Eyadema and the Togolese Dynasty
Gnassingbé Eyadéma took power in Togo in January 1967 and held it for thirty-eight years, the longest rule in African history at his death. He had been a sergeant in the French army in Indochina and Algeria and was among the demobilised soldiers Togo's first president Sylvanus Olympio refused to take into the national army — on the reasonable grounds that a country of a million and a half people did not need one, and on the less avowable grounds that they were northerners and he was from the south. They shot Olympio outside the American embassy in January 1963, where he had been trying to climb the fence. Eyadéma later said publicly that he had fired the shots. That is the first assassination of a head of state in postcolonial Africa. He took power himself four years later in a bloodless coup, suspended the constitution, and created a single party in 1969. The system that followed was personal. He survived a plane crash in 1974 and made the anniversary a national holiday with a comic book of the escape; a party youth wing performed dances in his honour; his portrait was on watches; and phosphate revenue and French support paid for it. Multiparty elections were permitted from 1993 under pressure and were won by fraud and intimidation. He died in February 2005, and the army installed his son Faure Gnassingbé within hours in breach of the constitution. The family has now governed for fifty-eight years. A constitutional change in 2024 removed direct presidential elections altogether.
- Year: 1967 CE
- Category: Political
