Francisco Macías Nguema
Francisco Macías Nguema was a grim, menacing character, sociopathic and all-powerful, surely the most fearsome combination of attributes in any national leader. He was the first President of Equatorial Guinea, ruling from independence in 1968 until his overthrow in 1979.
As the son of a witch doctor, Nguema was born deep in traditional West African rural life. His childhood was scarred, however, by witnessing his father beaten to death at the hands of colonial officials, and his mother’s subsequent suicide. He was largely uneducated, but enormously ambitious, ruthless and charismatic. Equatorial Guinea was a Spanish colony, impoverished and poorly run, and it was in this rough and tumble political environment that Nguema scrapped his way to the top. As African colonies were being returned to Africans, so Spain had no interest in holding on any longer to a worthless tract of tropical real estate. Power was handed over to whoever came forward to claim it, and it just so happened that this was Francisco Nguema.
Bereft of any sort of rational policy, and wholly disinterested in the business of administration, Nguema settled quickly into power as a strong man. Using the blunt instrument of violence and murder, he established a crude system of patronage, backed up by a wholesale reign of terror. There was nothing particularly sophisticated about it, and it was simply the ferocity of violence, and the lack of discrimination that kept his population cowed.
Very soon, however, his growing psychosis began to manifest in paranoia, and he became increasingly obsessed with loyalty and security. After legislating himself into absolute power, he declared war on all his enemies, real or perceived. Stacking his private bodyguard with relatives, he used it as his own armed enforcement branch, disappearing and killing political enemies at will.
He outlawed spectacles under penalty of death, banned the use of the word ‘intellectual’ and destroyed all boats in the nation to stop his citizens from leaving. He killed the governor of the central bank, and transported the contents of its vault to his rural village. He Africanized every name and banned the use of Western medicine. On Christmas Eve of 1975, some 150 political opponents were rounded up and executed without trial. They were staked up in a football stadium and riddled with bullets by soldiers dressed in Santa Clause outfits. As this was taking place, Nguema was seated in the stands, the public address system playing Mary Hopkins’ ‘Those Were the Days‘.
Nguema accused the United Nations of ‘Deliberate Cultural Regression’, although, in fact, the reduction of the nation to the level of the iron age was simply a by-product of his mental imbalance. Tens of thousands of Guineans lost their lives, and many more were displaced. By the time he was overthrown in 1979, Equatorial Guinea had defined a new low in African failed states. In 1979, he was tried and executed.