By Peter Wanyonyi
It’s rough being the Central African Republic (Car). This, after all, is the unfortunate country that was converted into an ‘empire’ by the deranged ‘Emperor’ Jean-Bedel Bokassa in 1976, after he had misruled it for the previous eleven years as ‘President For life’.
In an era when money was money, Bokassa — who subsequently renamed himself ‘Salah Eddine Ahmed’ — spent US$200 million (Sh17.2 billion) on crowning himself emperor, apparently because he admired the 19th Century French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Human flesh
Bokassa, who was said to have a taste for human flesh, bankrupted the Car, not an unusual occurrence in an era when the likes of Idi Amin and Mobutu Sese Seko ran things in Central and Eastern Africa.
Finally, the French — Car’s former colonial masters — tired of Bokassa’s buffoonery and had him overthrown, setting in motion a series of coups and counter-coups that eventually ended up saddling the Gabon-born Francois Bozize with the presidency in 2003.
The then president, Felix Patasse, was away from the Car when he was overthrown. Bozize’s men threatened to shoot him if he ever stepped on Car soil again. He mournfully went into exile, returning only in 2008 and dying a couple years later, a broken, vengeful loser.
Bozize did not even accord him a state funeral, which surely makes his station in death lower even than that of your typical thieving Kenyan MP.
But what goes around comes around, and Bozize’s turn is around the corner. Right from 2004, when Bozize had been in office but a few months, a bush war erupted between his forces and those of a militia calling itself The Union of Democratic Forces For Unity (UFDR).
Tribal army
African rebel movements, evidently, must have the word ‘democratic’ in their names. But the UFDR was essentially a tribal army, staffed mainly by people from the north of the Car, who were angry that Bozize wasn’t throwing them any bones to chew.
The dictator eventually relented, however, and agreed a series of peace treaties with the rebels. As with any self-respecting African dictator, though, Bozize had no intention of honouring the agreements he signed. And after the rebels ran out of patience waiting for the deal to implemented, they relaunched their offensive in December 2012.
Training
Unbeknown to Bozize, the rebels had been training and arming rather seriously and they have swept through the Car like a bushfire.
Car military units have taken to fleeing like spooked rats wherever the rebels show up. A couple weeks ago, they nearly took the capital city, Bangui, forcing South Africa to send in heavily armed troops to defend the city.
A new peace treaty has been signed in which Bozize promises to redistribute power, but we all know how that ends in Africa: He will renege on the deal next week, the rebels will relaunch their offensive, and the South Africans will have gone back to Pretoria and Francois Bozize will soon join the long list of African tin-pot dictators who overstayed their welcome.
He had better start packing his stuff.
