The Coronation of Emperor Bokassa
Jean-Bedel Bokassat (1921 – 1996) was an army officer who became military dictator of the Central African Republic. He then declared the small landlocked country an empire, and named himself Bokassa I, Emperor of the Central African Empire. His years running the country were marked by terror, corruption, and increasingly bizarre behavior.
When Central Africa gained its independence from France, the president invited Bokassa, who had been a captain in the French colonial army, to head the military. He accepted, then staged a coup and seized power. An admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte, Bokassa imitated him by crowning himself Emperor of Central Africa. He then bankrupted his impoverished country with a lavish coronation that cost about 80 million dollars, with a diamond-encrusted crown that cost 20 million.
Bokassa’s rule was marked by a reign of terror in which he personally oversaw the torture of suspected political opponents, before feeding their corpses to crocodiles and lions he kept in a private zoo. There were also accusations of cannibalism, triggered by photographs in Paris-Match magazine, showing a deep-freezer containing children’s bodies.
His most infamous atrocity was the arrest of hundreds of schoolchildren in 1979 for refusing to buy school uniforms from a company owned by one of his wives. His imperial guard murdered over 100 of the children, under Bokassa’s personal supervision. That was a final straw, and French paratroopers deposed him soon thereafter.
Exiled to France, he soon wasted the millions he had embezzled and fell into poverty, which came to light when one of his children was arrested for shoplifting food. He returned to Central Africa in 1986, where he was tried, convicted of murder and treason, and sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1993, and died three years later.