by Guy Arnold
When President Tubman of Liberia died in 1971 he was succeeded by his vice-president of 27 years, William R. Tolbert who was subsequently elected President in his own right in 1975. Tolbert opened up Liberia’s foreign policy, raised diplomatic relations with the USSR to ambassador level and visited France. In 1973, with Siaka Stevens of Sierra Leone, Tolbert inaugurated the Mano River Union to create a free trade area for their two countries. Liberia participated in a commission on co-operation with Côte d’Ivoire and entered into a defence agreement with Guinea. Liberia became a founder member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which came into being in 1975. In 1979 Liberia hosted the sixteenth annual summit of the OAU, an event that was certainly a contributory cause of the collapse of Tolbert’s government. By that time it had become the practice for the annual OAU summit to be hosted by a different member state each year and hosting the event was seen as a mark of national prestige. In Liberia’s case the cost of doing so came to just over a third of the annual GDP of US$329 million and coming on top of nationwide riots of the previous April as a result of the government raising the price of rice, the Tolbert regime began to collapse. In April 1980 Tolbert himself was killed in the bloody coup that saw Master Sgt Samuel Doe seize power. One result of this debacle was a sudden reluctance upon the part of other states to host OAU summits, which, instead, were held at the Addis Ababa headquarters.
During the late 1960s Leopold Senghor attempted to transform Senegal into a one-party state but his moves created increasing unrest including a growth of union activity and student protest. Disturbances in 1968 persuaded Senghor to revive the post of prime minister and in 1970 this went to Abdou Diouf, a young provincial administrator, who now moved to the centre of the political stage. Although Senghor and his Union Progressiste Sénégalaise (UPS) won the 1973 elections without difficulty there was further unrest. Poverty was the chief cause. A new political party, the Parti Démocratique Sénégalais (PDS) led by Abdoulaye Wade, was formed in 1974 though a quarter of a century was to pass before it would achieve power. At this time Senghor tried to create a three-party system, a form of coalition, but without success. He again won the elections of 1978 when he renamed the ruling party as the Parti Socialiste.
The 1970s were a difficult political decade for Sierra Leone. They began badly when a coup was attempted against Siaka Stevens in 1971; this was followed by two assassination attempts against him. As a consequence of these threats Stevens signed a defence agreement with Guinea and Sekou Touré sent troops to support the government and these remained in the country for two years. Brig. John Bangara who had led the coup attempt was executed. In April 1971 Sierra Leone became a republic. Stevens was re-elected President for another five years in 1976. However, anti-government demonstrations occurred throughout the country in 1977; they had been set in motion by protesting students. The government called an election for May 1977 and the opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) won 15 seats from the ruling All People’s Congress (APC) though the government still had a majority. But the threat to his dominant position led Stevens to argue that one-party rule was the best answer for a disintegrating political system and in May 1978 the House of Representatives approved by more than the required two-thirds majority a one-party constitution and this was confirmed in June by a referendum in which 2,152,454 votes were cast in favour and only 63,132 against. The opposition SLPP then joined the APC and some of its leading members obtained ministerial posts.
There was a serious coup attempt against Etienne Eyadéma, the ruler of Togo, in August 1970. In January 1972 a referendum gave Eyadéma 867,491 votes to remain as President against only 878 no votes. A personality cult now developed round Eyadéma. In 1974 he launched a policy of authenticity: the phosphate mines were nationalized; foreign personal and place names were given Togolese names – Eyadéma, for example, changed Etienne to Gnassingbé; and Ewe and Kabiye replaced French as the languages of instruction in the schools. Anti-colonial authenticity was generally popular but it did not disguise Eyadéma’s tendency to absolutism. In 1976 he increased his personal authority when he reduced the number of members of the political bureau (the cabinet) from 15 to nine while he also nominated all members of the central committee and the government. Plots were discovered in 1977 and 1978 and duly foiled. In November 1979 the Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais (RPT) drew up a new constitution, which provided for an elective presidential system and a national assembly of 67 deputies elected from regional lists for five-year terms. In December of that year Eyadéma was elected President under this new constitution with nearly 100 per cent of the votes cast and in January 1980 he proclaimed the ‘Third Republic’. He maintained tight political control over all aspects of government and allowed no opposition to appear. The decade, indeed, had demonstrated in classic style the manoeuvres of a strong man closing all the loopholes to guarantee his hold on power.
Upper Volta, the last of these West African states, presented yet another example of what by then was an all too familiar political mix: a military ruler, backed by the army, allowing some power to civilians but finding excuses to curtail it as and when he saw an opportunity to do so. Lt-Col. Sangoule Lamizana came to power in 1966 but in 1970 allowed the country to return to civilian rule with an elected assembly and civilian prime minister. Lamizana, however, remained head of state and government in which he continued to include a number of military men. Gerard Ouedraogo was his civilian prime minister and the leader of the Union Démocratique Voltaique (UDV). A confrontation between Ouedraogo and the assembly in 1974 gave Lamizana the excuse to dissolve the assembly, suspend the constitution and restore full military power. Nonetheless, authoritarian military men were rarely as strong as they might seem and growing opposition from the trade unions forced Lamizana to form a new civilian government in 1976 and set up a commission to prepare for an orderly return to democracy. Seven political parties contested the elections in which the UDV won 28 out of 52 seats while in the presidential elections Lamizana had to face a run-off before being re-elected for a further five years. Strikes and mounting opposition to his rule led to Lamizana’s downfall in 1980 when Col. Saye Zerbo established a Comité Militaire de Rédressement pour le Progrès National (CMRPN) which promptly banned all political activities. Lamizana, at least, was no tyrant and tried to work with the civilians.
If we examine the fortunes of these West African countries through this decade we find that four of them – Dahomey (Benin), Ghana, Togo and Upper Volta – were dominated by the military though with considerable variations between the strong men in Benin and Togo and the more flexible soldiers in Ghana and Upper Volta; in six cases – Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Liberia, Senegal and Sierra Leone – democracy was the rule though the political process was dominated by powerful authoritarian rulers who tried and sometimes succeeded in installing one-party systems; in Guinea the dictatorial survivor Sekou Touré held onto internal power but was forced to return to the French (Western) dominated economic system; finally, the Portuguese territories achieved their independence halfway through the decade and in the case of Guinea-Bissau the PAIGC, which was already a Marxist party, continued its leftward, one-party state orientation. Despite the publicity that military coups and the one-party state received then and later, military regimes were never as secure as they appeared and were constantly obliged at the very least to come to accommodations with civilian politicians.
The Francophone states of West Africa were already recipients of EC aid under the Yaoundé Conventions. Following Britain’s entry into the EC in 1973 negotiations took place between the Community and Commonwealth African (as well as Caribbean and Pacific) countries whose economic and trading positions were affected by Britain’s new relationship with Europe. These negotiations were conducted in Lomé, Togo, and the First Lomé Convention (Lomé I) replaced the earlier Yaoundé Conventions between the EC and Francophone countries. Lomé I came into force on 1 April 1976. Lomé I provided a framework that linked Ang
lophone and Francophone Africa with the EC. Under the terms of the Convention about 99 per cent of African agricultural products, except those that directly competed with European agriculture, could enter the EC free of duty. At the same time Lomé I made available a new source of aid to Africa. Lomé II followed in 1979. Although the Lomé Convention was heralded as a new partnership between Europe and Africa in fact its principal result was to tie African economies more closely to the stronger economies of Europe.
EQUATORIAL AFRICA
The Congo, which was renamed Zaïre in October 1971, was always more important for what it failed to do than for what it achieved. The third largest country on the continent, strategically placed in the centre of Africa, it is a storehouse of mineral resources and has huge agricultural, forestry and hydro-electric potential, yet its story from independence to the end of the twentieth century has been a catalogue of disasters: corruption, unnecessary debt, violence, brutal dictatorship and missed opportunities turned Zaïre into a byword for all that went wrong in Africa. An amendment to the constitution in December 1970 made the Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution (MPR) into the country’s only political organization. The MPR adopted the creed of Mobutisme, placing Mobutu above the MPR. All candidates for elections were controlled by the MPR and in 1975 the secret ballot was abolished. Mobutu embraced a policy of authenticity under which names of people and places were changed, he himself becoming Mobutu Sese Seko. Authenticity led to a confrontation with the Roman Catholic Church and Cardinal Joseph-Albert Malala, the Primate and Archbishop of Kinshasa, was expelled. Reconciliation between Church and State, or rather Church and Mobutu, was only achieved in 1980 when Pope Paul John II visited Zaïre. In the meantime, over the years 1971–77, Mobutu systematically eliminated all opposition and took all power into his own hands.
When Angola became independent in 1975 Zaïre supported the Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola (FNLA) but when the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) emerged as the winner in this first civil war Mobutu became reconciled to its leader Agostinho Neto. The two Shaba wars of 1977 and 1978 posed a major threat to Mobutu. Several thousand soldiers of Tshombe’s former Katanga army who had fled into Angola were suspicious of Mobutu’s offers of amnesty and had chosen to remain exiles. However, in 1977 they crossed the border into Shaba province, which was disaffected since it never received its share of the wealth generated by its mineral resources. These ex-Tshombe forces – Front National pour la Libération du Congo (FNLC) – were not restrained by the MPLA government in Luanda and this allowed Mobutu to claim that they had Communist support. His own forces disintegrated in the face of the invasion and Mobutu had to appeal for outside help; France, which always worked to draw Zaïre into its Francophone orbit, airlifted Moroccan troops into the Shaba province; by May 1977 the invaders had withdrawn. France and Morocco then urged Mobutu to democratize his regime so he reintroduced the secret ballot and allowed 2,000 candidates to contest 270 seats in the legislative council and another 167 candidates to contest 18 elective seats in the political bureau. Mobutu himself was re-elected for another seven-year presidential term. At the same time Mobutu purged his military and 13 senior officers were executed while in Shaba the Lunda suffered further repression for not having opposed the invaders sufficiently rigorously. Then, in May 1978, the second Shaba invasion took place, the invaders this time coming through Zambia from Angola. They were more effective than the previous year and captured the key town of Kolwezi as well as part of the vital railway line. This time France intervened directly with troops and ensured that Mobutu could regain control of the province. Subsequently, a pan-African force of Moroccan, Senegalese and Togolese troops moved into the region and stayed there until May 1979. Mobutu’s need to call upon outside help – half his soldiers had not been paid for months – illustrated the fragility of his huge state, which, increasingly, he treated as a personal fief.
During the years of Massamba-Debat’s Presidency of Congo (Brazzaville) from 1964 to 1968 a conflict emerged between the youth wing of the Mouvement National de la Révolution (MNR), the Jeunesse de Mouvement National de la Révolution (JMNR), and the more conservative army with the result that in the latter year Capt. Marien Ngouabi took power in Brazzaville. For a short period the army allowed Massamba-Debat to remain as President before he was dismissed and Ngouabi assumed full powers. Ngouabi created a Marxist-Leninist party, Parti Congolais du Travail (PCT) and in January 1970 the country was renamed the People’s Republic of Congo. Ngouabi lasted, surviving several coup attempts, until he was assassinated on 18 March 1977 when another, unsuccessful, attempt was made to restore Massamba-Debat to power: he was later executed. The new military head of state, Col. Joachim Yhombi-Opango, promised to continue Ngouabi’s policies. He, however, only lasted two years before being deposed and replaced by Col. Denis Sassou-Nguesso. Elections for a national people’s assembly and regional councils were held in July 1979 and a referendum gave massive support to a new socialist constitution. Although Nguesso used the rhetoric of socialism, in fact he turned increasingly to the West for economic support and this in reality meant France. Nguesso had to find a balance between the pro-Soviet faction of the PCT and the pro-Western pragmatists. The politics of the Congo at this time were a strange mixture: the adoption of Maxism-Leninism, both as a repudiation of the West and to satisfy the genuine popular demands for socialism, especially from the youth wing of the party; a pragmatic turn back to France for economic reasons; and a series of coups and military rulers who in contradictory fashion kept power in the hands of the military while also supporting a form of popular democracy. The agenda – national independence, throwing off neo-colonialism, surviving economically, and satisfying the expectations of the people – was an impossible one given the country’s limited resources.
Gabon, unlike both Congo and Zaïre, enjoyed rapid economic growth through the 1970s. Its most difficult problem was that of accommodating and controlling foreign companies whose investment was wanted but whose concomitant dominant role in a very small country and society was resented. The second problem concerned resentment at the growing gap between the wealthy elite of Gabonese and Europeans on the one hand and the rest of the population. A policy of increasing Gabonese participation in the new wealth creation was implemented from 1973 although Gabon remained firmly oriented to the West, capitalism and foreign investment. In 1968 President Bongo had turned Gabon into a one-party state under the Parti Démocratique Gabonais (PDG) and under his direction the country enjoyed a decade of political stability through the 1970s, made possible by a rich if narrow-based mining sector. On a per capita basis Gabon became one of the richest countries in Africa. An extraordinary congress of the PDG was held in January 1979 and this allowed a ‘limited dose of democracy’ with the result that several leading political figures lost their seats on the central committee. The congress criticized government inefficiency and forbade ministers holding several offices. In reality the criticisms were directed at Bongo himself. Even so, he was able to stand as sole presidential candidate for a further seven-year term in December 1979 and received 99.96 per cent of the votes cast.