Gabon’s Leader, Ali Bongo Ondimba, Was More Admired Abroad Than at Home

Because the omnipotent ruler of oil-rich Gabon, Ali Bongo Ondimba had two passions, music and forests, that solid {powerful} ties the world over.

An achieved musician, Mr. Bongo recorded a disco-funk album and lured James Brown and Michael Jackson to Gabon. As president, he constructed a music studio at his seaside palace and performed improv jazz to overseas diplomats at state dinners.

Extra lately, Mr. Bongo allied with Western scientists and conservationists, entranced by each the paradisiacal fantastic thing about Gabon, an Arizona-sized nation coated in lush rainforest and teeming with wildlife, and by his dedication to defending it.

However to his personal folks, Mr. Bongo, 64, embodied a household dynasty, based by his father, which had dominated Gabon for 56 years — till this week, when it got here crashing down.

Army officers seized energy on Wednesday, hours after election officers declared Mr. Bongo the winner of a disputed election final weekend. Few noticed it coming, not least the president. When his personal guards got here for him, Mr. Bongo appeared genuinely bewildered.

“I don’t know what’s occurring,” Mr. Bongo, talking from his dwelling, mentioned in a video that was authenticated and circulated by a few of his many Western advisers. “I’m calling on you to make noise.”

It was the most recent in a blaze of army takeovers of African nations, toppling weak governments. (“Déjà coup,” mentioned one analyst from Sudan, which had its personal coup in 2021.) However whereas different takeovers have been prompted by violent upheaval, in peaceable Gabon it was one thing else: An indication that the Bongo rule, which held quick for a half-century, had run its course.

There was no signal of Mr. Bongo on Thursday, a day after his plaintive cry for assist. The coup chief Gen. Brice Oligui Nguema — a cousin of Mr. Bongo — introduced he can be sworn in as “transitional president” subsequent Monday.

Different African leaders, fearing they could be subsequent, took precautions. In neighboring Cameroon, President Paul Biya — in workplace for 40 years and, at age 90, the world’s oldest serving chief — introduced a sudden reshuffle of his nation’s army management. So, too, did Rwanda, which like Gabon has for many years been dominated by one man.

As Mr. Bongo’s destiny hung within the stability, reactions differed. Overseas conservationists expressed worries about what comes subsequent for a rustic that labored so onerous to to protect its pristine forests and seas. Simply final month, Gabon negotiated a landmark $500 million debt refinancing deal that freed $163 million for marine safety.

“An influence vacuum may result in a free-for-all the place poaching, unlawful logging and deforestation improve,” mentioned Simon Lewis, a professor of world change science at College School London, who has suggested Gabon on local weather coverage. “The prospect of the Gabonese folks gaining main revenue from their forests may evaporate.”

In Libreville, Gabon’s crowded seaside capital, the decision was extra combined. “I’m free!” cried Alaphine, a younger lady in a crowd of coup of supporters who declined to present a surname. However Christopher Ngondjet, a 25-year-old legislation pupil, mentioned he felt torn.

He welcomed a change from the Bongos, he mentioned, however apprehensive about army rule. “The president did quite a lot of good issues, particularly with the setting,” he mentioned. “I don’t know if the generals could have the identical curiosity.”

In some ways, Gabon has extra in frequent with some Persian Gulf states than with its African neighbors. It has a tiny inhabitants of two.3 million folks, large oil wealth and a rustic that’s sparsely inhabited; 88 p.c of the land is forest and roads are few.

As oil costs soared within the final quarter of the twentieth century, the Bongo household reigned like an undeclared monarchy. President Omar Bongo took energy in 1967 and have become a detailed ally of France, Gabon’s former colonial ruler. By most estimates, he fathered no less than 53 youngsters with totally different ladies, a method of cementing political alliances.

After Omar Bongo died in 2009, the torch handed to Ali, certainly one of his seven “official” sons, who gained the presidential election that 12 months.

The Bongos liked the baubles of tremendous wealth — the Bentleys, the Parisian villas, the holidays on the Côte d’Azur. Ali Bongo ceaselessly rode round Libreville in a Rolls-Royce and socialized with King Mohammed of Morocco, an previous good friend who has a personal palace in Gabon.

French investigators accused Mr. Bongo and his household of corruption. However what distinguished their nation from close by oil-rich kleptocracies, like Equatorial Guinea, was that some wealth additionally flowed down.

Training and well being care ranges are considerably greater in Gabon than elsewhere within the area. Gifted college students are despatched to France on authorities scholarships. Its timber trade offers 30,000 jobs, largely due to Mr. Bongo’s insistence that worth be added in Gabon, not overseas.

With its orderly markets and palm-lined corniche, Libreville lacks the fixed chaos of neighboring capitals. The U.S. Company for Worldwide Growth classifies Gabon as a middle-income nation.

Definitely, poverty is rife: a report by McKinsey in 2013 estimated that 30 p.c of Gabonese lived on $140 a month. But even within the poorest elements of Libreville residing circumstances are higher than in a lot of the area.

Mr. Bongo’s kitchen cupboard is crammed with Western advisers who stroll by authorities places of work and in a single case was appointed a minister: Lee White, a British-born scientist, who since 2019 has been minister of water, forests, the ocean and setting.

About 15 years in the past, Mr. Bongo started specializing in the nation’s forests — dwelling to western lowland gorillas, forest elephants, chimps and mandrills, and a part of the Congo Basin, one of many world’s most vital carbon sinks.

Omar Bongo, created 13 nationwide parks overlaying 10 p.c of Gabon’s landmass, and Ali Bongo continued that zeal. He flew by helicopter to his personal reserve, the place he saved lions, tigers, cheetahs, cougars and leopards.

He turned an everyday at worldwide local weather conferences, and courted {powerful}, rich allies. Final 12 months King Charles, who has praised Mr. Bongo’s insurance policies, welcomed him to Buckingham Palace. On a go to to Gabon, Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, pledged $35 million for forest preservation.

Mr. Bongo’s advocacy was partly pushed by self-interest. It burnished his overseas picture and opened doorways to a possible fortune in carbon credit — billions of {dollars} that Mr. Bongo has urged the West to pay Gabon to assist protect its rainforests.

However overseas officers who met Mr. Bongo mentioned his soft-spoken, genteel method may vanish as he enthused about nature. In a 2016 interview with the Occasions, Mr. Bongo reminisced about rising up with a pet Siberian tiger and gushed over his present pets within the presidential reserve. “There are such a lot of,” he mentioned, ticking off the names of a few of his lions, Goliath and Greta, and a cheetah known as Sahara.

However Mr. Bongo’s system started to point out cracks. After the monetary crash of 2008, a fall in oil costs hit Gabon onerous. Because the financial system slumped, inequality grew extra pronounced.

The fleets of Mercedes and Rolls-Royce automobiles that rolled by the small streets of the capital, parking at fancy seafood eating places or outdoors the president’s palace, started to jar greater than common.

In forest communities, farmers complained that rising numbers of hungry elephants — a direct results of Mr. Bongo’s anti-poaching efforts — have been consuming their crops. Regardless of oil revenues, they complained, satisfactory roads barely existed outdoors the capital. “Let the elephants vote for him,” was a slogan of critics in the course of the 2016 election.

In that vote, Mr. Bongo bared his knuckles to remain in energy. In his strongholds, voter turnout was an inconceivable 99 p.c. Safety forces encircled the opposition get together headquarters and no less than one particular person was killed.

Daniel Mengara, founding father of the exiled opposition group Bongo Should Go, mentioned oil revenues did assist Gabon’s folks, however the Bongos skimmed off an excessive amount of. “We deserve higher than what we’ve received and what we’ve received is distress,” he mentioned.

In 2019 Mr. Bongo suffered a stroke and disappeared for 10 months, re-emerging with a cane. His relationship with France faltered: He welcomed Chinese language and different funding, and final 12 months Gabon joined the British Commonwealth.

Since 2020, a collection of coups has shaken West Africa: first in Mali, then Burkina Faso, Guinea, Sudan and, final month, Niger. Regardless of threats and sanctions from African and Western powers, none was reversed.

President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria warned of a “contagion of autocracy,” with emboldened troopers in different nations deciding they need to take over, too.

Few imagined Mr. Bongo was in fast hazard. However then he pushed forward with a contentious election, and the coup makers, led by his personal cousin, introduced contagion to his door.

Declan Walsh reported from Nairobi, Kenya, and Dionne Searcey from New York. Yann Leyimangoye contributed reporting from Libreville, Gabon.