A member of the ‘dinosaur’ generation, Togo’s dictator, Gnassingbé Eyedéma, held on to power for thirty-eight years until his death in 2005.
A member of the ‘dinosaur’ generation, Togo’s dictator, Gnassingbé Eyedéma, held on to power for thirty-eight years until his death in 2005.
A giant portrait of President Hosni Mubarak hovers over a Cairo street. Through brute repression and the use of emergency laws, Mubarak managed for the most part to keep the lid on the activities of Islamist extremists.
An American soldier on patrol in Mogadishu in December 1992 as part of ‘Operation Restore Hope’. The aim was to assist relief efforts for famine victims and to restore order to the streets of Mogadishu where Somali gunmen reigned using ‘technicals’ – vehicles converted for combat use. But the US involvement in Somalia was to end in disaster.
Land of a Thousand Hills: once renowned for its magical beauty, a highland country tucked away in the heart of Africa, Rwanda became the setting for Africa’s worst genocide. In the space of a hundred days, some 800,000 people were killed – about three-quarters of the Tutsi population.
Desperate to find sanctuary, Tutsi families sought refuge in churches, but to no avail. They were slaughtered there en masse, sometimes with the cooperation of Hutu priests.
Facing defeat, Rwanda’s génocidaires ordered the exodus of the Hutu population to neighbouring Zaire (Congo) to enable them to continue their campaign. In two days, about one million Hutu crossed the border. ‘It was as though the whole country was emptying,’ said an observer.
The return journey: released from the grip of the génocidaires, Hutu refugees trudge back to Rwanda from Zaire.
West Africa’s most notorious warlord, Charles Taylor, won the election in Liberia in 1997 using as his campaign slogan: ‘He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him.’ Forced to step down amid civil war in 2003, he made his farewell speech dressed in a virginal white suit, drawing parallels between himself and Jesus Christ. ‘I would be the sacrificial lamb,’ he said. He went into comfortable retirement in Nigeria.
Shortly after seizing power in an Islamist coup in Sudan in 1989, General Omar al-Bashir pledged to purge the country of ‘enemies’ ‘Anyone who betrays the nation does not deserve the honour of living’. In his jihad against African tribes in the south he ordered ethnic cleansing costing hundreds of thousands of lives.
When rebels in Darfur launched a guerrilla war against his regime in 2003, Bashir used the same tactics of ethnic cleansing, arming Janjaweed militias to drive out the civilian population. More than a million refugees fled to neighbouring Chad.
The graduate: during the eleven years he spent in Ian Smith’s prisons, Robert Mugabe collected three university degrees to add to the three he already possessed. As Zimbabwe’s president, he boasted of a seventh degree – ‘a degree in violence’– which he used ruthlessly to crush his opponents.
A moment of liberation experienced around the world: Nelson Mandela walks free in 1990 after twenty-seven years’ imprisonment in the Cape, hand-in-hand with his wife, Winnie.
South Africa’s election, 1994. In their millions, voters queued patiently for hour after hour, determined to make the elections a success, and on leaving for home spoke of how their dignity had been restored.
The world’s last hero: Nelson Mandela rides with Queen Elizabeth in a carriage procession during a state visit to Britain in 1996.
Western leaders like Tony Blair and George Bush admired President Olusegun Obasanjo’s commitment to democracy. But Nigeria, after squandering an oil bonanza of US$280 billion, remains in a pitiful state.
