Jean-Bédel Bokassa
Jean-Bédel Bokassa ruled the Central African Republic from January 1966, when as army chief he overthrew his cousin David Dacko on New Year's Eve, to September 1979, when French paratroopers removed him while he was in Libya and put Dacko back. In thirteen years the colonel who had fought for France at Indochina and worn its medals made himself president for life in 1972, marshal in 1974. On 4 December 1977 he became emperor, Bokassa I, in a coronation in the Bangui stadium modelled on Napoleon's, with a crown of two thousand diamonds, an eagle throne of gilded bronze, a coach drawn by Normandy horses that died of the heat, and a bill of twenty million dollars, a third of the country's revenue, which France largely paid. Giscard, who hunted elephants on his estates and took his diamonds, called him a friend and a relative until the schoolchildren. In January and April 1979 the pupils of Bangui protested against the compulsory uniforms sold by the imperial family's factory and the imperial guard killed some hundred of them, with the emperor present at the prison and, the Amnesty report said, taking part. After that Paris organised Operation Barracuda and the empire ended in its third year. He was born in Bobangui in 1921 into the Mbaka people, the son of a village chief beaten to death by the French company's agents in 1927, whose mother killed herself a week later, was raised by missionaries. He joined the French army in 1939, fought in the Free French and in Indochina, where he was decorated and married a Vietnamese wife. He came home in 1962 as a captain to build the new state's army. The rule was the whims of a man who beat ministers in the cabinet room and had thieves' ears cut off by decree in 1972. He kept seventeen wives and some fifty children, and converted to Islam for Gaddafi's money in 1976 and back. He was accused at his trial of eating his enemies, which the court did not prove. He was sentenced to death in absentia in 1980. He lived in exile at a château near Paris that the French state tired of paying for. He flew home unannounced in October 1986 to be arrested at the airport. He was tried for murder, cannibalism and embezzlement, convicted of the murders and sentenced to death in 1987, commuted to life and then to twenty years. He was freed in an amnesty in 1993, and declared himself the thirteenth apostle. He died in Bangui in November 1996. The republic rehabilitated him in 2010 as a son of the nation.
- Lived: 1921 CE – 1996 CE
- Nationality: Central African
- Roles: president, emperor, dictator
