Everything about Jean-b Del Bokassa totally explained
Bokassa I of Central Africa (
22 February 1921 –
3 November 1996), also known as
Jean-Bédel Bokassa (IPA: [ʒɑ̃bedɛl bɔkasa]) and
Salah Eddine Ahmed Bokassa, was the military ruler of the
Central African Republic from
1 January 1966 and the Emperor of the
Central African Empire from
4 December 1976, until he was
overthrown on
20 September 1979.
Early life
Bokassa was born as one of 12 children to Mindogon Mgboundoulou, a village chief, and his wife Marie Yokowo in
Bobangui, a large
M'Baka village in the
Lobaye basin located at the edge of the equatorial forest, some southwest of
Bangui. Mgboundoulou was forced to organise the rosters of his village people to work for the French Forestière company. After hearing about the efforts of a prophet named Karnu to resist French rule and force labour, Mgboundoulou decided that he'd no longer follow French orders. He released some of his fellow villagers who were being being held hostage by the Forestière. The company considered this to be a rebellious act, and they detained Mgboundoulou and took him away bounded by chains to
Mbaïki.
Bokassa's extended family decided that it would be best if he received a French education at the Ecole Sainte-Jeanne d'Arc, a
Christian mission school in Mbaïki. As a child, he was frequently taunted by his classmates about his orphanhood. He was short in stature, but made up for this by being physically strong. In his studies, he became especially fond of a grammar book written by a French man named Bedel. His teachers noticed his attachment, and started calling him "Jean-Bedel".
On
10 October 1979, the
Canard Enchaîné satiric newspaper reported - in what soon became a major political scandal known as
the diamonds affair - that President Bokassa had offered the then
Minister of Finance Valéry Giscard d'Estaing two diamonds in 1973. The Franco-Central African relationship drastically changed when France's
Renseignements Généraux intelligence service learned of Bokassa's willingness to become a partner of
Qadhafi of
Libya. In early December 1979, the French council officially stopped all support to Bokassa.
After a meeting with Qadhafi, Bokassa converted to
Islam and changed his name to Salah Eddine Ahmed Bokassa. It is presumed that this was a ploy calculated to ensure ongoing Libyan financial aid. When no funds promised by Qadhafi were forthcoming, Bokassa abandoned his new faith. It also was incompatible with his plans to be crowned emperor in the Catholic cathedral in Bangui.
Proclamation of the Empire
Conseil de la Révolution Centrafricaine 'Central African Revolutionary Council'. On
4 December 1976, at the MESAN congress, Bokassa instituted a new constitution and declared the
republic a
monarchy, the
Central African Empire. He issued an imperial
constitution, announced his conversion back to
Catholicism and had himself crowned "S.M.I. Bokassa Ier", with S.M.I. standing for
Sa Majesté Impériale: "His Imperial Majesty", on
4 December 1977. Bokassa's full title was
Empereur de Centrafrique par la volonté du peuple Centrafricain, uni au sein du parti politique national, le MESAN ("Emperor of Central Africa by the will of the Centrafrican people, united within the national political party, the MESAN"). Both his lavish coronation ceremony and his regime were largely inspired by
Napoleon I, who had converted the French Revolutionary Republic of which he was First Consul into the First French Empire. The coronation ceremony was estimated to cost his country roughly 20 million US dollars. . Between
17 April and
19 April a number of schoolchildren were arrested after they'd protested against wearing the expensive, government-required
school uniforms. Around 100 were killed.
The severe international criticism which followed upon the massacre of the students enabled former President Dacko to gain French support and led a successful coup using French troops while Bokassa was absent in Libya on
20 September 1979.
Operation Barracuda
Bokassa's overthrow by the French government was called "France's last colonial expedition" (
"la dernière expédition coloniale française") by veteran French diplomat
Jacques Foccart.
Operation Barracuda began the night of
20 September and ended early the next morning. An undercover commando squad from the French intelligence agency
SDECE (now
DGSE), joined by Special Forces'
1st Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment, or
1er RPIMa, led by Colonel Brancion-Rouge, landed by
Transall and managed to secure the Bangui Mpoko airport. Upon arrival of two more transport aircraft, a message was sent to Colonel Degenne to come in with his
Barracudas (codename for eight
Puma helicopters and Transall aircraft), which took off from
N'Djamena military airport in neighbouring
Chad.
Fall of the empire
By 12:30 PM on
21 September, the pro-French Dacko proclaimed the fall of the Centrafrican Empire. David Dacko remained president until he was overthrown on
20 September 1981 by
André Kolingba.
Bokassa fled to
Ivory Coast where he spent four years living in
Abidjan. He then moved to France where he was allowed to settle in his house at Haudricourt, west of
Paris. France gave him political asylum because of the
French Foreign Legion obligations. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in February 1988 by then-President
Andre Kolingba and then reduced further to twenty years. With the return of democracy in 1993, Kolingba declared a general
amnesty for all prisoners as one of his final acts as president, and Bokassa was released on
1 August. He had 17 wives and a reported 50 children.
At the end of his life he proclaimed himself the 13th
Apostle and claimed to have secret meetings with the Pope. He died of a
heart attack on
3 November 1996 in Bangui, at the age of 75.
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