The Coup d’Etat which has just taken place in Gabon constitutes a situation as incredible as it is unexpected. Incredible because of the demonstration of the fragility of a power that we believed to be deeply anchored within the state apparatuses. In fact, the longevity of the Bongo clan in power for more than sixty years has led people to believe that this clan has had time to place its men in all decision-making positions, and thus, to lock down the security apparatus, making any movement of mood within society and the army, and even more so any coup d'état.
Furthermore, the multifaceted interests and networks that this clan had time to weave within the Gabonese political class, the army and even beyond, presaged a strong structuring of the state apparatus around of the leader of the Clan, Omar Bongo in his time and Ali Bongo today. In fact, the clan had to forge solid interconnections between politicians through marriages (Jean Ping, former challenger to Ali Bongo in the previous elections of August 27, 2016, is nothing less than Ali Bongo's brother-in-law General Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, current head of the Junta, is none other than Ali Bongo's cousin etc.).
This dark web of relationships had thus forged pacts and links across the entire political class, so that everything was held together through alliances that were as sudden as they were unexpected, even controversial. This innervation of the political class through transversal and vertical relationships made the disestablishment of the regime almost improbable.
These interconnections were also supported from the outside, by mafia links around the sharing of oil revenues where large French companies, in collusion with the Gabonese political class, have carved out the Lion's share for a very long time. The Elf affair under LEFLOCH PRIGEANT, highlighted the methods of exploitation, even expropriation, of a people of its wealth, through mechanisms of domination, and open spoliation, thus stabilizing Françafrique until the caricature. The structuring of the Gabonese political class through business and mafia relationships thus gave power a semblance of stability.
Gabon thus appeared for many decades, as the soft underbelly of FrançAfrique, through the domination of France on the continent, and the practices of exacerbated neocolonialism, raising at the same time, the depredation of natural resources to degrees paroxysmal. This country, although considered a Black Emirate, had thus become almost a Dom Tom, Bongo father and son refusing nothing to the powers of the ex-colonizer, thus bringing the exacerbation of the overexploitation of the country's wealth to unacceptable levels. To this day, Gabon certainly remains rich, but ¾ of its population lives below the poverty line, the country's wealth having tangible benefits only for the Gabonese political class and the French companies of depredation.
Under these conditions, Gabon had become the keystone of French domination on the continent, thereby weakening any idea of ejection of France, super master in its backyard. In fact, even after this coup d'état, Gabon still presents itself as the emblematic figure of this French territory, or at least its most visible face.
The coup d'état of August 30 proved to the world that this Central African country was in fact living in an unstable equilibrium. A bric-a-brac, which lasted as long as it took, and which could no longer last for an eternity, given the current situation of a world in full reorganization. A multipolar world which makes the decline of pre-existing systems the sine qua none condition for the emergence of new forces of progress.
T.K.M
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