Gabon

By: Roanne Edwards

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Gabon

Densely forested and rich in natural resources, Gabon has one of Africa’s strongest economies. Gabon suffered less from the slave trade than other areas along Africa’s Atlantic coast. However, French settlers, commercial enterprises, and colonial administrators irreversibly transformed its economy and society in the nineteenth century. The French created a two-tiered society, with a small elite loyal to French political and commercial interests and a poor, disenfranchised, majority. The leaders of independent Gabon have preserved and maintained this division. At the head of Gabon’s elite is President Omar Bongo, who has maintained a firm monopoly on power since 1967 and whose tenure in office is now one of the longest of any head of state in the world. Although Bongo’s government has made investments in transportation and social services, the country’s large oil wealth has primarily benefited Bongo and his clients, while the vast majority of the population remains impoverished.

Early History

For thousands of years, the ancestors of the Babongo people (pygmies) inhabited the tropical rainforest that today covers three-quarters of the area of present-day Gabon. The Babongo hunted chimpanzees, gorillas, and other forest animals and gathered vegetable foods for their livelihood. Most archaeologists believe that Bantu peoples first arrived in the region around 1300 B.C.E. and established small farming communities at the edge of the forest. The Bantu gradually expanded into the surrounding forest. By the seventh century C.E.., they acquired iron-making skills and came to dominate the region. Besides hunting and fishing, the Bantu survived by growing yams, bananas, and oil palms.

Extended families and clans provided the foundation of the social structure; ethnic identities were fluid and secondary in importance. Male leaders or “big men” gained prominence through hunting, war, trade, and rituals, and distinguished themselves by the number of their dependents: wives, children, in-laws, servants, slaves, and Pygmy hunters. Women bore and raised children, made pottery, cultivated crops, danced, and performed religious rituals. Bantu peoples used iron for tools, weapons, and jewelry; woven raffia circulated as a form of currency. Over time, clans grouped into scattered villages of a few dozen to several hundred people, located along trade routes such as rivers or footpaths. Most villages held common beliefs in ancestral worship, sorcery, and witchcraft, although these beliefs were often clan-specific in their details; many villages maintained secret societies. The peoples of early Gabon generally lacked state structures, though by the fourteenth century C.E.., the kingdom of Loango had extended its rule northward from present-day Congo-Brazzaville along the Gabonese coast.

Imperialism and French Colonialism

Slavery, international trade, and French colonialism brought profound changes to Gabon. In 1472 the Portuguese first visited the Gabon Estuary, which they named the Gabão, or “hooded cloak,” because of its shape. From the late sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, French, Dutch, and British traders visited the coast and exchanged manufactured goods and salt for slaves and ivory. Local inhabitants rose in opposition to European mercantilism, most spectacularly in 1600 when a group of Ndiwa attacked the Dutch at Corisco Island.

Coastal trade reached its apex in Gabon in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with the height of the transatlantic slave trade. The coastal Mpongwe and Orungu apparently acted as slave brokers. Through trade they acquired the wealth to support an aristocratic elite and to maintain a privileged status in Gabon through the colonial period and down to the present day. However, Gabon never attracted large numbers of slave traders because it had a small population, mostly concentrated in the inaccessible interior. At their height between 1815 and 1830, slave shipments from Gabon did not exceed a few thousand slaves per year.

Gabon

view larger image

The French established a colonial presence in Gabon beginning in 1839, partly in an effort to halt the slave trade in West Africa and partly to provide naval protection along the coast for French trading companies. French mercantile vessels suffered regular attacks from the Mpongwe, Orungu, and other coastal peoples who had profited from the slave trade and were angry at France’s attempts to abolish it. In 1839 French admiral Edouard Bouët-Willaumez arrived in the Gabon Estuary on his ship, the Malouine, and within the next several years had signed treaties with most of the oga, or chiefs, of the estuary and coast. In the treaty of 1846, for example, France claimed “all the land that seemed appropriate for the creation of military and agricultural establishments” and also set aside land for Roman Catholic missionary activities.

The arrival of the French coincided with an important shift in the ethnic balance of Gabon. The fact that Bouët-Willaumez signed separate treaties with the various oga demonstrates the absence of a political structure uniting the Myènè-speaking clans of the estuary at that time. Meanwhile, the Fang people, who subsequently became the largest ethnic group in Gabon, had begun their migration into the region from the north. To many Fang, the coming of the French fulfilled an ancient Fang legend in which white warriors arrived from the sea.

During the 1840s French, British, and German firms traded along the estuary, where they competed for the ivory and rubber brought from the interior. The French established cotton and sugarcane plantations, but faced a lack of manual labor. In an attempt to solve this problem, in 1849 Bouët-Willaumez settled fifty-two Loangan slaves, who had been taken from a Dutch slave ship, in a site on the Gabonese estuary. On arrival in this new village of Libreville (“Freetown”), the French granted the slaves their “freedom” and put them to work as wage laborers on the plantations.

The arrival of the Europeans and their values undermined the clan-based societies of the estuary. In the economic sphere, cash transactions replaced bartering, and status increasingly depended on material wealth. Christian missionaries aggressively promoted new ideologies that undermined established patterns of authority. Meanwhile, Europeans were beginning to penetrate the interior: In the 1840s French naval officers explored the hinterland of the estuary, in the 1850s the explorer Paul du Chaillu led expeditions into the northern and southern interior, and other explorers charted the interior over the following decades.

During the 1880s France’s interest in Gabon intensified. By this time, the Scramble for Africa among the European powers was fully underway. France saw the Gabon region as a source of raw materials, as well as an important gateway to the Congo basin. The trading and military posts France had established in Gabon allowed France to claim the area as part of its sphere of influence at the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. The underfunded colonial administration divided the territory into parcels and sold development concessions to forty private companies. The companies received trading monopolies granting them exclusive authority over their domains. Employing harsh forced-labor practices, they exploited the rubber and ivory resources aggressively. However, many such companies failed to produce long-term financial returns and went bankrupt.

The concessionary system devastated the Gabonese population. Many people had to abandon subsistence farming. French companies disrupted indigenous trade routes. The companies paid most Africans for their labor in goods or in a currency only used by the concessionary company and made little effort to develop the infrastructure of the regions under their control. This social and economic dislocation resulted in famines and epidemics that killed many thousands of Gabonese. Some Africans resisted forced-labor policies, but company militias dealt swiftly and harshly with any resistance.

In 1910, after the concessionary system had failed to yield profits or to provide an effective basis for administering its African colonies, the French created the federation of French Equatorial Africa, with a capital in Brazzaville, composed of French Congo (present-day Congo-Brazzaville), Oubangui-Chari (present-day Central African Republic), Chad, and Gabon. The French colonial government created a two-tiered social system in Gabon. A small governing elite—mainly composed of wealthy Mpongwe traders and those of dual European and African descent—enjoyed citizenship status. The vast majority of the population were subject to the indigénat, an administrative system that imposed upon them an inferior legal and political status accompanied by onerous tax and labor obligations.

With Gabon’s ivory and rubber stocks depleted, French colonial administrators neglected the country’s development, although during the 1920s timber became an increasingly important export. The French also introduced cocoa and coffee as cash crops. Indigenous Gabonese were forced either to cultivate cash crops such as these or to work for a wage, harvesting timber, in order to pay required taxes.

Many Gabonese opposed French colonialism. In the early 1900s local rebellions were common. The most serious of these was the Fang rebellion in 1903 led by Emane Tole. Indeed, it was not until World War I that French colonial authority encompassed the interior. However, the nascent Gabonese anticolonialist movement in the estuary region was divided between the Mpongwe elite and Fang newcomers who threatened the Mpongwe’s privileged status.

During and after World War II, relations between France and its African colonies shifted dramatically. In 1944 Charles de Gaulle organized the Brazzaville Conference as a means to unite the French African possessions against Germany and to initiate greater democracy in the African colonies. The indigénat system was abolished in 1946, when Africans received the right to vote. In 1956 the French National Assembly passed a loi cadre, or enabling law, that created representative assemblies within the French colonies and spurred the creation of political parties in Gabon and elsewhere.

The most prominent political figures during this period were the Mpongwe leader Paul Gondjout and the Fang leaders LéON MBA and Jean-Hilaire Aubame; the latter two had served in the French colonial administration. Mba and Gondjout formed an alliance, supported by the wealthy Mpongwe business community, the coastal Fang elite, and the French timber interests and managed to outmaneuver Aubame and his northern Fang supporters. Few Gabonese pushed for complete independence; in the 1958 referendum the population voted overwhelmingly for continued association with France. However, by 1960 the federation of French Equatorial Africa had effectively disintegrated, and the French sought to grant independence to Gabon.

Independent Gabon

On August 17 1960, Gabon became an independent parliamentary republic with Léon Mba serving as prime minister. Mba continued to rely heavily on French civil servants and technicians for administrative support and on the French military for security. In return, Mba assured the French a base for pursuing their interests, which included a steady supply of uranium from Gabonese mines for their nuclear program. Mba worked to consolidate his personal power by removing other leaders such as Gondjout and Aubame from positions of authority. With his encouragement, the National Assembly imposed strict limitations on freedom of speech and political assembly. In 1964 Mba attempted to create a one-party state by dissolving the National Assembly and calling new elections. In response, a group of young army officers overthrew the government in a coup d’état, arrested Mba, and set up a provisional government led by Jean-Hilaire Aubame. A swift military intervention by French paratroopers from Dakar and Brazzaville restored Mba to power. After 1964, opposition to Mba weakened in the face of a permanent French military presence in Libreville. Under Mba’s rule, Gabon began extensive exploitation of its mineral resources. French firms provided much of the investment capital for this development, and along with a small Gabonese elite they have reaped most of the benefit. During the early 1960s Gabon began to export both manganese and uranium. Prospecting for petroleum began.

When Mba died in 1967, his handpicked successor Albert-Bernard Bongo (now named Omar Bongo) assumed the presidency. Many Gabonese welcomed Bongo, a Téké from the southeast. His accession appeared to end Fang-Mpongwe political dominance, and opponents of Mba welcomed Bongo’s call for national renewal and his decision to grant amnesty to those who had participated in the 1964 coup. Indeed, Bongo carefully co-opted his political opponents by offering them positions in his government. He also consolidated his personal power: he established a single party in 1968 under his control, the Parti Démocratique Gabonais (PDG), and a single trade union within the party.

The rapid growth in oil exports gave Gabon one of the highest per capita incomes in sub-Saharan Africa. The petroleum-based economy, highly dependent on French corporations and technical workers, became a cornerstone of Bongo’s rule. Gabon’s prosperity allowed the development of a patronage system, whereby Bongo provided a clique of loyal and dependent bureaucrats lucrative government positions, some paying over $200,000 per year. Economic prosperity also enabled the construction of the expensive Transgabonais Railroad from 1974 to 1987. It linked the southeast, with its mineral wealth, to the port at Libreville and served as a potent symbol of national unity. The government also instituted a network of social services such as education and public health.

During the 1980s the Bongo regime faced several significant challenges. In 1981 an opposition group, the Mouvement de Redressement National (MORENA), formed and denounced government corruption, the single-party system, and the economic disparity between rich and poor. The government severely repressed MORENA; its leader, the priest Paul Mba-Abessole, fled to Paris.

Bongo’s government faced an even graver challenge when declining oil prices and a weakening U.S. dollar initiated a prolonged economic crisis in 1986. Gabon had difficulty servicing its heavy debt burden, and in the late 1980s international lenders forced Gabon to implement an austerity program. This program had its harshest effects on the middle classes and the impoverished masses. Unemployment rose, and state bureaucrats had their wages slashed. The patronage system that had propped up Bongo’s rule collapsed. When the international press exposed the Bongo regime’s corrupt and oligarchic nature, widespread popular discontent erupted in strikes and street protests. Meanwhile, Gabon’s elite continued to live opulently: one source estimates that 2 percent of the population controlled 80 percent of the country’s gross national product.

After the suspicious death of a leading opposition figure, serious riots in Libreville and Port-Gentil led the government to declare a state of emergency and to call upon French troops to intervene. In 1990 Bongo held a national “Conference on Democracy” of government and opposition political figures in an attempt to stem the unrest. Although the publicity leading up to the conference explicitly rejected any discussion of a multiparty system, the conference recommended open elections for a reconstituted National Assembly in September 1990. Bongo’s PDG won these elections with a two-seat majority. However, he formed a government of national unity, with one-third of ministerial appointments held by opposition members.

Although significant, Bongo’s moves towards more democratic rule proved short-lived. As the 1993 presidential elections approached, opposition candidates found themselves subject to police harassment, and opposition media outlets were silenced. The election results, in which Bongo won 51 percent of the vote, were widely regarded as fraudulent, and rioting erupted in Libreville. In response, in 1994 the PDG and the opposition parties signed an accord that installed a transitional coalition government, revised the electoral code, and scheduled legislative elections for 1996. Divisions in the opposition enabled the PDG to secure a clear victory in these elections. In the December 1998 elections, the president claimed two-thirds of the vote. Bongo again won a large majority of the vote—nearly 80 percent—in the elections of 2005, seizing yet another seven-year term. As Bongo ages and is eventually replaced, the question is whether his authoritarian style will outlast him. Much will surely depend on the influence of Western powers such as France and the United States, who have favored Bongo for creating an apparently stable climate for investment despite the lack of economic and political equality under his regime.

Gabon’s abundant natural resources, combined with its small population, have created a strong economy by African standards. Inflation has dropped in recent years due to the government’s tight monetary and fiscal policies, while real GDP has continued to grow. Yet Gabon remains heavily dependent on oil exports and the vagaries of the international oil market. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) deemed Gabon’s recent performance “broadly satisfactory,” but implemented a structural adjustment program in 1995 that required Gabon to diversify and privatize its economy and improve its social services, particularly to the urban poor and the rural population. As Gabon’s GDP continues to rise, Gabon has recently taken to calling itself the “Kuwait of Africa.” This is an apt comparison, since Gabon, like Kuwait and other Middle Eastern oil economies, is unhealthily dependent on oil and is deeply divided between a small, wealthy elite and a poor majority. About half of the Gabonese population lives in the cities of Libreville and Port-Gentil. Agriculture remains poorly developed. As a result, Gabon relies heavily on food imports; prices of staples such as plantains are three times higher in Libreville than in the neighboring country of Cameroon. In 2000 and 2001, Gabon signed agreements to reschedule its official debt. The nation’s economic progress depends on a strong world economy and Gabonese fiscal adjustments that comply with IMF policies.

The environmental costs of Gabon’s state-driven capitalist development have been considerable. Although Gabon still contains some of Africa’s densest forests, with up to 80,000 species of plants, they are threatened by powerful and prosperous timber industries. Indeed, one of Gabon’s leading exports has been wood and wood products; Gabon’s forests have been logged faster than they can recover. Many researchers believe that deforestation sparked the 1995 Gabonese Ebola outbreak that spread to Congo-Brazzaville. By stressing the forest ecosystem and increasing human exposure to forest animals, deforestation could lead not only to more Ebola outbreaks but also to other new infectious diseases.

See also Bantu subentry on Dispersion and Settlement; Christianity subentry on Missionaries in Africa; Colonial rule; Diseases, Infectious, in Africa; Ivory trade; Loango; Pygmy; Slavery in Africa; and Structural Adjustment in Africa.

processed xml | source xml