Gabon is still seen by some observers as the symbol of the Françafrique, this cosy and often incestuous relationship between France and its former colonies in Africa. Coming to Gabon, French colonialists also hold specific ideas about extraordinary forms of power (pouvoir). They often justified their mission in Africa by boasting about Frenchmen’s extraordinary moral and political capacities. This relational imaginary needed to confront African forms of agency and denounce them both as hateful and ineffectual. Africans, meanwhile, borrowed the French term puissance (power) to express new problems and new possibilities. The ability of French officials to appoint chiefs, collect taxes and limit trading opportunities did not leave local big men powerless.
At the same time, Gabon, on the west coast of Africa has had few leaders since its independence from France in 1960, with Omar Bongo ruling as president for more than four decades until his death in 2009. Bongo’s regime can be described as a neo-patrimonialistic regime which shows a remarkable stability compared to similar African regimes. This neo-patrimonialistic regime is characterised by a strong personification of power based on a political and political-economic clientelistic network. The members of the political network, including prominent members of the government and the party executive are kept in a permanent state of insecurity by a constant threat of dismissal or reappointment. The persons involved hardly oppose this state of affairs, in exchange for huge compensations -even when they don’t hold the position any longer- and the possibilities of corruption. The most important positions of power however, such as the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Defence and Finance, are reserved the closest confidants and relatives of the President. Therefore, the separation between private and public domains at very high level is practically non-existent. In the sphere of internal politics, Bongo, as President and Secretary-General holds complete control. The role of Parliament and the Central Committee is mainly symbolic. The Parti Démocratique Gabonais founded in the name of the ideology of National Unity, just serves the purpose of lending some legitimacy to Bongo’s personal power. Even so, the personification of power is not complete.
Under its second president, Omar Bongo, it had a very close relationship with France under a system known as “Francafrique”, where the Gabonese government would receive political and military support in exchange for business favours. But relations cooled after his son Ali won a contested election in 2009 and the French authorities launched a long-running corruption investigation into the Bongo family’s assets, although this has since been dropped. On Saturday, August 26, Gabon went to the polls for the country’s presidential election. Early on Wednesday, August 30, the country’s national electoral authority announced that Bongo, who had been in power for 14 years, was re-elected for a third term with 64.27 percent of votes cast. Soon after, a group of mutinous soldiers appeared on state TV saying they were seizing power, cancelling the election results and “putting an end to the current regime”. Meanwhile, the junta named Gen. Brice Oligui Nguema – who was once the bodyguard of Bongo’s late father, the previous ruler of Gabon – as a transitional leader.
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Unlike the coup in Niger in July, or previous ones in Burkina Faso and Mali, Gabon is not facing the jihadi insurgencies and rising civilian fatalities that were used as an excuse by military leaders there to oust elected governments. Instead, the military officers of the Committee of Transition and Restoration of Institutions claimed they were responding to the country’s “severe institutional, political, economic, and social crisis.” Ironically, Nguema is not only from the same Haut-Ogooué clan as the Bongo family but also had long been close to certain factions of the family, having served as the aide-de-camp to the late President Omar Bongo before eventually becoming the intelligence chief of the Republican Guard and then securing the commander position. “Beyond this discontent, there is the illness of the Head of State [Ali Bongo suffered a stroke in October 2018 which left him weakened]. Everyone talks about it, but no one takes responsibility. He did not have the right to serve a third term, the Constitution was violated, the method of election itself was not good. So the army decided to turn the page, to take its responsibilities,” Nguema told French daily Le Monde after the coup.
Gabon’s transitional leaders have made moves aimed at rebuilding trust in the government, including arresting those accused of embezzlement of state funds, forgery and other crimes. The new constitution provides for a maximum of two seven-year presidential terms, no prime minister and no dynastic transfer of power. At the same time, Nguema has focused on strengthening relations and lobbying for readmission with members of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS). Other actions include declaring himself as the Transitional President on September 4, 2023, appointing loyalists to two-thirds of the Senate and National Assembly, naming all nine members of the Constitutional Court, and hosting a meticulously controlled national dialogue in mid-2024.
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