Titans of History

NGUEMA

1924–79

The cottage industry Dachau of Africa.

Robert af Klinteberg on the state of Equatorial Guinea under Nguema

Francisco Macías Nguema, who officially called himself the Unique Miracle, was the corrupt, demented, homicidal, skull-collecting first president of Equatorial Guinea in west Africa. In a continent that has endured governance by a legion of bloodthirsty madmen, Macías Nguema stands out as one of the worst.

For the first forty-four years of Macías Nguema’s life, Equatorial Guinea was a Spanish colony. Three times in succession Nguema failed the civil-service entrance exams, only passing on the fourth occasion because the bar was purposely lowered by the Spanish to enable him to do so. Thereafter he occupied increasingly influential positions, eventually gaining a seat in the national assembly.

In 1968 Spain granted the country independence, and in the subsequent presidential elections Macías stood on a left-leaning populist platform. He won. Initially, Nguema appeared to promote a free and liberal society, but the honeymoon period lasted a mere 145 days. Nguema had developed an intense hatred of the Spanish (perhaps as a reaction to his earlier dependence on them) and, indeed, foreigners in general. Spanish residents became the target of state-sanctioned terror, and by March 1969 over 7000 of them had abandoned the country—many of them skilled workers. In their wake, the economy collapsed.

Initially, some within the government, such as the foreign minister Ndongo Miyone, attempted to rein in the excesses. But they paid a high price for doing so. In the case of Miyone, he was summoned to Nguema’s presidential palace and beaten, then hauled off to prison and murdered. Similar treatment was meted out to others who dared to oppose Nguema: ten of the twelve ministers who formed the country’s first post-independence government were killed. In their place, Nguema appointed relatives or members of his clan, the Esangui. Thus one nephew was made commander of the national guard, while another was simultaneously minister of finance, minister of trade, minister of information and minister for security. The dreaded security _services were manned entirely with his placemen and he ordered them to bludgeon his victims to death in a stadium as a band played “Those were the days, my friend.”

As Nguema tightened his grip on power (he made himself president for life in 1972), the killing became ever more capricious. On two occasions he had all former lovers of his then mistresses put to death. More broadly, two thirds of the members of the national assembly and all the country’s senior civil servants were arrested and executed. The more fortunate fled into exile. In 1976, 114 senior civil servants—all of whom had been appointed by Nguema to replace those he had previously got rid of—petitioned him for a relaxation of the persecution. Every single one of them was subsequently arrested, tortured and murdered.

The same year also saw the closure of Equatorial Guinea’s central bank and the execution of its director, as all meaningful economic activity—other than that directed toward the benefit of Nguema—was brought to a standstill. From then on, all foreign currency that entered the country was delivered directly to the president and hoarded. When Nguema ran short of funds, his forces oversaw the kidnapping and ransoming of foreign nationals.

In his determination to control all aspects of life, Nguema ordered that all libraries and all forms of media be shut down. The only form of worship permitted was of Nguema himself, with people required to acknowledge that “There is no God other than Macías” and “God created Equatorial Guinea thanks to Papa Macías.”

Over time it became clear that Nguema was clinically insane, talking to himself and alternating between mania and depression. Drugged up on stimulants, he ordered the building of a vast new presidential palace in Bata, but then decided to retreat instead to his home town in the Mongomo region of the country. There, he kept the entire national treasury in bags, alongside a range of human skulls, fueling terrifying rumors of his supposed magical powers.

Nguema finally fell in August 1979 in a military coup led by his nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo—who continues to rule to this day—although not before setting fire to much of the country’s wealth. He tried to flee, but was locked in a cage suspended in a cinema, where he was tried for 80,000 murders and sentenced to death. The new regime had to get Moroccan mercenaries to carry out the execution—fear of his magical powers prevented local troops from doing it themselves.

During his decade-long reign of terror, Nguema had brought Equatorial Guinea to its knees. Out of its population of over 300,000, some 100,000 had been killed and 125,000 had fled into exile as Nguema transformed his country into a hell on earth. After a reign of almost thirty years, his nephew’s tyranny remains one of the most corrupt and repressive in Africa. Torture is endemic, and local radio hails him as a god while he grooms his son to succeed him.