Macias Nguema's Rule in Equatorial Guinea
Francisco Macías Nguema won Equatorial Guinea's independence election in September 1968 and killed or drove out something like a third of the population in eleven years. The territory had been Spanish since the eighteenth century — a mainland enclave and the island of Bioko, with cocoa plantations worked largely by imported Nigerian labour and one of the higher incomes per head in Africa at independence. Macías had been a minor colonial official who had failed the civil service examination three times and who campaigned on anti-Spanish resentment. Within five months of taking office he had provoked a crisis with Madrid, put down an attempted coup, and begun killing. What followed had no ideology to speak of. He abolished the constitution, banned political parties, closed the churches and later all private worship, closed the schools, banned the word intellectual, and had the national library burned. Ministers, including his own, were executed; something like two-thirds of the first national assembly were killed. Anyone who wore glasses was suspect. He required his title to include Unique Miracle, moved the treasury to his village hut, and had the country's electricity generator break down without replacing it, so that the capital had no power. Around a third of the population fled, mostly to Cameroon and Gabon, and tens of thousands died. He was overthrown in August 1979 by his nephew Teodoro Obiang, the commander of the notorious Black Beach prison, tried and shot. Obiang has ruled since, the longest-serving head of state in the world. Oil was found offshore in the 1990s, and the country now has one of the highest incomes per head in Africa and one of the worst records on almost every other measure.
- Year: 1968 CE
- Category: Political
