From disputed elections to political score-settling, we delve into the Bongo saga.
“Please make noise.” In the space of a few hours, these words travelled around the world. A cry for help launched by Ali Bongo Ondimba a few hours after he’d been overthrown by Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, the call remains unanswered – amid a silence fraught with meaning. Why is this? How did the long-time president find himself abandoned by his whole entourage?
Frustrations, jealousies and excesses
To understand the fall of the Bongo empire, we need to go back in time, to relive Omar Bongo Ondimba’s death and look at how the subsequent dissensions, failure to hold elections and the seizure of power shook the family. To understand, as well, how various frustrations, jealousies and abuse of power – as much as Ali’s own personality – gradually destroyed a dynasty that had ruled the country since 1967.
On 30 August, while Ali Bongo Ondimba was being “retired”, his wife Sylvia and his son Noureddin were arrested. Guilty in the eyes of General Oligui and his supporters of having confiscated power from a president weakened by a stroke and no longer governing, they are the symbol of a Gabonese particularity that had made power a family affair. But not of the sort that would preclude backstabbing or betrayal. Quite the contrary, in fact.
When reality trumps fiction
From Omar Bongo Ondimba to his son Ali, from Pascaline to Sylvia, Maixent Accrombessi to Brice Laccruche Alihanga, and Noureddin Bongo-Valentin to General Oligui: all succeeded one another at a frenetic pace that eventually overpowered the now deposed leader. Here is a look back at 14 years of a reality that, in many respects, surpassed fiction.
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