Equatorial Guinea Independence to Present Day
Guinea Independence: Equatorial Guinea (Río Muni and the islands of Fernando Po [now Bioko] and Annobón) gained independence quickly after years of authoritarian rule under Franco’s Spain, but there was insufficient time for a grassroots nationalist movement to emerge.
Francisco Macías Nguema (1924–1979) was a leader known for persecution and breaches of basic human rights, comparable only to Idi Amin and the “emperor” Bokassa. Twenty years of rule under his nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, have resulted in some limited progress, but the country continues to suffer from the dual heritage of colonial and postcolonial authoritarianism.
Macías Nguema, a former court interpreter during colonial rule, was considered a “safe” candidate for Spain’s presidential elections leading up to independence on October 12, 1968. However, within a few months, he had disappointed his old masters by removing their ambassador and the local Spanish military presence, resulting in a massive exodus of white residents.
A reign of terror ensued, targeting political opponents like would-be separatists on Bioko Island and dissidents inside the ruling party, and manifesting itself through public executions, kidnappings, exile killings, “disappearances,” and the murder of entire towns. By 1974, more than two-thirds of the initial 1968 Assembly members had vanished.
According to Fegley, the Macías administration killed at least 20,000 people and forced 100,000 others to flee the country, accounting for almost one-third of the overall population. In 1970, Macías established PUNT (Sole National Workers’ Party), prohibiting other political parties. Two years later, he declared himself president for life, leading the nation and party, commanding the army, and overseeing education, science, and culture.
Macías separated himself from his colonial background by starting on an idiosyncratic “authenticity” agenda. This included an anti-Christian campaign, which culminated in the ban of the Roman Catholic Church in 1978 and the outlawing of the use of Christian names. Instead, he fostered his Fang group’s traditional Bwiti cult.
Other characteristics included the promotion of traditional medicine, the closure of hospitals, the dismissal of six hundred instructors, and the prohibition of the term “intellectual” as referring to an alien polluter of African values. The initiative was accompanied by the now-customary excesses: in one instance, a secondary school principal was hanged and his body displayed after discovering a slashed portrait of the “President for Life” in his school entrance.
In his final year, Macías abandoned traditional norms, probably inspired by Eastern-bloc contacts, declaring Equatorial Guinea as “an atheist state.” Meanwhile, the dictatorship itself was causing significant challenges to the once-thriving economy. Police assaults on Nigerian embassy staff in Malabo in 1975 led to the withdrawal of 35,000 Nigerian laborers from the Fernando Po cocoa plantations, replacing them with Fang laborers drafted from the mainland under the Compulsory Labor Act (1972), who lacked the necessary skills and failed to sustain production.
Despite blaming Spanish imperialism for his problems, Macías’ economic incompetence increased his country’s reliance on Spanish aid. By the late 1970s, Macías was rapidly losing his faculties and exhibiting signs of madness. Reports claimed that he communicated with those he had slain as if they were in the same room.
However, his authority was absolute, supported by family, and trusted Esangui clan members. He ruthlessly applied it to anyone who dared to complain, let alone criticize him. He overreached himself in June 1979 when he assassinated Teodoro Obiang, his nephew’s younger brother, for protesting his army pay arrears.
This threat to the tight circle of power prompted Obiang to rally numerous relatives and execute a successful coup. Macías was hanged at the end of September 1979, following a brief military trial. Some of the plotters were implicated in the previous regime’s atrocities. Obiang’s military government took swift action to improve relations with Spain and the Roman Catholic Church and was rewarded with a papal visit in February 1982.
In August 1976, the Anti-Slavery Society protested the Macías regime’s atrocities, prompting the United Nations Human Rights Commission to launch an investigation. In March 1980, the United Nations Secretary-General approved the hiring of an expert to assist the Obiang government in restoring human rights.
Despite lacking his uncle’s paranoia, Obiang’s human rights record has been far from perfect, with documented cases of extrajudicial murder, torture, and denial of basic rights to accused sons, compounded by the continued absence of an independent judiciary and the use of military tribunals to hear national security cases. For instance, they granted a defense attorney four hours to prepare a case for their alleged involvement in a coup attempt.
Other aspects of the old regime have persisted, such as the Esangui clan’s dominance of political structures and the ruling Equatorial Guinea Democratic Party’s (PDGE) absolute political and economic control. The breakdown of a one-party government in 1992 did not undermine its authority.
While the main opposition parties boycotted the 1993 elections, the 1999 elections saw short-term detentions of opposition candidates, the alleged removal of known opponents from the voter rolls, and reports that a lack of privacy in voting booths rendered the secret ballot, introduced for the first time in 1999, null and void.
Obiang received immunity from prosecution for suspected misdeeds committed before, during, and after his tenure in government prior to the emergence of multiparty politics, but this immunity has not yet faced challenges. He received 98% of the votes cast in the 1996 presidential election, despite allegations of fraud and intimidation.
However, in other respects, the 1990s were more favorable for Equatorial Guinea. The UN Human Rights Commission reported that the ruling class, not the people, reaped the benefits of significant offshore oil reserves brought into production in 1994. Obiang won the 2002 presidential election without any opposition, and Equatorial Guinea’s oil boom led to the highest economic growth rate in Africa.
Also Read: The Damaging Impact Of Colonialism on African Societies
