Francois Bozize
Francois Bozize took the Central African Republic by force and lost it the same way ten years later. He was an army officer who had been a general under Bokassa, the man who crowned himself emperor in 1977 in a ceremony costing a year of the country's revenue. Bozize was army chief of staff in the 1990s, was dismissed, fled to Chad, and returned in 2003 to take the capital while the sitting president was out of the country. He won elections in 2005 and 2011 that observers considered flawed but not fabricated. The state he governed barely reached beyond Bangui: a country the size of France with a few hundred kilometres of paved road, no functioning tax system outside the capital, and armed groups running the diamond and gold areas in the north and east. The wealth that did exist funded whoever held it. Diamonds and gold from the east moved out through Cameroon and Sudan without passing through a customs post, and the groups that controlled the mines could pay fighters better than the army could pay soldiers. Bozize's own seizure of power had been financed the same way. In 2012 a coalition of northern, largely Muslim groups calling itself Seleka accused him of breaking earlier peace agreements and advanced on the capital. Regional troops and a French garrison declined to stop them, and he fled in March 2013. What followed was worse than what it replaced. Seleka's rule collapsed into looting and killing, Christian self-defence militias called anti-balaka formed in response and attacked Muslim civilians, and a quarter of the population was displaced. The Muslim community of Bangui was almost entirely driven out. He returned in 2019, was barred from the 2020 election, and backed the rebel coalition that tried to take the capital again.
- Lived: 1946 CE – ?
- Nationality: Central African
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
