Although it has specific characteristics and engines, the coup in Gabon seems to have a similar script and aesthetics to the previous ones.
On August 30, after it was announced that current President Ali Bongo would begin his third consecutive term in office, a group of 12 soldiers wearing Republican Guard, Army and Security Forces uniforms took over national television screens. In a brief televised statement, the so-called Committee for Transition and Institutional Restoration announced that the August 26 presidential election, which Bongo won with more than a suspicious 65% of the vote, had been annulled. And that “in the name of the Gabonese people” and “to preserve peace” he had decided to “put an end to the current regime” and now promised to follow the “path of happiness”.
This makeshift military junta dissolved Congress and the Supreme Court. And he arrested Bongo, his family and members of his cabinet on charges ranging from fraud and irresponsible governance to treason.
As in other countries in French-speaking Africa, in Gabon there were scenes of popular support and joy at the fall of Bongo, as well as identical slogans against French neo-colonialism and its partners in the local elites.
General Oligui Nguema, leader of the coup and former commander of the Republican Guard, took over as interim president. He promised to form a “government of national unity” made up of members of political parties and to call elections within a year. But the future is uncertain.
It is still premature to consider the episode over, although the likelihood that the coup will succeed is high, given recent experience. If consolidation occurs, it would be the eighth military coup in the region since 2020.
The color note of the day came from Bongo himself. Shortly after the fall, a video circulated in various media in which Bongo, secluded in a luxurious room of the presidential palace and a little disoriented, calls on his friends from the Western powers to “make noise” (sic ) against the coup. Even if the request sounds strange, it’s probably just noise. Looking at the recent experience of the coup in Niger, it appears that Africa’s pro-Western institutions – the African Union, ECOWAS and the like – or the imperialist powers have neither the strength nor the will to embark on the adventure in disgrace to reinstate fallen old partners by force. The most forceful speech, for obvious reasons, was delivered by President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke of an “epidemic of coups” against his allies, a disease that is weakening France’s already pale neo-colonial character.
Although it was a palace coup, it is also true that no coup takes place in a vacuum. If the background in the case of Niger, as in Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad, was the French intervention to “fight terrorism”, the immediate trigger in the case of Gabon was a fraudulent election process by a weak president. However, the common denominator is economic insecurity and fatigue with authoritarian and dynastic regimes that guarantee France’s neo-colonial interests in return for maintaining some of the plunder, mainly oil and mining.
Of the 63 years that Gabon existed as an independent state – it was a French colony until 1960 – 56 were ruled by the Bongo family. This dynastic regime began in 1967 with Omar Bongo, who was president for 41 years until his death in 2009, and continued with his son Ali. Through the Bongo family, French imperialism continued to exercise colonial control in economic, political and military affairs. Even today, France still has around 400 soldiers deployed, a base in Gabon and a large presence of its monopolies such as Total.
The supposed “democracy” that France, the US and the Western powers claim to defend is clearly a scandalous farce. Omar Bongo was appointed by the French government under General De Gaulle and supported by French imperialism. Until 1990, there was a one-party regime in Gabon, the Gabonese Democratic Party, which represented the interests of the Bongo family and the endogamous elite built around them. Beyond the forms, this one-party regime actually perpetuates itself through a web of clientelism and oppression that includes fraudulent elections and constitutional reforms designed to maintain the same interests.
Ali Bongo’s governments were more unstable than his father’s. In 2016, his first re-election was already called into question. The Angurria brought the Bongo family into a short circuit with the French government, which denounced several Bongo brothers (it is a large family) for the appropriation of about 85 million euros. Given the tensions, the Gabonese government also took some measures, such as joining the Commonwealth, which increased tensions.
In 2018, Ali Bongo suffered a stroke during a state visit to Saudi Arabia, which kept him away from the public stage for more than a year.
But the most important thing came not from state intrigue, but from the streets: in 2019, a wave of massive demonstrations and strikes by teachers and students rocked the country for weeks against a law that attacked education. The government eventually withdrew the counter-reform, but the movement sparked protests in other sectors and spread beyond the capital. Bongo’s unpopularity and fear of mobilization encouraged a layoff sector to attempt an unsuccessful coup. The situation ended with several deaths and an intensification of repression that failed to drive away the seeds of discontent.
The driving forces that shape the batting situation are profound. According to World Bank Excel, Gabon is an upper-middle income country. As an oil exporter and member of OPEC, the country has a per capita GDP of $9,000, compared to $500 for Niger, $890 for Burkina Faso or even $2,000 for Nigeria, considered a regional power . However, as in its poorer neighbors, a third of the population lives below the poverty line and 40% of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 are unemployed.
Therefore, beyond national peculiarities, hatred of local elites and deep anti-French – that is, anti-colonial – sentiment are the common denominator of the shattered situation in Africa.
The United States has its own interests in the region. In the context of the war in Ukraine, her main concern is to prevent the rejection of French imperialism and this “anti-colonial zeitgeist” from being used demagogically by Russia and China to deepen their advance into Africa. As is well known, several French exiles, for example from Mali, have established close ties with Russia through the Wagner Group. The death of its leader, the mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin, who paid with his life for the challenge he posed to Vladimir Putin’s government, raises the possibility that the Kremlin could control both the military and economic operations carried out by this wealthy mercenary company. “determined by the state”. in Africa.
The African military coup plotters are not “anti-imperialists,” but rather are striving for better conditions and allying themselves with the capitalist bloc of Russia and China. But the fact that some of them resort to anti-colonial language to legitimize themselves is a symptom of how geopolitical contradictions and rivalries can pave the way for mass movement intervention.