POLITICAL BACKGROUND
Black emirate May 14th 1998 | LIBREVILLE The Economist
OMAR BONGO does not love or trust the French as much as he used to do. The feeling is mutual: France is edging away from its old African dependants. Last month, in a bad-tempered outburst, Gabon’s president said that he still wanted “to know who is telling the truth” after France had tried to reassure him about rumours that the CFA franc, which Gabon shares with 13 other African countries, would be devalued when the French franc slides into Europe’s single currency next year.
Sometimes known as “the black African emirate” because the wealth from its 370,000 barrels of oil a day is shared, albeit unevenly, among only 1.2m people, this tiny central African state has for years been valued by France as an island of stability in a turbulent region. Although Mr Bongo is small, like his country, he has stood tall in Parisian political circles, where he has long been known for his acquiescence to the dictates of French policy in Africa.
But his recent remarks are a sign that an old friendship is fraying at the edges. France’s Elf oil company lies at the heart of the changes. For more than half a century, the seafront offices of Elf in Libreville, the capital, have served as a powerful symbol of the overwhelming influence of France in Gabon’s affairs. But these days the country is no longer quite the “private preserve” of the French that it once was, and the oil industry is looking less and less Elf-like: the French company was toppled as Gabon’s largest concession-holder when Agip, an Italian company, bought into offshore areas late last year.
Elf is shifting its attention southwards to its offshore operations in Angola, where, in the past two years, vast oil fields have been found. As it moves out, a shoal of minnows is moving into Gabon to pick at the leftovers. These nimbler companies are typically American, Canadian or South African, and specialize in small fields. But, compared with Angola’s possibilities, Gabon’s new developments pale into near-insignificance. Without major new discoveries, its oil production will probably peak in two or three years’ time.
Fear of life without oil has spurred Mr Bongo to respond to the relentless proddings of the IMF and open up Gabon’s wider economy to newcomers. He is not only privatizing state companies but is also single-mindedly trying to drive forward an ambitious regional integration programme, which has already eliminated internal trade tariffs among the six countries of the Economic Community of Central African States. This project is rather like Europe’s, but in miniature, and in reverse. The countries already share a single currency and are now building common institutions, such as a regional parliament and a common court of justice.
Little more than 40% of Gabon’s imports now come from France, compared with 75% in the 1960s. An investment charter, which simplifies and clarifies rules for investors, has replaced the previous tangle of special taxes and exemptions upon which many French businesses had thrived. Unexpectedly, when the state electricity and water utility was sold by tender last year, the winner was an Irish-led consortium not the French company, Lyonnaise des Eaux, which has long been involved in French-speaking Africa.
France, for its part, seems to be gradually disentangling itself from the family-like ties that bind its former colonies across Africa into what was once a cosy “Franco-African village”. Although the 600 French troops stationed next to one of Mr Bongo’s palaces in Libreville have so far escaped France’s deep troop cuts in Africa, the old aid-for-favours technique that has held Gabon and others in their satellite-like orbit is being overhauled as France ventures deeper into Europe. In recent talks with President Jacques Chirac, Mr Bongo complained that France was not sticking to its old policy of erasing Gabon’s debts in exchange for fat infrastructure contracts. Mr Bongo seems to want to have it both ways.
New York Times May 22, 1996 France's Army Keeps Grip in African Ex-Colonies By HOWARD W. FRENCH
Week in and week out for years, French sentries have manned the lookout towers at a military base here, and French soldiers have drilled behind high concrete walls topped with barbed wire. Despite such vigilance, France's military outpost here, 3,300 miles from Paris, is not guarding some hostile border or protecting against a foreign threat. Instead, to judge from the base's setting, hard against one of Africa's most extravagant presidential mansions, among Paris's top priorities here is protecting Gabon's autocratic leader, Omar Bongo, who was installed with French help in 1968.With the end of the cold war, France has begun the difficult process of wrestling with the future size and shape of its large standing army. Earlier this year President Jacques Chirac announced sweeping reforms that would alter longstanding French deployments in Europe and gradually introduce an all-volunteer force. Left unchanged, at least for now, however, are African commitments like these that date to independence 36 years ago. Besides Gabon, French troops are based in the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Senegal, Central African Republic, Chad, Djibouti and the Indian Ocean islands of Reunion and Mayotte.
Since its 1964 intervention in Gabon, France has intervened militarily on the continent every other year on average. Paris has repeatedly sent troops into action in Chad, flown in paratroopers to rescue French and Belgian nationals in Zaire and help put down an insurrection there, and used its forces to replace political leaders in the Central African Republic....
For many experts on African affairs, the history of France's military role in post-colonial Africa can be neatly condensed in the experience of Gabon, where Paris launched the first of many full-fledged interventions in 1964. When Gabon's first President, Leon M'ba, was overthrown in a broadly popular military coup in 1964, French paratroopers were flown in to reinstate Mr. M'ba, whose devotion to France was legendary. Mr. M'ba was soon weakened by illness, and by France's promotion of a young aide, Omar Bongo, to near figurehead status. Jacques Foccart, the chief adviser on Africa to the French President at the time, Charles de Gaulle, wrote in his memoirs that Paris literally auditioned Mr. Bongo for the role of head of state, which he assumed in 1968 upon Mr. M'ba's death.
Shortly after taking office, Mr. Bongo banned opposition parties in Gabon, and ruled unchallenged until a democratic reform movement began sweeping much of Africa in 1990. With his huge mansions throughout Gabon and around the world, diplomats say Mr. Bongo has used the country's large oil revenues to become one of the continent's wealthiest leaders.
Diplomats say corporations and businessmen from France, which retains an unusually high degree of influence here, even by the standards of its former colonies, have also done well by Gabon's oil-based economy.
To protect that investment, from their bases in Gabon, the 600 or so French troops here have intervened twice, in 1990 and 1994, to help put down civil disturbances directed against Mr. Bongo's rule.
A second wave of riots occurred after Mr. Bongo declared himself the winner of an election that international observers called "a very flawed exercise," with 51 percent of the vote.
These days, Mr. Bongo, who is also protected by Moroccan security units and privately hired former French military officers, never goes anywhere without first closing off nearby streets to traffic.
"There is no threat to Gabon other than the disaffection of the population towards its leader," said one Gabonese businessman who is sympathetic to the opposition. "When someone needs this kind of protection, that should tell you immediately that something is badly wrong."
For diplomats of other Western nations, France's high-profile security role in countries like Gabon has more to do with preserving Paris's privileged access to business opportunities than it does with questions of democracy.
NY Times March 20, 1997, Thursday Jacques Foccart Dies at 83; Secret Mastermind in Africa By CRAIG R. WHITNEY
Jacques Foccart, who masterminded clandestine military coups in French-speaking Africa for Charles de Gaulle and three French presidents after him, died at his home this morning. He was 83. Mr. Foccart's secrecy and preference for operating in the shadows were legendary. He was trusted by France's friends in Africa and remained a powerful influence on his country's African policy almost to his death, serving as an honorary adviser to President Jacques Chirac after his election in 1995.Mr. Foccart was born in Ambrieres near Mayenne in west-central France on Aug. 31, 1913. He spent his first six years in Guadeloupe, where his family had property. Drafted into the French Army at the start of World War II, he avoided capture when France fell and, according to his biographer, Pierre Pean, joined the Resistance only after the German occupiers brought a criminal complaint against him for construction work he was doing for them to build fortifications on the Atlantic coast. For his Resistance work he won an award from the United States Army and friendships in the inner circle of the leadership around General de Gaulle, the leader of the French government in exile.
After the war he started an import-export company called Safiex that did business in many of the French colonies in Africa, although Mr. Foccart said most of its activities were centered on the West Indies. The company did so well that Mr. Foccart, almost single-handedly, was able to finance the Rally of the French People, the party that de Gaulle, who had served briefly as President after returning to France in 1944, organized to support his political agenda.
Mr. Foccart also became one of the founders of a powerful private police force the movement organized to do battle against the Communists -- the Service d'Action Civique, the ''Action Service.'' Its school in Cercottes, outside of Orleans, became a gathering place for the keepers of the Gaullist flame in the 1950s. Mr. Foccart forged lasting connections there with a network of army officers and secret service operatives that survived long after de Gaulle's movement disbanded in 1955.
Under the code name ''Mathurin,'' Mr. Foccart masterminded the strategy that brought the General back to power in 1958, using the secret intelligence networks he had forged to create popular fears of a coming coup d'etat led by angry paratroopers from Algeria and to make sure that when the Fourth Republic fell, de Gaulle, not the diehards in Algeria, would get power.
As first President of the Fifth Republic, de Gaulle made the bald, bespectacled Mr. Foccart, who was rarely seen in public, one of his closest aides. He became Secretary-General of the French Community, the vehicle de Gaulle created in 1960 after giving France's colonies in Africa nominal independence. There, Mr. Foccart put his clandestine operating skills to use over the next nine years. ''Foccart was assigned the task of orchestrating an arrangement whereby French interests could maintain the upper hand in her former colonies, for whom she had done virtually nothing to prepare for independence,'' Douglas Porch, an American expert, wrote in ''The French Secret Services,'' published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1995.
In 1964, Mr. Foccart sent French troops to oil-rich Gabon to keep Leon Mba, a close ally, in power against an American-supported rival, and incidentally to protect the local interests of the French petroleum group Elf, led by another close friend. Asked by Philippe Gaillard in his first volume of memoirs, ''Foccart Speaks,'' published in France two years ago, who had run Gabon, Mr. Foccart said, ''Without question, it was Mba. But I was available, and he consulted me a lot.''
De Gaulle left power after a year of tumult in France in 1969, but Mr. Foccart stayed on, first for President Georges Pompidou and later, despite some interruptions, for President Valery Giscard d'Estaing.