The Past of the Central African Republic

Having finished watching Al Jazeera's 3-part documentary on Françafrique, I happened to reread this Brookings Institution blog post, "What is the Future of the Central African Republic?" from April, which reviewed some of that troubled country's post-independence, neo-colonialist experience:

...the legacy of French colonial rule left the C.A.R. with no visionary leadership and an ill-developed institutional and physical infrastructure. The C.A.R. is a very small country– its population is comparable to the state of Alabama. Yet its huge surface area – comparable to that of the state of Texas – is richly endowed in natural resources, notably timber and diamonds, which explains the continued interest of its former colonial master and other foreign nations in the country. Since the colonial period when the C.A.R was called Oubangui-Chari, France’s colonialism (and subsequent neocolonialism) was aimed at extracting the C.A.R.’s resources at the expense of developing the country’s human resources, institutional and physical infrastructure... 

For instance, right up to 1971 – almost a decade after independence from France – the C.A.R.’s gross secondary enrollment rate was barely 4 percent; less than 2 percent of the country’s total road network had been paved; and only about one physician per 50,000 people was available. 

Francafrique on Al Jazeera

Following on the last post about the corruption scandal in Guinea, a recently-broadcast 3-part Al Jazeera documentary is especially well-timed (now that Al Jazeera America has launched and subsequently Al Jazeera's website has been blocked in the US, I may be just teasing Moved 2 Monrovia's American readers). This excellent three-part exposé, The France-Africa Connection, can be accessed online in three 45-minute episodes on the Al Jazeera website.

While reading up the topic will give interested viewers more depth into the long, sordid, shocking relationship between France and its colonies, documentary programming like this are electrifying for their vintage footage, however fleeting. Anyone interested in African history can only dream of having hours to look through all these archive news reels. 

In this respect, Episode Two is especially riveting, concentrating on the shocking "Elf Affair," which revealed how metropolitan French politics were infused with dirty money from oil exploitation from Francophone Africa, especially Gabon. Included here are brief glimpses of rare footage of Brazzaville, pockmarked by gunfire in the wake of the Nguesso-Lissouba conflict. 

Legendary prosecutor Eva Jolly also makes an appearance at the end, calmly recounting her life-risking exposure of the Elf scandal. 

All three episodes reference astonishing chapters in this complex, often ugly history, such as the mention in Episode 1 of the now openly-admitted poisoning of Cameroonian opposition candidate Félix Roland Moumié, and the counterfitting of the Guinean currency to destablise the regime of its democratically elected leader, as well as some disturbing retelling of the Biafran crisis, where France tried to undermine British power in the Gulf of Guinea.  

Across the entire broadcast, the grey-haired, liver-spocked old men, sitting in their gilded salons in Paris, could not be more frank in admitting to and confirming the malfeasance and shenangians that went on for decades in French West and Equatorial Africa, from Conakry to the Congo. 

One of the more compelling interviews is Jean Pierre Cot, who, as a young public servant was named Minister of Cooperation in the early days of the Mitterand cabinet. Having never been to Africa, much less positioned within the corruption networks, Cot's year in office was a rare, brief moment of reform, retold in his own words from 30-year old footage as a baby-faced Cot steps off an Air Afrique jet to visit a village, and speaks of a new era of fairness and partnership that never came.

The third episode is especially fascinating. In post-cold war era, as realpolitik pros age and die and new powers, especially China, arrive on the continent, and the traditions of feality to Paris slacken. The bonds with metropolitan France aren't exactly broken, but in some cases are reversed. 

Gabonese President Ali Bongo's endless suitcases of cash, stashed in corners of Crillion Hotel suites, not so much lubricated French party politics, but became one of the post important power nodes in the entire country, hand selecting freshman ministers across the political spectrum. Rather than simply being an industrial-commodity exploitation, now cash was the main extraction flowing out of Africa with the Presidents-for-life playing their former colonial masters.

Just as this bizarre arrangement reached its sprawling, viscous apex, its main underwriters, the founding father of Cote D'Ivoire and Françafrique itself, Hophouët-Biogny, passed away. The other pillar of Françafrique, Ali Bongo, died in 2009, succeeded by his son. 

This last episode includes several pristine panoramas of the Basilica in Yamoussoukro... 

...but more memorably features some shocking footage of the night-time bombing of Gbagbo loyalists on bridges Abidjan, and hundreds scattering and falling as French forces fire on protesters outside the Hotel Ivoire. 

Rather than being the final unravelling of Françafrique, the arrangement seems to live on in a post-classic form, as French intervened in the Gbagbgo-era Ivorian crisis, and its commercial tentacles still firmly grip the economic levers of West and Central Africa in the Sarkozy era, when ministers who spoke ill of Françafrique found themselves suddenly without portfolio.  While Hollande has declared a new era, French companies still operate ports and mines from Cote D'Ivoire to Congo. 

Postcards of Pre-Independence Luanda

Escola Industrial, c.1960

Yesterday's descriptions of the remarkable infrastructure of mid-century Angola reminded me of my collection of vintage postcards of various African cities. The most-often repeated description of Luanda, other than being crowned the world's most expensive city in the 2011 Mercer survey, is that it now teems with 4 million people, being one of the most pronounced examples of a small colonial capital, built for a few hundred thousands, now crowded with more inhabitants than the entire country had at independence.

 Luanda, 1950

 Aerial views of Luanda, 1955-60

Porto Largo Diogo Cao

Luanda has been experiencing a construction boom as the oil bonanza has dominated the city, but it has long been regarded as one of southern Africa's most beautiful cities, with its waterfront corniche. These postcards, from the 1940s, when the city had about 60,000 inhabitants, til about 1970, when it had grown to about half a million, show a smart, modern city, with huge technical works for emptying out the interior, as seen in yesterday's post.

While this tidy, mannered capital was then considered an integral part of the Portuguese state, and was divided unevenly between a tiny white elite and a native population, its a shame that so little of this place remains. This originally city, like so many 20th century plans of Africa's capitals, is being made over into an imitation Dubai, in Luanda's case, explicitly so. Perhaps that Gulf emirates are not the models to solve urban Africa's problems, and perhaps its useful to remember that these places are not starting out as clean slates.

 Waterfront Vistas, c.1965

Africæ Tabula Nova, 1570

Two details from a plate of the 16th century Theatrum orbis terrarum, depicting the African continent. This masterpiece is part of the collection of the Boston Public Library's Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, which tweeted out a link to this item last week. 

The details above show West Africa and the Guinea coast. Cape Verde and Sierra Leone are already known as such, although the Niger River is incorrectly shown to flow into the Atlantic between the two, a fallacy that would exist for centuries to come.


Benin and Biafra are labeled, as is Guinea, somewhat ironically exactly where modern-day Guinea is. I presume Dauma is kindred to Dahomey, as Melli surely is to Mali. Melegueta, the early Portuguese name for the Liberian coast, is probably the same as Melegete, which this map puts at somewhere near modern-day Ghana. Its fascinating not only that Cape Palmas is clearly labeled, but also the St. Paul River-- showing just how ancient that river's Christian name really is.

I don't recognize a single town name, (although I wonder if Gago is now Gao) and its notable that they are depicted with as tiny clusters peaked by a church spire, in the European style of the era. I love the swordfish, too.