The Exit of Bongo, Africa's Longest Serving Leader

By Paul Ohia with agency report, 06.09.2009

Like the controversy surrounding his reign, the death of Africa's longest-serving ruler, Gabon's President Omar Bongo Ondimba, also came under dispute until finally confirmed yesterday. He died at the age of 73 in a Spanish hospital.
Though he epitomized sit tight leadership during his lifetime, he was equally a charismatic figure surrounded by a personality cult. He led the oil-producing West African state for more than four decades. Many in Gabon saw him as a guarantor of the former French colony's stability and this resulted in panic during his death but detractors said his rule was based on violence and corruption, accusing him of amassing a personal fortune from the country's oil boom.
Bongo's wealth was a well-kept secret, but he is thought by some to have been among the world's richest men.
He was born Albert Bernard Bongo on December 30, 1935, one of 12 children to a peasant farming family in south-east Gabon and he lost his father at the tender age of seven. To emphasise the journey he made from poverty to success, his official website said: "He didn't come into the world on a hospital bed, and he didn't have a cot or a nanny."
Of course, many older Africans were not born on hospital beds but traditional midwives did the job but this could be translated to mean that he was not born with a silver spoon.
He went to school in Brazzaville in Congo and he joined the French Air Force and was the first black man to serve in the force in Chad. The veteran leader's political career was made after he won the trust of the father of Gabon's independence, President Leon Mba.
He was appointed director in the president's office in 1962, when just 27 years old.
Bongo's moment of peril, according to a new BBC website, came in 1964 when renegade soldiers arrested him in Libreville and kidnapped the president himself.
The plotters attempted to install a civilian, Jean Hilaire Obame, as leader in order to legitimise their actions - but he lasted just two days in office.
French paratroopers rescued the abducted president and Bongo, restoring them to power. Surprisingly, it was the only coup attempt in Gabon's history.
Mba rewarded Bongo for his loyalty with the Vice-Presidency in 1967.
Less than nine months later, Mba suddenly died and Bongo became Africa's fourth-youngest president ever.
The Gabonese president changed his name to El Hadj Omar Bongo when he converted to Islam in 1973.
He later added his father's traditional African name to his title and went by the name Omar Bongo Ondimba.
With a neat moustache and piercing gaze often hidden behind dark glasses, he ruled over a one-party state for 26 years.
Critics long argued that Bongo's stay in power was not simply down to popularity.
Several of his political opponents were killed during the 1970s.
Then in 1990, the mysterious death of opposition leader Joseph Redjambe sparked riots that rocked the regime for days.
Bongo introduced multi-party elections in 1993 and Gabon held a presidential poll, which Bongo won, but the vote was marred by allegations of rigging.
The country soon found itself on the brink of civil war, as the opposition staged violent demonstrations.
Determined to prove that he was not an autocrat, Bongo entered into talks with the opposition and managed to restore calm.
When Bongo won the second presidential elections held in 1998, similar controversy raged over his victory, but he was able to appease his political opponents by offering them government posts.
Bongo's name was connected in the late 1990s with various murky financial scandals involving the French oil company, Elf Aquitaine, but he insisted the affair was a domestic French matter.
Analysts say credit is due to Bongo, given that Gabon is in a rough neighbourhood, yet it avoided during his rule any direct spill-over from conflicts in the nearby states of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
On the international stage, the Gabonese president cultivated an image as a peacemaker.
He played a pivotal role in attempts to solve crises in the Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Observers say he had a style of exchanging favours for votes that was characteristic of Africa's �big man� tradition.
He built a powerful dynasty, which analysts say benefited from the development of officially one of richest countries in Africa. But the country's wealth remains concentrated in a small proportion of its 1.4 million population.
Last month, a French judge launched a landmark investigation into whether Bongo and two other African leaders had plundered state funds to buy homes and cars in France.
His bank accounts in the country were subsequently frozen. Bongo denied the corruption allegations. Shortly afterwards, he announced he was suspending official duties - for the first time since taking power - to mourn his wife.
At the same time it emerged Bongo was being treated at the clinic in Barcelona, where the Gabonese authorities announced yesterday that he had died. Bongo is survived by more than 30 children - most of them from other women apart from his late wife.