampen some of the Gabonese people’s ideological resistance by using those secret societies that escaped the president’s control. After 1967, each time Bongo visited the city of Lambaréné, a powerful rain fell, even during the dry season, paralyzing his activities and forcing him to shorten his visits. Such powerful rains are not unusual during the rainy season in the tropical zone; they are intriguing and suspicious, however, during the dry season. These occurrences became a source of concern for Bongo and the members of his political class, who perceived them to be a gesture of political hostility from local populations and a potential threat to Bongo’s life.
In 1988, Bongo discussed his concerns with Rawiri, a long-time friend and a leading official from Moyen-Ogooué (Gabon’s central province). Rawiri convened the leaders of the three local ethnic groups (Bekele, Fang, and Galwa) for them to explain the reasons for their anger against the government. An agreement was reached during the dialogue for Bongo to modernize Lambaréné and in return the local population through mystical purification would prevent the rain from falling during his visits. For the purification ceremonies in Lambaréné, the Fang brought Mekun, the Bekele brought the Ndokwe, and the Galwa brought the Ndjembe. The ceremonies lasted for four days: each secret society had one day to do its purification; on the last day, congratulatory and closing ceremonies were hosted by Rawiri himself. During the closing ceremonies, a conspiracy to attack Bongo’s regime was planned. The Bakele apparently never believed in the president’s promises to modernize their area. Since Bongo did not attend the ceremonies, his representative, Rawiri, became the target. While Rawiri was giving his speech, a young Bakele man left the Ndokwe headquarters in downtown Lambaréné for Independence Square; armed with a mystical gun (Aloke), the young man shot Rawiri and quickly returned to Ndokwe headquarters to announce his action.
The crowd saw Rawiri fall to the ground but could see no apparent reason for it. He was immediately rushed to the Albert Schweitzer Hospital, blood flowing from his mouth.
At the hospital, the doctors were unable to find any injuries inside or outside Rawiri’s body. He was taken to the Galwa, where an Ndjembe diviner informed him that he was a victim of a Bakele mystical aggression and that only the Bakele could cure him. He was then taken to a secret society’s headquarters where Ndekwe healers and diviners gave him a concoction made out of leaves and bark to drink. In just a few hours, Rawiri had recovered and returned to Lambaréné. With the support of Jean-Marie Mbekwe, a Bakele representative in the Bongo government, Rawiri sought revenge by sending the gendarmerie to beat and arrest all adults in Bellevue (Mbekwe’s village of origin). The arrestees were released and sent home after three days of incarceration. The Bekele decided to counteract by mystically punishing Mbekwe, whom they regarded as a traitor. In just a few months, Mbekwe lost his government position, the new house he was building in Lambaréné burned down with no apparent reason, and his three wives divorced him.
By employing their traditional ideological tools, the Gabonese masses tried to resist Bongo’s hegemony. Their activities led to a multiparty system by 1990. Among the political parties launched or legalized were MORENA, MORENA Bûcherons (MRB), Union Socialiste Gabonaise (USG), Union pour la Démocratique et le Dévelopment (UD) and Parti Gabonais du Progrès (PGP). The legalization of these parties was immediately followed by a national conference that led to calls for radical economic and political reforms in Gabon. Strong leaders emerged from the conference. One of them was Joseph Rendjambe of the PGP who was mysteriously murdered in Libreville toward the end of 1990. His death triggered a national uprising against Bongo’s regime that was thwarted by French intervention.
Also in 1990, legislative elections were organized and, surprisingly, MORENA, the main opposition party, split into the Rassemblement National des Bûcherons (RNB) and the MORENA Original. As a result, PDG was declared the winner, albeit many election irregularities were noted. During the presidential elections of January 1994, Bongo declared victory in the first round of the elections over his main challenger, Father Mba-Abessole, while the ballots were still being counted. The victory was nonetheless immediately recognized by the French government and other international observers. In the presidential election of 1998, Bongo was reelected by successfully corrupting and dividing the opposition. A large portion of his ideological fortress damaged, Bongo has adjusted his strategy by attempting to control the new democratic institutions.
In sum, while the Gabonese people were able to challenge Bongo’s ideological domination, they were not able to achieve their ultimate goal of wrestling power away from him because of the dispersed character of their strategies. Each ethnic group used its own tools to fight Bongo in its own isolated way. Meanwhile, religious sects continued to proliferate in Gabon, traditional societies continued to play an important role in shaping the lives of the Gabonese people, and the opposition parties continued to challenge Bongo at the secular level.
About the Author
Abdul Karim Bangura Karim is Professor of Research Methodology and Political Science at Howard University in Washington, DC. He holds a PhD in Political Science, a PhD in Development Economics, a PhD in Linguistics, and a PhD in Computer Science. He is the author of 58 books and more than 450 scholarly articles. The winner of numerous teaching and other scholarly and community service awards, Bangura is also fluent in about a dozen African languages, six European languages, and studying to strengthen his fluency in Arabic and Hebrew.
Bangura’s URL:
http://www.studentservicesdr.org/Promocion/Bangura%20Brief%20Bio%20For%20Howard%20University.pdf
Photo: The late President Omar Bongo of Gabon.
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