How France Shaped New Africa

By HOWARD W. FRENCH (Originally published in The New York Times, February 28, 1995)

When Jacques Foccart, one of France's most secretive statesmen, broke his legendary silence with a newly published memoir, one of his main goals, it seems, was to shed the image that he had long headed a potent network of informants, henchmen and spies in former French territories in Africa.

Instead, for all his denials, what emerges from the book about the man who was among Charles de Gaulle's top aides is a picture of a master puppeteer. The account indicates that his seemingly unchecked powers in shaping the former French empire in Africa in the postcolonial era surpass even those imagined by ardent critics of French behavior in the third world.

Mr. Foccart's book also depicts France's preoccupation with American influence, which it considered scarcely more desirable than influence from Moscow.

In the book, Mr. Foccart, 81, says that African leaders who were seen as insufficiently friendly to French interests were simply frozen out, as in the case of Guinea's President, Sekou Toure, who sought and gained independence in 1958, before Paris was ready to relinquish control. Others were eliminated, as with Felix Moumie, a Cameroonian opposition figure who was assassinated in Geneva in 1960. It is the first time a French official has acknowledged a French role in the killing.

With an air of nonchalance, Mr. Foccart tells the interviewer who wrote the book how in 1968 he literally auditioned Omar Bongo, a young politician in the Central African nation of Gabon, before Mr. Bongo could become the country's President. Other African leaders who were made and often broken by France, he said, had telephone hotlines to the bedrooms of the French ambassadors in their countries, or signed blank authorizations of French intervention in case of political trouble.

This system failed in at least two cases, Mr. Foccart said, because he was out hunting or fishing in the French countryside when an African coup began and could not be reached in time to mobilize a response.

Mr. Foccart was de Gaulle's counselor for African affairs for most of the period covered in the book, and at one time was secretary general of the presidency, a high-level staff position.

For most of the period from the dawn of African independence in the late 1950's to the end of the cold war, the United States gave assurances that it was content to see France govern over the affairs of its former colonies as part of a sort of division of labor between Western allies that was aimed at minimizing Soviet advances in the third world.

"The U.S. policy was very explicit, giving major responsibility for Africa in global terms to the major metropolitan powers," said Herman Cohen, a former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs under the Bush Administration, referring to the colonial states. "The problem with the French," he said in an interview, "is that they never believed it, because they extended the Gaullist vision of the U.S. as an imperialist power in Europe into Africa."

Mr. Cohen said that French suspicions became so strong that "they were even running intelligence operations against us out of their Embassy in Zaire."

For many Africans reading Mr. Foccart's book, the fascination of seeing confirmation of many long-rumored behind-the-scenes coups and other twists of history has been tempered by a sadness over the ease with which their leaders were manipulated, more often to satisfy French interests than to address the needs of their own countries.

Nowhere was this more true than in the Central African Republic, where, according to Mr. Foccart's account, the French-installed Central African dictator Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who would later proclaim himself "Emperor," insisted on calling de Gaulle "Papa." The French President considered the pliant Mr. Bokassa, who would later be pushed from power and accused of cannibalism, to be a "noble idiot," Mr. Foccart said.

Francis Kpatinde wrote in a column about the book in the French-based weekly Jeune Afrique, "If it didn't involve the fate of a continent, the destiny of millions of Africans, one could have laughed at the dozens of anecdotes."

"The worst is that change is not in the cards for tomorrow," he added. "Between the discreet successors of Foccart and the new generation of African leaders, relations have only lost their warmth and theatricality."

Comments

[Ndim Bernard Ngouche]

African Countries would have continued from the Bandung Conference of 1954 and made claims for complete Independence from Imperialist who had subjugated them from slaver, to colonialism and neo-colonialism. This is an insult for Africans to continue to allow their countries pillaged by whites and then scorn or insults poured upon them. The time to stand up and say enough is enough is now. The time for Africans to move back to the drawing boards so as to re-define their future is now. The time to take their destinies into their hands is equally now. This is our time to refuse purchasing weapons of death when we can construct hospital, schools and why not train our engineers, doctors, scientist so as to successfully launch a new take off for Africa. The time for fear and hatred amongst Africans should be over. We should join our efforts as one man and one voice so as to chase misery and poverty out of Africa. Yes we can if we trust and believe in ourselves. We should not continue to allow whites to keep on deceiving us with polemics that we can not do it.

[Ndim Bernard Ngouche]

France as it calls itself is a poor country whose only product exported is its deceit and barbaric foriegn legion which helped to maim and kill Haitians. France's denial of freedom for it's colonies in Africa and Asia saw them humiliated in Viatnam call it the battle of bien dien fu. However Africans thought freedom was ever given rather than seized. It is unfortunate that African Countrries Colonized by France had cowards and sheep as leaders; Foccart would have had his hands bleeding with fresh French blood.This would have been killed by African patroits defending their fatherland from thieves and rapist. It is time these blood thirsty Gerndarmes who are here to cause coup d'etats should be called home. It is equally time for these rapiest and sex maniacs should be shown the door out of Africa. African Countries should be allowed to handle their own crisis without the intervention of French forces like the case in Tchad,Gabon, Central African Republic, Repubique Du Congo and Ivory Coast. It is a shame that France intervines in the domestic affairs of its Colonies such as public revendications and pupular uprisings. France cannot pretend that its citizens don't have a right to demonstrate against bad governance and poor threatment. It will be morally wrong for the rest of the world through the toothless bull dog; the United Nations Organisation. However is it is not believed that Africans should be killed so that its vast land become farms and mines for the Western Industries? This circulated around the 1980's in what became famously known as the white Paper. Today we shall not cover our eyes or give them to sleep when we contionue to have inequality and classism in this earth my brother. France should be squeeced until it squids for all their crimes committed against Africans. France should pay ransoms to those whose parents were killed by France like Doctor Roland Moumie, Um Nyobe etc. They can take a lead from Belgians who have accepted their role in the Killing of Patrice Lumumba. It was granted as an open appology. Foccart should write an open appology for his crimes against humanity and should be arrested for crimes against humanity.