Jean-Bédel Bokassa Part 1: The Butcher of Bangui

Speaker 1 Tu mereces tis fruitartos favoritos por menos. Ja sel na Big Mac, McNuggets, oh un sausage, egg and cheese, McCriddles, pidetuan to hocomo un meo ya hora.

Speaker 1 Oof, nava comodarto un gustaso, por tam poco, los extra value meals están de regreso.

Speaker 2 Gana por la mañana con el extra value meal, sausage, mc, muffin with egg, hash browns, yun cafe agiente pequeño por solos se dolares. Bara ba ba ba.
Preses y participación pueden varía.

Speaker 2 Los preces de la promosión pueden enclenores que los de las comidas.

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Speaker 1 It's early morning on a March day in 1975.

Speaker 1 Deep in a remote forest in equatorial Africa, something is moving in the dense green foliage.

Speaker 1 The sound of trampling grows louder. A monumental force is closing in.

Speaker 1 Suddenly, A great clump of tree branches is ripped away.

Speaker 1 In the freshly made clearing stands one of Africa's great natural treasures, a forest elephant, 10 feet tall, with striking white tusks.

Speaker 1 In this eastern part of the Central African Republic, these giants dominate the landscape.

Speaker 1 In herds, they stomp their way through the lush undergrowth, wade through wetlands, and drink from water holes.

Speaker 1 But this elephant is an adult male and therefore roams alone.

Speaker 1 He wraps his powerful trunk around the branches of a tree and strips it of its leaves in one sweeping motion. Stuffing his mouth, he chews slowly.

Speaker 1 These majestic herbivores are a source of abundant life.

Speaker 1 Dozens of species of flora depend on them to disseminate their seeds.

Speaker 1 But that's of no concern to the hunters who target this mighty prize.

Speaker 1 One one of whom is lurking right now, hidden behind the trees not 30 feet away.

Speaker 1 Crouching low, breathing deeply through his nose, the hunter raises his weapon to his shoulder.

Speaker 1 He briefly flexes the forefinger of his right hand before placing it around the trigger.

Speaker 1 He takes aim and fires.

Speaker 1 The elephant stumbles to his knees, then slumps onto his side.

Speaker 1 He's been shot directly in the head,

Speaker 1 killed almost instantly.

Speaker 1 The hunter beams. Rising to his feet, he thrusts his rifle skywards in celebration.

Speaker 1 It's not the first time his eyes have shone with the thrill of taking a life,

Speaker 1 and it won't be the last.

Speaker 1 This is Jean-Bédel Bocasa.

Speaker 1 For over 20 years a brilliant soldier in the French army.

Speaker 1 For the last decade the supreme ruler of his homeland, the Central African Republic.

Speaker 1 In that time, he's carved out a reputation for ruthlessness, audacity, and extreme brutality.

Speaker 1 He baffles as much as he terrifies.

Speaker 1 On the one hand, he's a proud Central African, fueled by bitterness against his nation's former oppressors, France.

Speaker 1 Yet on the other, he's bewitched by French culture and hankers for acceptance from the Parisian elite,

Speaker 1 including the French president, Valéry Giscard d'Esta.

Speaker 1 who is here today, part of Bocasa's expedition.

Speaker 1 Two very different men, united in their love of hunting.

Speaker 1 For Bocasa, it's not just the thrill of the chase, it's about money.

Speaker 1 As with so much else that goes on in this country, he has a controlling interest in big game hunting. For every felled elephant, he makes a profit.

Speaker 1 This is how the president rules, with predatory violence and avarice.

Speaker 1 Bocasa Bokassa strides towards the elephant, limp and lifeless on the ground. Chin in the air, he plants a foot on top of the stricken animal's body.

Speaker 1 With a broad smile rippling across his face, he looks to the French president and the rest of their party.

Speaker 1 Today, Bokassa is in his element, the master of every living thing in the Central African Republic.

Speaker 1 Yet, within two years, his megalomania and narcissism will vault to incredible heights that will make even his friend, the French president, balk.

Speaker 1 Bocasa will elevate himself to emperor, a Central African version of his hero Napoleon Bonaparte. It will all end in accusations of torture, murder, even cannibalism.

Speaker 1 And at that point, it will be Bocasa himself who is in the crosshairs.

Speaker 1 In these episodes, we'll explore Bocas's rule of the Central African Republic, a reign as strange as it was chilling.

Speaker 1 From humble origins in a community that was ruthlessly exploited by a foreign empire, he seized power in the most audacious way imaginable.

Speaker 1 He began his time as leader promising the people of the CAR equality, justice, and free elections.

Speaker 1 But ended it having dissolved the government and plunged his country into debt.

Speaker 1 Convinced he was destined for greatness, Bocasa staged a lavishly surreal coronation for himself, featuring horse-drawn carriages, glittering crowns, and songs from Andrew Lloyd Weber.

Speaker 1 He amassed 17 wives, countless children, and a never-ending collection of luxurious possessions.

Speaker 1 But beyond the eccentricity and excess, there was profound darkness, beatings, torture, and innumerable murders, directed at Bocas's command and sometimes performed by his own hand.

Speaker 1 Yet there is also a catalogue of lurid half-truths and urban myths, including stories of cannibalism, which some say are evidence of lingering colonialist prejudice.

Speaker 1 A significant number still venerate him as the man who presided over a crucial era of development in the CAR.

Speaker 1 Heroic soldier, capricious tyrant, grotesque spendthrift, beacon of strength for a marginalized nation.

Speaker 1 Jean-Bedel Bocasa was all these things and more.

Speaker 1 From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is part one of the Bocasa story.

Speaker 1 And this is Real Dictators.

Speaker 1 At the heart of a continent, the Central African Republic, or CAR, is landlocked by Chad to the north, Sudan and South Sudan to the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Republic of the Congo to the south, and Cameroon to the west.

Speaker 1 It's a land of stunning natural beauty. Large flat savannas teem with big game.

Speaker 1 Unspoiled forests roar with the sound of waterfalls, and canyons sink deep into the earth.

Speaker 1 Beneath rich soils lie reserves of oil, uranium, diamonds and gold.

Speaker 1 Yet, home to some 5 million people, it's one of the poorest nations on Earth.

Speaker 1 Since claiming its independence from France in 1960, it's been hampered by civil war, chronic underdevelopment, and despotic mismanagement.

Speaker 1 Today, less than 40% of the adult population is literate.

Speaker 1 It features in the UN's list of least developed nations.

Speaker 1 Dr. Gino Vlavaneau is a Beninois academic who's written on conflict in the Central African Republic.

Speaker 1 It's a beautiful country, massive forest with tropical vegetation and it's quite hot and humid.

Speaker 1 So at times it's a little bit difficult to breathe, but the people are warm.

Speaker 1 In terms of economic development, Central African Republic has not been faring well overall, usually at the bottom of most of the development indexes.

Speaker 1 In Bangui, the country's serene capital, wide boulevards fan out from a central district where a handful of government buildings and commercial offices stand a few stories tall.

Speaker 1 The city is organized in Parisian-inspired administrative districts. Streets hum at the sound of generators burning diesel to provide electricity to the nearly one million people who call Bangui home.

Speaker 1 Dr. Louisa Lombard from Yale University is a cultural anthropologist.
She's written extensively on the CAR.

Speaker 4 It used to be known as Bangui La Coquette, Bangui the Flirt, because it was known as this kind of quiet, pretty, lovely city by the river where not all that much happened, but where you could have a nice time.

Speaker 4 There are still shades of that that you can find here and there, but it also bears the marks of being a city that has been neglected through the decades and where people have had to endure a lot of tumult and violence and just the decaying of the little infrastructure that once existed.

Speaker 1 The lands that would come to be known as the Central African Republic are first colonized at the end of the 1800s, when European powers perpetrate the infamous scramble for Africa, competing for imperial dominance of the continent.

Speaker 1 But prior to the arrival of the French, the region was already a dynamic, varied, and complex place.

Speaker 4 There were two main tendencies going on in the region in the late 1700s and 1800s.

Speaker 4 One of these was that most people in this area were living in what nowadays get referred to as stateless societies or acephalous societies or egalitarian societies.

Speaker 4 But basically, there wasn't one person who could stand up and tell everybody else what to do. They were fairly flexible.

Speaker 4 They were attached to particular places, but they also moved around a fair amount. Then at the same time, there were polities that were forming out of these expansionist empires.

Speaker 4 Some of those were connected to the spread of Islam and the kinds of trading networks that were attached to that.

Speaker 4 And it also was a place where some of those raiders were making inroads and setting up capital cities.

Speaker 4 So, a lot of things were changing in the region in that period before French colonizers showed up. And they only showed up at the very, very end of the 1800s.

Speaker 4 This was one of the last places where European explorers made inroads.

Speaker 1 In the 1880s, Italian-born French explorer Pierre de Brazza Brazza signs treaties with tribes in the Ubangui region.

Speaker 1 Consequently, France finds itself in control of a vast trench of land, stretching from Gabon on the Atlantic coast to Chad in the Sahara. It equates to more than one quarter of the African continent.

Speaker 1 Around the turn of the 20th century, a region known as Ubangui-Shari, named after two nearby rivers, becomes a French dependency, with a native population of about one million people.

Speaker 1 Compared to other French colonies in Africa, it draws few envious glances. While it has its appeals, its resources are considered relatively meager.

Speaker 4 Ubangishari, which was a colony that the French both had a fondness for, particularly those who were interested in big game hunting because it was a great place for doing that, but also it was the place that was sort of looked down on the most.

Speaker 4 It was seen as the place where the colonial officials who got the worst grades on the exams would be sent.

Speaker 4 And the French really did very little in terms of investing in the infrastructure of this country.

Speaker 1 The government in Paris decides to lease large swathes of their African lands to private concession companies.

Speaker 1 These companies are to oversee the exploitation of natural resources, such as rubber, timber, ivory, and gold. The hope is that the companies will invest in infrastructure.

Speaker 1 But it quickly becomes apparent that that isn't high on anyone's priority list.

Speaker 1 Richard Moncrief is a former British diplomat and an expert on Central Africa.

Speaker 1 As with all colonies in Africa, really, the focus of the French was on the areas where they could extract resources and then the infrastructure needed to get those resources out.

Speaker 1 And French interest in French presence thinned out very much in areas where there were few resources to exploit.

Speaker 4 France came very late to this project in this part of the world.

Speaker 4 And once they got there, they realized that their hopes that it would be a source of resources and wealth for them were probably overblown.

Speaker 4 They tried to trade it to England for a little speck of land in the Gulf of Guinea, for instance, but England said no way, no deal.

Speaker 4 So Ubankishari was not particularly a venerated colony and ended up having a colonial government that was alternately neglectful and brutal.

Speaker 1 The private concession companies run their own militias to enforce their savage working conditions.

Speaker 4 The colonizers would sometimes resort to modes of spectacular punishment to try to just make people afraid.

Speaker 4 And this took a variety of different forms but some of the infamous incidents included things like locking people into a house and then setting it on fire.

Speaker 1 Entire villages of women and children are locked up to incentivize the men to work for their freedom.

Speaker 1 Whips are frequently deployed to speed up or punish workers.

Speaker 1 On the spot, 40 franc fines, as much as an individual could earn in a month, are issued to those who don't meet rubber quotas.

Speaker 1 Insubordination is punishable by death or mutilation.

Speaker 1 The French people themselves, I mean in France, were not quite aware of what was happening in the Central African Republic.

Speaker 1 And at the time, they thought that right it was only the Belgian Congo who was brutal with rubber collections you know this kind of huge taxing activities on the locals but the same was happening in the South African Republic

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Speaker 1 One man who's all too aware of the grim realities of Central Africa is Mindigon Mbundulo.

Speaker 1 Mindagon is a hardened worker for Forest Year, a French company involved in rubber harvesting in Lo Bay.

Speaker 1 a region some 50 miles south of the capital city, Bangui.

Speaker 1 A socially prominent figure within his village, Mindagon is coerced into organizing the local workforce on behalf of the company.

Speaker 1 Like so many others, he seethes with resentment at the horrific treatment of his community.

Speaker 1 On February the 22nd, 1921, Mindagon's wife, Marie, gives birth to one of their 12 children.

Speaker 1 They name him Okasa.

Speaker 1 The boy grows up surrounded by rebellion. The locals are exhibiting more and more dissatisfaction, dissent and defiance.

Speaker 1 In a region not far from Bokassa's home, a prophet known as Kanu is claiming to have a magical plant which turns the colonial invaders into guerrillas.

Speaker 1 He also supplies his followers with hoe handles with which to do battle with their French oppressors.

Speaker 4 A huge amount of rebellion and resistance that now is referred to as the War of the Ho Handle or the Kongawara Rebellion. It was not fought by a unified force.

Speaker 4 It was more like a groundswell mobilization of peasants, people living throughout, particularly the southwestern part of the Central African Republic, who were angry at the kinds of labor demands that were being made of them, who were angry about the kind of repression that they were facing, and who through any means fought back.

Speaker 4 Sometimes that took took the form of assassinating an isolated private concession owner when they found him on his own. Sometimes it took the form of refusing to work.

Speaker 4 Sometimes it took the form of other kinds of demonstrations. So Ubangishari was known as the hotbed of resistance to colonial rule, particularly in the 1920s and 30s.

Speaker 1 Bokasa's father hears of Kanu's exploits and decides that he will no longer follow French orders.

Speaker 1 Mindagon takes it upon himself to release some of his fellow villagers who are being held hostage by the Forestier Company.

Speaker 1 His defiance leads to inevitable consequences.

Speaker 1 It's November the 13th, 1927,

Speaker 1 a hot, dry day in Low Bay.

Speaker 1 Two roosters peck at the dirt in a town square as men begin to arrive back after a long, hard day harvesting wild rubber.

Speaker 1 Their bodies are exhausted, their eyes sting in the dust. As they trapes into the square, quiet and forlorn, two forest-year militiamen appear, hauling a muscular man bound in chains.

Speaker 1 The militiamen hurl their prisoner to the floor.

Speaker 1 He cowers beneath them, too weak to resist.

Speaker 1 It's Mindagon, Bokasa's father.

Speaker 1 Suddenly, the blows start raining down.

Speaker 1 The bosses know all about his seditious activities, and they've had enough.

Speaker 1 The local men watch, horrified, as Mindagon is beaten in front of them, his weak appeals for clemency dying away,

Speaker 1 until finally, he stops moving altogether.

Speaker 1 A week after Mindogon is beaten to death, Bokasa's mother Marie commits suicide, crushed by the grief of losing her husband.

Speaker 1 At the age of just six, Bokasa is an orphan, both of his parents, in their different ways, the victims of colonial oppression.

Speaker 1 The young boy's remaining family decide that he should receive a French language education at a Christian mission school in Mbaiki, the capital of the region.

Speaker 1 He's frequently taunted by his classmates about his orphanhood.

Speaker 1 Although he's short, he's physically strong, and soon he learns how to handle himself.

Speaker 1 Bocasa takes to the French language quickly and learns to speak well.

Speaker 1 He becomes especially attached to a French grammar book by an author named Jean-Bedell.

Speaker 1 a name that now becomes attached to the boy.

Speaker 1 During his teenage years, Bokasa studies in Bangui, where a priest intends for him to take holy orders.

Speaker 1 But Bocassa's interests lie elsewhere. At the age of 18, he enrolls as an infantryman in the French colonial army.

Speaker 1 It's 1939, the eve of the Second World War.

Speaker 1 During his service, Bocassa develops a deep admiration for all things French, a fascinating and complex irony, considering his family's experience of the country's rule.

Speaker 1 He is enchanted by France's uniforms, medals, and pageantry.

Speaker 1 He even comes to describe French military leader Charles de Gaulle as a father figure.

Speaker 1 When you think about the experience of people from not just Central African Republic, but from that region, going to France in 1939, I think it would have been quite ambivalent.

Speaker 1 And I think that different individuals took away rather different experiences.

Speaker 1 I think on the one hand, going from a poor area of Central Africa to one of the richest countries in the world at the time, in France, one would have been struck by the power of France, by its military organization, particularly Edmaring de Gaulle, no doubt.

Speaker 1 Bocasa wasn't the only one who had that attitude. And generally leaving with a sense of being impressed.

Speaker 1 But then others would have taken away, or maybe the same individuals have contrasting impressions, would have taken away the racism that they would have experienced even within the French army.

Speaker 1 For Picasse's part, he takes to military life rather well.

Speaker 1 The young soldier is well liked, earns respect in battle, and is promoted quickly up the ranks.

Speaker 1 His service takes him to the thick of world events. After France falls to Nazi Germany, he is a member of de Gaulle's Free French Forces.

Speaker 1 In North Africa, he marches across the desert to join up with the British Eighth Army and drive the Germans out of the region.

Speaker 1 On the 15th of August 1944, he participates in the Allied landing in Provence as part of Operation Dragoon.

Speaker 1 Then fights in southern France and Germany in early 1945, before the collapse of the Nazi regime.

Speaker 1 The orphan from Lobe has come a long way.

Speaker 1 After the war, Bucassa remains in the French army, and the foreign postings continue.

Speaker 1 First, he studies radio transmission in the town of Frejus on the French Riviera. After that, he's sent to officer training in San Luis, Senegal.

Speaker 1 Then in 1950, he's off to Southeast Asia, traveling to French Indochina as company sergeant and transmissions expert on a three-year tour of duty.

Speaker 1 He's described as a dynamic soldier, always volunteering for missions and frequently exhibiting great courage.

Speaker 1 For his exploits in battle, he's eventually decorated with numerous medals for bravery, including the Legion d'Honneur.

Speaker 1 Indochina proves a milestone in his personal life too.

Speaker 1 It's there that he marries a 17-year-old Vietnamese girl, Nguyen Tai Hue,

Speaker 1 who gives birth to the couple's daughter.

Speaker 1 This is the first of 17 wives and dozens of children Bokasa will have throughout his life.

Speaker 1 Before departing, he promises his young bride that he will return, assuming he'll be sent back on another tour.

Speaker 1 But he never is.

Speaker 1 Years later, he will say that he found his posting in Indochina to be the most beautiful and brotherly of experiences.

Speaker 1 Bacassa's affection for the French army is quite plain, but his broader attitudes towards France and its influence over his homeland are more complex. He isn't alone.

Speaker 1 Through the 40s and 50s, many of his African contemporaries have polarized views on how to move away from French rule.

Speaker 1 Francophone African elites after the Second World War were broadly divided between radical and conservative.

Speaker 1 The more radical wing wanted independence and wanted it more rapidly, but there was also quite a significant group of conservative pro-Paris leaders who, in some cases, pushed for independence, but the independence they sought was a rather sheltered independence.

Speaker 1 It isn't until 1959, after 20 years abroad, that Bokasa, now a lieutenant, is posted back to Bangui.

Speaker 1 During that two decades' sojourn, a lot has changed. Most notably, French control of the colonies is eroding, and new local heroes are emerging, including one who is closely connected to Bokasa.

Speaker 1 Bartélemy Boganda is Bocasa's uncle. He is seen as the charismatic young leader required to shake off the shackles shackles of colonialism.

Speaker 1 Like Pokassa's father, Boganda's mother had been beaten to death by French company officials.

Speaker 1 In the aftermath of this, the young Bogander is adopted by Catholic missionaries, is given a good education, and in 1938 is ordained into the priesthood, serving at various missions throughout the Second World War.

Speaker 1 At the end of the war, Bogander founds a party called the Movement for the Social Evolution of Black Africa, also known by its French acronym, Messin.

Speaker 1 The party advocates for the equal treatment of native black peoples in the colonies.

Speaker 1 With the French Empire crumbling, Boganda is elected the first prime minister of the self-governing territory of Ubangishari in 1958.

Speaker 1 He dreams of the four territories of Gabon, Moyen Congo, Ubangishari and Chad becoming autonomous under a single independent federation called the Central African Republic.

Speaker 1 We can't talk about the independence of the Central African Republic without mentioning Boganda. As the priest and the father of the country, everyone talks about him even till today.

Speaker 1 Buganda was the one who, I think, spearheaded the battle for independence.

Speaker 1 To Central Africans, Baganda is more than just a charismatic political leader. He becomes a messianic figure,

Speaker 1 considered the Black Christ.

Speaker 1 In fact, large crowds gather on the banks of the Ubangi River one afternoon when a rumor spreads that he is about to demonstrate his supernatural powers by walking across the placid water.

Speaker 1 We don't know whether he accomplished this.

Speaker 1 In 1958, referendums are held across the French African colonies to decide their future relationship with France.

Speaker 1 On offer is the opportunity for each colony to become a semi-autonomous member of what is called the French Community,

Speaker 1 an organization attempting to give new constitutional form to the relationship between France and its colonies.

Speaker 1 Alternatively, each colony could vote for full independence.

Speaker 1 When the referendums take place at the end of 1958, only Guinea takes that option. Their regional neighbors, including Ubangi-Shari, are more cautious.

Speaker 1 They choose, for now at least, to maintain some ties with France.

Speaker 1 Gabon, Moyen Congo and Chad go down a similar path. And at the same time, they reject Boganda's proposal that they all pool their resources and unite.

Speaker 1 Consequently, it's only Ubangishari that becomes what from now on is known as the Central African Republic.

Speaker 1 Although it still doesn't have full independence, Boganda sets out on building this new nation.

Speaker 1 He proposes new laws. Among them are prohibitions on nudity and vagrancy, indicative of the moral seriousness of this former member of the priesthood.

Speaker 1 But just when Boganda is getting started, things come to an abrupt end.

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Speaker 1 On March the 29th, 1959, he boards a plane to return to Bangui after a countrywide tour.

Speaker 1 As the aircraft soars over the district of Boda, it lurches suddenly downwards and crashes into the jungle.

Speaker 1 The plane explodes in a ball of flames and oily black smoke. Everybody on board is killed.

Speaker 1 For Baganda's adoring followers, the death of their beloved leader is a terrible shock.

Speaker 1 As the news sinks in, sabotage is widely suspected. Indeed, the Paris Weekly, L'Express, claims that experts found traces of explosive in the wreckage.

Speaker 1 Others point the finger at French businessmen or the French Secret Service.

Speaker 1 And it's seen as suspicious that Michel Jourdin, Bogander's widow, had taken out a sizable insurance policy on her husband's life just days prior to the crash.

Speaker 4 The mysterious circumstances part is a little bit of editorializing. He died in a plane crash, and it certainly seems odd, but who knows?

Speaker 4 Planes crash quite a bit in this part of the world, unfortunately.

Speaker 1 Boganda is instantly a national martyr. His messianic status solidified.
The nation's sense of loss is palpable.

Speaker 1 A void is left. Others start to step forward as new potential leaders of the Central African Republic.

Speaker 4 But none of them had that charisma or that deep sense of purpose and nationalism that people identify in Bartolome Boganda.

Speaker 1 Boganda cannot be truly replaced, but the march to independence continues.

Speaker 1 Into the spotlight steps yet another relative of Bokasus,

Speaker 1 this time his distant cousin, David Darko.

Speaker 1 The son of a plantation night watchman, 29-year-old Darko is heavily backed by France, who consider him a pliant moderate.

Speaker 1 Darko becomes the new leader of the Meson political party and does so just as the pace towards full independence quickens.

Speaker 4 Once they saw that the leader of Guinea, which went for independence just a little bit earlier, once they saw that he got the red carpet treatment at the United Nations and everything else, everybody wanted that.

Speaker 4 And so we ended up with a situation where each of the former colonies became an an independent nation-state.

Speaker 1 The process is swift. On August the 13th, 1960, the Central African Republic cuts the cord with France.
But the transition is far from smooth.

Speaker 4 The French colonial officials were not always generous in the way that they adapted to this new state of affairs.

Speaker 4 And in some places, they actively sabotaged and destroyed offices and destroyed infrastructure like telephones and things like that.

Speaker 4 In the Central African Republic, they didn't destroy as much simply because there was not much there for them to destroy.

Speaker 4 French advisors stayed on in most of the ministries and departments of the government, and effectively, in most cases, they were still running the show, even though there were now Africans who were alongside them and who were the official titular heads of these ministries and departments.

Speaker 4 So, although independence came for Central Africa Africa in 1960, in terms of what people living in the country experienced, they didn't experience that much of a difference.

Speaker 1 Broadly speaking, many former French colonies in Africa lacked the resources to engage in the kind of state building which has happened in other post-colonial settings.

Speaker 1 And the elites either encouraged or accepted a situation of continued French influence.

Speaker 1 After independence, African countries were buffeted by a combination of geopolitical and internal problems and instability.

Speaker 1 And the French offered both a minimal financial life support and a degree of regime security.

Speaker 1 The CAR's newfound independence means that David Darko is the nation's first ever president.

Speaker 1 But, lacking Boganda's charisma, Darko never commands popular support.

Speaker 1 His unfortunate resemblance to the cow on a popular brand of cheese means he's known locally as La Vash Kikiri, the laughing cow.

Speaker 1 More substantively, he's seen as too close to the old colonial rulers. using his connections to develop his own financial interests.

Speaker 1 It was the first point of disenchantment with the independence model and the realization that the new leaders of independence were often overwhelmed by a context that they had insufficient control and influence over.

Speaker 1 There was a feeling that the civilians who had been handed the reins at independence hadn't fulfilled the promises of that time, of the independence moment.

Speaker 1 The legitimacy basis of the new leaders in 1960 was not that they were democratically elected, but was that they would enact independence in a way that would bring prosperity and freedom to people.

Speaker 1 And people didn't see that coming in the mid-1960s.

Speaker 1 In the shadows of the newly independent nation, there is one man whose personality shines brighter than President Darko's.

Speaker 1 Jean-Bédére Bocassa.

Speaker 1 He has been stationed back in the CAR with the French army since 1959.

Speaker 1 But on New Year's Day, 1962, Bokassa switches to the Central African Armed Forces as battalion commandant.

Speaker 1 There is a nation to be built, and Bokassa is seconded to Darko to advise on military matters. A very prominent position.

Speaker 4 The military was important in those early independence years, in part just because it was a structured institution in a brand new country that had very, very little in the way of institutions.

Speaker 4 And perhaps more importantly, the leaders of this military were people who had served, and so they had that experience of being part of a structured institution, what that meant, chains of command, all of these kinds of things.

Speaker 4 And they could bring that with them into the experience of running things now in the Central African Republic.

Speaker 1 But implementing structure into the CAR is no simple task. And things are not made any easier by the corruption and nepotism that quickly gripped TARCO's government.

Speaker 1 The president sets about creating as many government jobs as possible in the new administration.

Speaker 1 Civil servants receive exorbitant salary increases and extraordinary benefits like housing and interest-free loans.

Speaker 1 The temptation is irresistible. They begin to buy villas, luxury cars, and travel abroad.

Speaker 1 Jobs and favors are handed out to friends and relatives. Cabinet ministers grow wealthier by running taxi services and bars.

Speaker 1 Others use public funds to build apartments, which they then rent out, pocketing the money.

Speaker 1 The CAR's finance minister states that the government's revenues would struggle to cover 60% of its expenditure.

Speaker 1 Reluctantly, it's France, still with interests in the region, that is balancing the books.

Speaker 1 In July 1962, Darko announces that Maison will henceforth be the only political movement in the country, and all citizens must take out membership.

Speaker 1 In 1964, Maison put Starko forward as the sole candidate for president.

Speaker 1 He garners 100% of the ballots cast and begins a seven-year term in office.

Speaker 1 His 60 hand-picked National Assembly members are unanimously elected.

Speaker 1 The Central African Republic is losing its way already.

Speaker 4 The main thing to know about these early independence years is just that the number of educated Central Africans is tiny.

Speaker 4 The number of elite Central Africans who can be holding these important government positions can be counted on, you know, not that much more than two hands.

Speaker 4 It's a very small number of people who know each other because they have been studying in France together, have kind of come up during this era together.

Speaker 1 Bokasa, meanwhile, is continuing his steady rise to prominence. He is, after all, a decorated soldier who's fought all over the world.

Speaker 1 Not to mention the fact that he's the president's cousin and the nephew of Boganda, the father of the nation.

Speaker 1 With his reputation ever growing, Bokasa starts to apply his considerable experience to the new Central African Army.

Speaker 1 He's appointed commander-in-chief of this ragtag bunch of 500 poorly trained and poorly equipped soldiers, becoming its first colonel and chief of staff in December 1964.

Speaker 1 He's certain that greatness lies ahead.

Speaker 1 I think he started seeing himself as someone who could lead the country.

Speaker 1 Daku was perceived as someone who was more quiet, reserved, and Bukasa was kind of the opposite, more strong army man who could maybe be more forceful.

Speaker 1 Well-traveled and ambitious, Bokasa reads the situation shrewdly, realizing that there is power and influence available to Africans in this new post-colonial order.

Speaker 1 His charm and good humor are winning over influential friends. But while his standing in the army is undisputed, Bokasa is desperate for wider public recognition in the fledgling nation.

Speaker 1 He rarely appears in public without his military medals on glittering show.

Speaker 1 Much to the chagrin of President Darko's chief aides, he insists on standing next to or right behind his cousin at public ceremonies. Bokasa is even seen driving the president's car.

Speaker 1 At first, Darko finds Bokasa's antics amusing.

Speaker 1 At an official dinner for foreign diplomats in 1965, Darko ridicules the colonel. Bokassa only wants to collect medals, he says.
He's too stupid to pull off a coup d'état.

Speaker 1 Yet there is little doubt that Bokassa carries a real threat.

Speaker 1 Darko's interior minister suggests appointing him to the cabinet to distance him from the army and moderate his ambitions. This doesn't come to pass.

Speaker 1 But Darko does create two new institutions designed to bolster his muscle.

Speaker 1 An armed police force of 500 men, the Gendarmerie, headed by loyal police chief Giannisamo, plus a 120-strong presidential guard, his own personal protection force.

Speaker 1 With these measures, Darko perhaps feels he's neutralized his vainglorious cousin.

Speaker 1 Whatever the case, Bokasa is just one of the many problems on the president's plate. The economy is spiraling.
Government is stymied by dysfunction and corruption.

Speaker 1 Regional neighbors are beset by discord and coups.

Speaker 1 In a desperate attempt to take control of the situation, Darko establishes diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, who gladly send a delegation to tour the country, showing communist propaganda films in the villages.

Speaker 1 An interest-free loan of 1 billion CFA francs follows. But even that is not enough to plug the holes in the sinking ship.

Speaker 1 Five years into the Dako presidency, conflict and anxiety abound.

Speaker 1 These are ideal conditions for an ambitious strongman with a thirst for power to make his move.

Speaker 1 Unless, of course, the president moves first.

Speaker 1 In the summer of 1965, Bocasa is sent to Paris as his country's special envoy for the Bastille Day celebrations.

Speaker 1 At the event, his medals glint in the sun amid a sea of red, white and blue.

Speaker 1 On July the 23rd, he attends another event at a cadet school in his old haunt of Frejus.

Speaker 1 The Riviera town is as resplendent as ever. His sixth wife, whom he's only only just married, joins him for the excursion.
All in all, it's a very happy stay back in France for Bocasa.

Speaker 1 That is, until he's preparing to come home and receives an unexpected and unwelcome phone call.

Speaker 1 President Darko, he is told, has forbidden his return to the Central African Republic.

Speaker 1 The colonel is effectively trapped in exile.

Speaker 1 Bocasa is incensed.

Speaker 1 For the next two months he attempts to drum up support back home and in the French army.

Speaker 1 It seems the president won't budge. The long wait for Bokassa to return home stretches out.

Speaker 1 Daco finally yields in October 1965 and allows his cousin to re-enter the CAR.

Speaker 1 Bocassa claims that it was Charles de Gaulle himself, now president of France, who had intervened on his behalf.

Speaker 1 After this, tensions between Darko and Bocassa bubble like never before.

Speaker 1 Darko approves a financial increase for his gendarmerie police force, but rejects Bocassa's budget proposal for the military.

Speaker 1 The enraged colonel tells friends he will execute a coup.

Speaker 1 There were kind of rivalry between the gendarmerie and the army in the country and there was a perception from Pokasa's view that the chandelier was being favored instead of the army, where the army was used for mundane tasks.

Speaker 1 So Bokasa felt that the army was not taking its due place in the development of the country and for that reason was also willing to stage a coup.

Speaker 1 By December 1965, Darko's personal advisors are alerting him that his cousin is showing signs of mental instability.

Speaker 1 They say he should be arrested. Daco decides against that dramatic step, perhaps not wanting to escalate an already tense situation.

Speaker 1 Instead, he intends to replace Bokasa as his military advisor with police chief Jean Izamo.

Speaker 1 Daco runs the plan by the elders in his home village. who straight away tip off Bokasa.

Speaker 1 The colonel knows that the president is trying to move him to the side. The time has come.
It's now or never.

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Speaker 7 This December on the Noiser Podcast Network, it's a busy month with the launch of a brand new show.

Speaker 7 Join Sir David Suchet for Charles Dickens Ghost Stories, a selection of Dickens' most spine-tingling tales.

Speaker 7 In Jane Austen's stories, Pride and Prejudice concludes, when all said and done, will pride get in the way of true love?

Speaker 7 Short History of takes us onto the historic canals of Venice and beyond the courtrooms of the Nuremberg trials.

Speaker 7 On Real Survival Stories, we'll follow an emergency chopper as it goes down in the Labrador Sea and traverse the mountain bike trails of Patagonia.

Speaker 7 In Sherlock Holmes' short stories, Holmes unpicks a mysterious string of sculpture-related crimes in The Adventure of the Six Napoleons.

Speaker 7 And Real Dictators Returns with the extraordinary story of Jean-Bedell Bocassa. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

Speaker 7 And if you're still on the hunt for Christmas presents, then why not grab a copy of A Short History of Ancient Rome, available in all good bookshops.

Speaker 1 Overthrowing the government, of course, is easier said than done. Bocassa needs an able deputy.
He picks Captain Alexandre Banza, a leading military figure. who's also served in the French army.

Speaker 1 By late December, rumors of coup plots are openly circulating among among officials in the capital. As the year comes to an end, Bokasa is primed to strike.

Speaker 1 It's New Year's Eve, 1965, a warm, dry evening in Bangi.

Speaker 1 Outside the presidential palace, David Dako climbs into the back of his motor car, the metal of the door hot against his hand.

Speaker 1 As the car swings out of the gates, the president nods to the guards through a tinted glass window, half-opened to let in a breeze.

Speaker 1 He plans to spend the evening at the plantation of one of his ministers, southwest of Bangui.

Speaker 1 Things haven't been easy, he thinks, but he is to leaving those troubles behind in 1965.

Speaker 1 Tomorrow is a new year, a fresh start.

Speaker 1 What he doesn't know is that Colonel Bokasa also has big plans for the future. And And they start tonight.

Speaker 1 With his co-conspirator Captain Banza, Bokasa has formulated a strategy to seize power.

Speaker 1 First, they will overpower the security at the presidential palace and arrest Darko.

Speaker 1 Another group of soldiers will occupy a hill overlooking the police camp. And a third will seize Radio Bangui.

Speaker 1 Fearing a French intervention in support of Darko, they order that a final group blockade the runway at the airport.

Speaker 1 At 10.30 p.m. on New Year's Eve, Banza sends word to his men, Go, the coup is underway.

Speaker 1 While his soldiers ready themselves, Bokasa picks up the phone to Police Chief Isamo, insisting that he come to Camp De Rue Military Center to sign some documents.

Speaker 1 They need attention before the year expires.

Speaker 1 Izamo is exasperated. He's just opened a bottle of wine to toast the new year with friends.
Surely this paperwork can wait. If Bukasa is insistent, this is crucial business.

Speaker 1 Izamo jumps in his wife's car and speeds over to the barracks.

Speaker 1 As he approaches the front gates, The car's headlights illuminate two figures directly in front of him, arms folded.

Speaker 1 It's Bukasa and Banza.

Speaker 1 A coup d'état is in process, they tell him. Would he care to lend his support?

Speaker 1 Out of the question, Isamo replies.

Speaker 1 Wrong answer.

Speaker 1 The president's chief police officer is seized and bundled into a cellar. With Izamo dealt with, there is nobody to lead a resistance to the coup.

Speaker 1 At half past midnight, the various military units roll out of the Camp de Rue to take up their positions around the city.

Speaker 1 Ocasa and Banza lead the entourage, not in a jeep or an armoured tank, but a Peugeot 404.

Speaker 1 After seizing the capital in a matter of hours, Okasa and Banza rush to the palace to arrest Darko.

Speaker 1 But as they move from room to room, banging through doors and checking storerooms, he's nowhere to be found.

Speaker 1 Has the president been tipped off?

Speaker 1 Is a counter-coup in the works? Or, worse still, are the French negotiating their support for the president?

Speaker 1 Bokasa orders his soldiers to search for Darko in the countryside until he's found.

Speaker 1 An agonizing wait begins. For as long as the president is at large, the coup is incomplete.

Speaker 1 By this time, Darko has left his New Year's Eve party and word has reached him about an attempted coup.

Speaker 1 Astounded, he orders his driver to race back to the capital.

Speaker 1 But it's too late.

Speaker 1 Bokasa already has control of the city. His men are everywhere.
When a group of soldiers patrolling the streets identify the presidential car, they apprehend the man on the back seat.

Speaker 1 And the first president of the Central African Republic is placed under arrest.

Speaker 1 Back at the presidential palace, Bokasa is fretting. There is still no word of Dako's whereabouts.
Standing at the palace gates, he checks his watch, then checks it again.

Speaker 1 His mouth is dry, his heart races. The wait continues.

Speaker 1 Eventually a car comes into sight at the far end of the wide avenue.

Speaker 1 Pokassa begins to smile.

Speaker 1 As the vehicle pulls to a stop, Darko is hauled out by two of his infantrymen.

Speaker 1 Pokassa steps forward, arms open wide, and embraces the president.

Speaker 1 I tried to warn you, he beams, but now it's too late.

Speaker 1 At around 2 a.m., Pokasa and Captain Banza take Darko with them to the notorious Ngaragbar prison.

Speaker 1 With Banza waving a pistol menacingly in the face of the prison director, Pokasa makes a spontaneous gesture. He orders the jail to be emptied.
Everyone shall be freed. A new beginning for all.

Speaker 1 The prison gates are flung open.

Speaker 1 All of the inmates are released into the night, granted instant clemency to begin the new year.

Speaker 1 Dako is then taken to Camp Kasai military base.

Speaker 1 Paralyzed by shock and weeping and trembling uncontrollably, he's forced to resign the presidency.

Speaker 1 Okasa's plan is complete.

Speaker 1 As far as coup d'états go, this one is relatively bloodless.

Speaker 1 Throughout the night, eight people are killed in gunfights around Bangui, but very little resistance is offered.

Speaker 1 In fact, one of the last men to hold out is a lone night watchman at a radio station, bravely firing on soldiers with a bow and arrow.

Speaker 4 So, when Bokasa took power in his coup, this was in some ways understandable, but in other ways quite shocking. Here was the sleepy backwater of a place where this dramatic incident takes place.

Speaker 4 And initially, I think people were surprised, but also saw it as potentially something that would inject a little bit of energy into the country and drive it forward into this independent era with a new kind of discipline that people felt like had been lacking up to that point.

Speaker 1 The following morning, Bokasa takes to Radio Bangui. This is Colonel Bokasa speaking to you, he declares triumphantly.
At three o'clock this morning, your army took control of the government.

Speaker 1 The Darko government has resigned. The hour of justice is at hand.
The bourgeoisie is abolished.

Speaker 1 He declares himself an undying patriot, a defender of the people.

Speaker 1 A new era of equality among us all has begun, he says. Central Africans, wherever you may be, Be assured that the army will defend you and your property.
Long live the Central African Republic.

Speaker 1 A young nation, barely five years old, is now in the hands of a military ruler.

Speaker 1 The age of Bokasa has begun.

Speaker 1 In the next episode,

Speaker 1 A new year brings new beginnings in the CAR.

Speaker 1 President Bokasa attempts to modernize, improving transport, women's rights, and even establishing two national orchestras.

Speaker 1 But at the same time, the mass incarcerations and torture ramp up, corruption takes hold, and then things get really strange.

Speaker 1 An imposter infiltrates Bokasa's home life.

Speaker 1 A bizarre public competition is launched. to marry off the president's daughters, while the president himself cozies up to Libyan strongman, Colonel Gaddafi.

Speaker 1 That's next time.

Speaker 1 Don't want to wait? Join Noiser Plus and you can listen to the whole Bokasa story, parts two and three, right now without ads.

Speaker 1 Just click the Noiser Plus banner at the top of the feed or head to noiser.com forward slash subscriptions.

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