France and Gabon: half a century of living together, for better and for worse

“In Africa, you don’t organize an election to lose it.” For having misapplied this aphorism forged by his father, Ali Bongo lost power in a quarter of an hour. More exactly: in seventeen minutes. This is the time that elapsed between the announcement of the results which gave him elected for a third seven-year term and the putsch led by the presidential guard on August 30. Under house arrest since then, the potentate languishes with his Franco-Gabonese wife Sylvia in a villa near Libreville. As for their son Noureddin, 31, whom his mother already imagined as president, he was also arrested for high treason and corruption.

Thus ends the last chapter of the Bongo saga, an African story in which France appears on every page. From “independence”, Gabon followed a path diametrically opposed to that of Guinea de Sékou Touré, the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to say “no” to Paris in 1958, during the referendum proposed by General de Gaulle. In Libreville, Léon Mba, the future president of the Gabonese Republic, proposes on the contrary that the colony rich in minerals be transformed into an overseas territory – a bit like New Caledonia sip of nickel. Paris declines the proposal. But a privileged relationship is forged, all the more readily as the natural resources of Gabon are considerable.

A strategic ally in Central Africa

Soon, however, Mba falls seriously ill. Quick, he needs a successor. Jacques Foccart, the “Mr. Africa” ​​of Paris, proposes Albert-Bernard Bongo (who will change his first name in 1973 by converting to Islam). A meeting is organized at the Elysée, where the former employee of the PTT, who has become a senior civil servant, is presented to de Gaulle. The man is cunning, cultured, sympathetic. So that’s okay. Bongo is propelled vice-president. From his Parisian hospital bed, Mba, moribund, designated him as heir, before dying in 1967. The investiture ceremony of his successor was promptly organized – in Paris! – within the confines of the Embassy of Gabon.

“No African country, no doubt, is linked, like Gabon, to the history of the Fifth Republic, believes Vincent Hugeux, author of tyrants of africa (Perrin, 2021). And this, on the economic, political, military, strategic level.” At a time when de Gaulle launched the French nuclear program, Gabon became France’s leading supplier of uranium (the deposit would be definitively exhausted in 1999).

“Gabon is no longer the money pump of yesteryear”

At the same time, the tricolor soldiers of the 6th battalion of marine infantry, still present today, ensure the stability of the regime. On the spot, the French also exploit the immense reserves of wood, manganese, used in the automotive industry, and, of course, oil. “Until the end of the 1990s, the boss of Elf Aquitaine weighed more heavily in Gabon than the French Foreign Minister himself”, continues Vincent Hugeux.

It must be said that in Gabon, Elf Aquitaine has become the slush fund of French political life, through a system of over-invoicing and retrocommissions supervised by Bongo. From the PS to the FN, the president sprinkles everyone. “People had no shame in soliciting the generosity of the Gabonese”, recalls the fine connoisseur of Africa Michel Roussin, who was director of the cabinet of Alexandre de Marenches (the boss of espionage), then of Jacques Chirac as mayor of Paris and, finally, Minister for Cooperation. Successively Gaullist, Pomidolian, Giscardian, Mitterrandian and Chiraquian, Bongo adapts to all diets. His talk, his sense of the anecdote, his humor, projected the image of a certain bonhomie, which did not exclude police violence, for example after the contested ballot of 1993 (23 officially dead).

In 1987, to everyone’s amazement, the Gabonese president even received Jean-Marie Le Pen in his seaside palace. It is true that in Libreville, the extreme right has long had its entrances. In 1970, “Loulou” Martin, a veteran of Indochina and Algeria, who was close to Le Pen, was promoted to head the presidential guard. Also the spooks of the Fifth Republic are at home in Gabon. In 1978, it was from here that Bob Denard and his mercenaries prepared the (failed) putsch against the Marxist President of Benin Mathieu Kérékou, during a mission worthy ofOSS 117 : Operation shrimp.

In 1988, the law on the financing of French political parties changed the situation. Gabonese money gradually dried up, until around 2000. “To put it simply, Gabon is no longer a money pump,” summarizes a diplomat who wishes to remain anonymous. The successors of Jacques Chirac – who was very close to Bongo – are increasingly losing interest in Africa. In 2009, everything changed with the controversial election of Ali Bongo. The new president rolls out the red carpet to the Chinese, turns to the English-speaking world, joins the Commonwealth (last year), neglects local political life. “Unlike his father, he never knew how to do it, tackles Roussin. He ignores his people, neglected to play politics, was content to raise money.” In this matter, Ali has something to hold on to. The case of “ill-gotten gains” by the clan of despot Omar Bongo concerns dozens of real estate properties in France and involves hundreds of millions of euros.

“Ali Bongo is rejected, too, because he did not know how to make the synthesis inside the country, analyzes the opponent and whistleblower Stéphane Zeng, who lives in France. On the contrary, he surrounded by Beninese, Malians and other foreign advisers; a whole small world of courtiers that the caciques call “the foreign legion”. There are Indian, Turkish, Moroccan and, of course, Chinese investors, very present in the timber sector, mining or infrastructure, whose shining symbol is the Sino-Gabonese Friendship Stadium, inaugurated in 2010.

France ? “Even the Corsicans [qui contrôlent les casinos et le PMU depuis toujours] have partly dismantled their devices”, continues our anonymous diplomat. “Economically, our country remains dominant in manganese, with 60% of the business, but that’s all, adds Luis Martinez, researcher at Sciences Po and author of Africa, the next caliphate? (2003, Tallandier). China has taken the lion’s share.” This may explain it: in an unusual way, Beijing reacted promptly to the overthrow of Ali Bongo by the putschist general Brice Oligui Nguema. A “transitional president” Paris does not forget that he was aide-de-camp to a friend of France named… Omar Bongo France still has a foothold in Gabon.