Gnassingbé Eyadéma
|
| “ | We shall win only by working together. | „ |
| ~ Gnassingbé Eyadéma |
Gnassingbé Eyadéma (born Étienne Eyadéma, 26 December 1935 – 5 February 2005) was the President of Togo from 1967 until his death in 2005. He participated in two successful military coups, in January 1963 and January 1967, and became President on 14 April 1967.
As President, he created a political party, the Rally of the Togolese People (RPT), and headed a single-party regime until the early 1990s, when reforms leading to multiparty elections began. Although his rule was seriously challenged by the events of the early 1990s, he ultimately consolidated power again and won multiparty presidential elections in 1993, 1998 and 2003; the opposition boycotted the 1993 election and denounced the 1998 and 2003 election results as fraudulent. At the time of his death, Eyadéma was the longest-serving ruler in Africa.
According to a 2018 study, "Gnassingbé Eyadema's rule rested on repression, patronage, and a bizarre personality cult." Estimates say that 15,000 people died under Gnassingbé's regime.
Biography edit
Étienne Eyadéma Gnassingbé was born on 26 December 1935 in the northern quartiers of Pya, a village in the prefecture of Kozah in the Kara Region, to a peasant family of the Kabye ethnic group. According to Comi M. Toulabor, his official date of birth is "based on a fertile imagination" and it would be more accurate to say that he was born around 1930. His mother was later known as Maman N'Danida, or Maman N'Danidaha.
Eyadéma joined the French army in 1953, served in Indochina, Dahomey, Niger, and Algeria (1953–61), and had attained the rank of sergeant when he returned to Togo in 1962. When President Sylvanus Olympio refused to take 626 Togolese veterans of French wars into Togo’s tiny army, a group of them, including Eyadéma, assassinated him in an otherwise almost bloodless military coup (January 1963) and installed a civilian, Nicolas Grunitzky, as president.
After an abortive coup by members of the Ewe people of southern Togo in November 1966, the army took over directly in January 1967 and in April made its chief of staff, Eyadéma, president and minister of national defense. He invited past political exiles to return, and in 1969 he set up a new unity party (the Togolese People’s Rally) and became its president. In the mid-1970s Eyadéma sought to strengthen the country’s nationalism by ordering the citizens of Togo to assume African first names, himself adopting the name Gnassingbé. He was elected to the presidency of Togo in one-party elections held in 1979 and 1985.
Eyadéma’s long rule brought a measure of stability to Togo, and his nationalization of the country’s phosphate industry in 1974 produced increased state revenues for development. The economic gains achieved in the 1970s were largely negated in the ’80s, however, by governmental mismanagement and corruption.
Much like many other African dictators of his era, Eyadéma had an extensive personality cult. This included an entourage of 1,000 dancing women who sang and danced in praise of him; portraits which adorned most stores; a bronze statue in the capital city, Lomé; wristwatches with his portrait, which disappeared and re-appeared every fifteen seconds; and a comic book that depicted him as a superhero with powers of invulnerability and super strength. In addition, the date of a failed attempt on President Eyadéma's life was annually commemorated as "the Feast of Victory Over Forces of Evil." His personality cult has drawn comparisons to that of the Kim dynasty of North Korea.
In the early 1990s, faced with growing unrest with his rule, Eyadéma legalized political parties, freed political prisoners, and agreed to a democratic constitution. He surrendered his power to a transitional government in 1991 while awaiting multiparty elections. Though he was easily reelected in 1993, there were allegations of electoral fraud, a charge that was repeated at subsequent elections. There were also many killings of Eyadéma's opponents and this included ethnic groups who were against Eyadéma as they were persecuted and killed as well.
He briefly sheltered Mobutu Sese Seko in Togo after he was overthrown during the First Congo War, but later insisted that he leave the country, causing Mobutu to go to Morocco.
In 1998 Eyadéma started what should have been, under the terms of the constitution, his final term as president. But in 2002 the constitution was amended to abolish term limits, and Eyadéma was reelected in 2003, again amid allegations of electoral fraud.
Eyadéma constructed a large palace near his family home in Pya a few kilometers north of Lama-Kara. He was the chairman of the Organisation of African Unity from 2000 to 2001, and he attempted, unsuccessfully, to mediate between the government and rebels of Ivory Coast in the First Ivorian Civil War, that began in that country in 2002.
In early 2005 Eyadéma suffered a heart attack in his hometown of Pya, and, while seeking medical treatment, he died en route to France. His son, Faure Gnassingbé, succeeded him as president.