EQUATORIAL GUINEA: Despot’s Fall

A “miracle”man toppled

He called himself “The One True Miracle of Equatorial Guinea.”With the possible exception of Uganda’s deposed dictator, Idi AminDada, no African despot has been more brutal and erratic than FranciscoMacias Nguema, the President-for-Life of his tiny West African nation.

In the eleven years since the country won independence from Spain,Macias presided over a reign of terror that took the lives of some50,000 Guineans and drove perhaps 150,000—one-third of the remainingpopulation—into exile.

To stem the flow, Macias ordered all the boats in the country destroyed.When labor shortages appeared on his cocoa plantations, he pressed20,000 of his countrymen into slavery at gunpoint. Recalled oneGuinean: “If you didn’t go, you were shot.” His approach todissent was epitomized by the way he dealt with one group of 150political prisoners: they were lined up in a stadium on Christmas Eveand shot as loudspeakers played the tune, Those Were the Days, MyFriend.

Finally Macias’ own end came. Led by his nephew, Colonel Teodore ObiangNguema Mbazago, a military council seized power in the island capitalof Malabo in a bloodless coup. Said the colonel:

“Everybody was unhappy. It was only a matter of coordination.”From his fortified villa in the mainland province of Rio Muni, where hehad lived in seclusion for the past two years, Macias put up a brieffight, then fled into the jungle. But first, he burned a huge pile ofbanknotes: some $105 million in Guinean and foreign currency, or justabout all the cash in the country, which he had gathered up before heretired to the villa.

Macias, 57, had been an obscure civil servant before he was electedPresident in 1968. But once in power, says an acquaintance, he became”a total dictator who had a large charisma and could carry peoplealong with him.” That did not go for the economy, however. Skilledforeign planters and workers fled, and the country’s key cocoa exportscollapsed.

What services did not close down for lack of funds were wrecked byMacias’ often inexplicable decisions. Malabo’s lone-electric generatingplant has been out of commission since it blew up two years ago afterMacias decided that it should be operated without lubricating oil.

The treasury is bankrupt and civil servants have not been paid for sixmonths.

Everything is scarce but starvation and disease. But with Macias gone,if not in captivity, Guineans were jubilant. Foreigners arriving at theMalabo airport last week were greeted by smiling citizens who wereeager to shake hands. Their message, as one young radio mechanicexpressed it:

“We are glad to see that man gone.”

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