Equatorial Guinea

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Equatorial Guinea is an anomaly in Africa. Due to early migration patterns, a multiethnic society, dominated by the Fang, resides on the mainland, while a single ethnic group, the Bubi, live on Bioko island. Early European imperialism and the transatlantic slave trade exaggerated the differences between the island and mainland. The only Spanish colony in sub-Saharan Africa, Equatorial Guinea was run by a dictatorial colonial regime, primarily devoted to exploiting the small territory’s rich natural resources. The leadership since independence has proven equally undemocratic: for more than three decades two men from the same family have ruled Equatorial Guinea, making use of clan patronage and widespread repression to maintain their rule and their control over the country’s wealth. Increasing oil exports in recent years have brought extraordinarily high rates of economic growth (22.1 percent between 1990 and 2000, and 12.4 percent as of 2008), but most of the country’s 616,459 citizens have seen few, if any, of the profits.

Early History and European Exploration

Equatorial Guinea

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For hundreds of years vast differences existed between the two pieces of present-day Equatorial Guinea. The first inhabitants of the Mbini region (also known as Río Muni) were the Bayele pygmies, though little is known of these people’s culture, as it was lost through mixing with other groups. In the second millennium B.C.E. the Ndowe people migrated to the coast of present-day Equatorial Guinea from present-day Cameroon, splitting off into several related ethnic groups. The Ndowe were followed by the Fang, who are today the country’s largest ethnic group, composing 80 percent of the population. Included among the Fang are several cultural subgroup “tribes,” or ayong, and within these are several more important familial clans, or ndebot. Common culture and intermarriage united the groups, as Fang custom prohibited marriage within the clan of one’s mother. The numerous clans lived in egalitarian villages with no central authority, practicing the shifting cultivation of yucca, peanuts, yams, and malanga on the rich tropical plateau. Leadership depended upon wealth—measured with a currency of spearheads—and charisma. Although conflict between and among the Ndowe and Fang was common, it was limited in scope.

The island of Bioko has a longer history of Bantu-speaking inhabitation, though interpretations of the evidence differ. Archaeologists and linguists believe that the Bioko language cluster was one of the first groups to break from Western Bantu, arriving in present-day Gabon probably around 1500–1000 B.C.E., while oral historians date their arrival much later. From there the Bubi migrated to Bioko Island around the seventh century C.E.., though unlike many Bantu-speaking groups, they did not produce iron. Several successive societies rose and fell over time, concentrated primarily on the northern coastline. They grew palms on the rich soils of the volcanic islands, fished, and engaged in pottery and toolmaking. Although little is known of the early political and social organization of the Bubi of Bioko, it appears that political authority was diffuse, with the chief’s power dependent upon the approval of village elders.

The island’s and mainland’s early relations with Europeans exaggerated their differences. In 1472 the Portuguese navigator Fernando Pó explored both regions, and named the island after himself. Portugal formally claimed the lands in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas with Spain. But attempts to establish sugar plantations on the island were abandoned due to the difficulty of cultivation and access, as natural ports were few. Furthermore, although some European vessels took individual captives, a regular slave trade never developed on Bioko.

By contrast, the Mbini mainland and the nearby islands of Annobón (or Pagalu) and Corsico became important sites for commercial agricultural production, as well as busy markets for slaves and other commodities. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the islands supplied slave ships bound for PORTUGUESE EAST AFRICA with fresh fruits and cattle. Soon these islands’ inhabitants, many of whom had migrated from the mainland and others from Portuguese East Africa (present-day Angola) developed distinctive Creole cultures and languages. On Bioko, meanwhile, Creole culture would not develop until the nineteenth century, when West Africans and slaves who had returned from the Americas were brought to the island by the British. They settled among the Bubi, creating a people that became known as the Ferninandos.

European Imperialism and Spanish Colonialism

European imperialism and Spanish colonialism exaggerated the economic and cultural differences between Mbini and Bioko, even while uniting the two territories politically. Spain, seeking a dependable base for its slaving operations, purchased Annobón from Portugal in 1777. A year later the Treaty of Pardo provided for Portugal to cede part of the mainland as well as Bioko and other islands, in exchange for lands in Brazil. The Spanish presence remained negligible. Trading stations controlled by the British, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish on the islands continued to supply both slaves and provisions to passing merchant ships into the mid-1800s, then switched to provisioning the vessels sent to enforce the British ban on slave trading. British enterprises established and operated palm plantations on Bioko, though when they were unable to compete with other palm-exporting regions, they switched the focus of production to cocoa.

The influx of Europeans brought a host of diseases to the islands and mainland, decimating the indigenous populations. European trade also led to conflicts over access and to the emergence of centralized states. On the mainland, for example, Europeans pushed the Ndowe inland, bringing them into conflict with the Fang, who sought European goods. On Bioko, where the Bubi had long lived without central authorities, control over European trade enabled the Bubi chief Moka to establish a kingdom.

After decades of concentrating its efforts on Cuba and Morocco at the expense of Equatorial Guinea, Spain finally laid claim to all of present-day Equatorial Guinea in 1900, at the Treaty of Paris. Four years later, a decree established the colony as a “colony of exploitation,” not one of settlement, and it delineated rules concerning land concessions. The colonial administration’s top priority was the export of timber and agricultural products, namely cocoa, coffee, and palm oil. Finding labor to produce these crops, however, proved difficult. The administration had relatively few troops or other tools of coercion at its disposal, and local people actively resisted colonial occupation and labor policies. On Bioko, it took Spanish forces until 1910 to defeat King Moko and subsequent Bubi leaders. Colonization proved even more difficult in the forested Mbini interior, where one Fang leader actually captured the governor-general. Not until an all-out pacification campaign in 1926–1927 did the colonial state destroy organized resistance, and put in its place a system of indirect rule, in which administrative dictates were carried out by pliable chiefs. But even then the local labor supplies were insufficient. Instead, the colony turned to importing laborers, including Liberians, Angolans, Mozambicans, and Asians, to work on the cocoa and coffee plantations.

Apart from the plantations, Spain did little to develop the colony’s economy or infrastructure. On the mainland, the major town, Bata, consisted of little more than a few shacks. The inhospitable forest made the construction of roads or railways difficult, hindering the forestry industry. Despite these conditions and a climate conducive to tropical disease, Equatorial Guinea attracted many fortune-seeking European settlers, making it a colony with one of the highest ratios of Europeans to Africans in Africa. Like neighboring Portuguese colonies, Equatorial Guinea distinguished assimilated (or emancipado) and “nonassimilated” Africans, depending upon land ownership and education. But since the colony had few schools, only a small fraction of the African population was able to acquire this status. Even those who did were excluded from political representation.

Although Equatorial Guinea’s educated elite were few in number, they were at the forefront of the nationalist movement, which began in the late 1950s under the leadership of Acacio Mane, a Fang activist calling for African teachers’ salaries to equal those of Europeans. Mane was denounced by a priest and later executed by Spanish authorities; his martyrdom politicized Equatorial Guineans, and led to the establishment of proindependent parties, namely the National Movement for the Liberation of Equatorial Guinea and the Popular Idea of Equatorial Guinea. Violent repression on the part of colonial officials forced the parties into exile.

Spain, however, was bound by United Nations agreements to prepare Equatorial Guinea for self-rule. It held a referendum on self-determination in the colony in 1963, and municipal and legislative elections the following year. By the time a preindependence constitutional conference was held in 1968 the nationalist movement had fragmented into parties representing Mbini, Bioko, or specific ethnic groups. The constitution created a very strong executive government, modeled after Franco’s regime in Spain (and made Bioko and Mbini the two provinces of Equatorial Guinea, though the power soon shifted to Mbini, and especially the Fang and its Esangui clan). In September 1968, Francisco MACíAS NGUEMA, the Minister of Public Works and a Fang backed by Spanish and French commercial interests, was elected president.

Familial Politics and Underdevelopment in Independent Equatorial Guinea

Equatorial Guinea gained its independence on October 12 1968. Almost immediately the new government faced the anger of 70,000 Nigerian migrant workers prohibited from sending their pay to Nigeria, due to the ongoing Biafran war. To divert attention, president Macías Nguema began denouncing the Spanish who had remained in Equatorial Guinea, many of whom quickly left. In March 1969 an alleged coup attempt—eyewitnesses claimed it was staged—was followed by a swift government crackdown on the political opposition.

For the next decade Macías Nguema, the self-proclaimed “Unique Miracle,” ruled Equatorial Guinea with an iron fist. He used the military youth organization, the Youth in Step with Macías, as well as the presidential bodyguard, which included Cubans and North Koreans, to carry out repression and political killings. In terms of the numbers of deaths relative to the total population, Macías Nguema’s regime was even more murderous than Idi Amin’s in Uganda. Fearing threats to his rule, Macías had thousands of political opponents killed and over 130,000—or one-fourth of the population—fled the country. Because he had no navy of his own, the president banned and destroyed all seagoing vessels (except the presidential “yacht”) in order to prevent smuggling, an action that destroyed the fishing industry. During this period the economy collapsed; as foreign workers and the educated elite fled the country, the per capita gross national product (GNP) fell by more than 60 percent within the decade.

Macías went unchallenged until his own security forces turned on the military, killing five members of the National Guard in August 1979. Other Guard officers, military graduates, and relatives of the president gained control of Bioko and Bata. After overcoming intense resistance from presidential loyalists in the interior, those leading the revolt captured, tried, convicted, and executed Macías Nguema for his role in torture, executions, and embezzlement. He was replaced by the nephew who had turned against him, army commander Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. On taking power, Teodoro Obiang announced that “for eleven years, politicians have made a mess of everything” and henceforth “the military will oversee everything … even if there are civilians in the government.” The new leadership paid salary arrears to all troops and established a Supreme Military Council to run the country. Many members of the previous regime remained in the government.

In the early 1980s the president brought more civilians into the government, though real power remained in the hands of the Fang-dominated military and president. Obiang’s presidential guard, composed of Moroccans, Spaniards, and South Africans, thwarted numerous coup attempts, including an army mutiny in 1985. As opposition groups in exile alerted the international community to events in Equatorial Guinea, Obiang made limited political concessions. In 1987 he created the Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea, but made membership mandatory. The next year he created a national assembly, but declared himself the head of both the party and the assembly. Legislative elections in July 1988 were lackluster and limited to a few urban centers.

The appearance of political change lured international investment. Having adopted the west and Central Africa CFA franc in 1985, Equatorial Guinea began to develop closer economic ties with France, and soon adopted French as the second official language, after Spanish. French businesses entered the profitable timber, fuel, and fishing sectors. Timber grown on Mbini, especially the softwood okoumé used for making plywood, became the country’s leading export, followed by cocoa. The fishing industry, especially in tuna and shellfish, made a slow recovery. Equatorial Guinea has also earned foreign exchange by importing waste, including New York City garbage and toxics from the South Africa–based Anglo-American Company. On Annobón, where the waste is dumped, the prevalence of certain skin diseases is now among the highest in the world.

In the late 1990s foreign investors were showing the greatest interest in Equatorial Guinea’s petroleum reserves. Oil was first discovered offshore in the early 1980s, and has now replaced timber as the primary export, accounting for two-thirds of the GNP. But many of the country’s other resources—among them gold, iron, thorium, and manganese—remain untapped, and most of its citizens are impoverished. Since the country has gained independence, much of the agricultural sector has been controlled by chiefs, elected by the people, who were responsible for maintaining cocoa and coffee plantations and timber harvests, though most of the revenues have gone to government officials and their companies. The leadership’s handling of the economy has resulted in a deteriorating national infrastructure and a deficiency in public services. Equatorial Guinea today has only approximately two hundred miles of paved road. Transpor-tation between the islands and mainland is by air only, because the country possesses only one boat, the presidential yacht.

Most of the wealth generated by the oil boom has gone directly into the hands of Obiang, his family members, and friends within the Esangui clan, leading many observers to question the effectiveness of the country’s political reforms. In 1993 Obiang legalized political parties, most of which were controlled by close associates and family members. Violence preceded the legislative, municipal, and presidential elections held in the mid-1990s. In 2002 Obiang was reelected with 97 percent of the vote. The disparity in wealth between rich and poor has led to growing discontentment, manifested in sometimes-violent protests and attacks on Bioko and Annobón islands. Torture and arrests of opponents have remained common and few exiles have accepted the government’s offer of amnesty. Many believe that the growth of the oil industry, under the control of American and French companies, will hinder development and political change because the profits within Equatorial Guinea will continue to go mostly to Obiang and the Esangui clan who have controlled Equatorial Guinea for the past few decades.

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