What life is like in Gabon \u2014 a month after a military takeover

09:12+08:00, AM. Oct. 02, 2023 By Emmanuel Akinwotu

Gabon is the latest country to experience a military takeover. Oil-rich and biodiverse, it was ruled by one family for over half a century — until just over a month ago.

A general view of the administrative district in Libreville on September 2023. -/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption -/AFP via Getty Images

A general view of the administrative district in Libreville on September 2023.

-/AFP via Getty Images

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

A contagion is how one African leader described a series of coups that have hit the continent in recent months. Gabon is the latest country to experience a military takeover. Oil-rich and biodiverse, it was ruled by one family for over half a century until just over a month ago. Our Africa correspondent Emmanuel Akinwotu traveled to the Central African nation to find out what life is like there after the coup.

EMMANUEL AKINWOTU, BYLINE: A month on from the coup, and the burst of elation and tension in Gabon has given way to the rhythms of ordinary life again.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing in non-English language).

AKINWOTU: An overnight curfew is still in place, but by morning it is lifted, and music blares again from roadside bars overlooking the Atlantic. But beneath the veneer of normality, there has been a sea change.

MIREILLE DIRAT: (Through interpreter) I was already preparing to be kidnapped. I told him, we're locked up here. We can hear gunshots.

AKINWOTU: Mireille Dirat is the director general of one of the state broadcasters in Gabon, and she recounts the moments when a group of heavily armed soldiers arrived at Gabon TV at 4 in the morning.

DIRAT: (Through interpreter) They said, calm down. We don't mean you any harm. All we ask of you is to follow our instructions.

AKINWOTU: They handed over a memory card and ordered her to broadcast the content - the announcement that the president was under house arrest and they'd taken over the country.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).

AKINWOTU: Only an hour before, President Ali Bongo had won a controversial but expected reelection victory that extended his family's 56-year rule of Gabon. But later that morning, Dirat watched from her office window as hundreds poured out onto the streets to celebrate his removal.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Chanting in non-English language).

AKINWOTU: Gabon is a middle-income country, according to the World Bank, with the third highest GDP per capita in Africa. But among the majority of Gabon's 2.5 million people who live at the sharp end of life here, it's easy to find bitterness at the decades of brazen corruption.

PHILLIP MINKO: You cannot live in a country whereby there are so many riches and you are poor.

AKINWOTU: Sitting on a bench facing the shore, 42-year-old Phillip Minko is an office administrator in Libreville. He says ordinary people struggled while Bongo and his allies acquired properties around the world. He describes the coup as a liberation for Gabonese people. And for some, this new freedom is a literal reality.

JEAN REMY YAMA: (Speaking French).

AKINWOTU: Jean Remy Yama was imprisoned by Ali Bongo early last year. He's the head of one of the most prominent unions in the country and a vocal critic of Ali Bongo. He was jailed for what many saw as politically motivated corruption charges.

YAMA: (Speaking French).

AKINWOTU: He tells me he felt the goal of his detention was to break him. He thinks he would have spent many more years in jail if Bongo stayed in power. I ask him if he's uncomfortable that it was a military takeover that led to his release.

YAMA: (Speaking French).

AKINWOTU: "We have a Gabonese proverb," he tells me. "If you are drowning in a river, you hold on to whatever branch you can find, whether it's a snake or a crocodile. It doesn't matter. What matters is getting out of the river."

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Singing in non-English language).

AKINWOTU: Within days of the coup, General Brice Nguema was installed as the transitional president. He filled the government with a mixture of some new and some familiar figures from the political class. Nguema is a distant relative of Bongo and, according to reports, has bought properties in the U.S. worth over a million dollars paid in cash. But he's presented himself as an agent of change in a country desperate for it. And he's arrested the former president's son and other figures from Bongo's government.

LAURENCE NDONG: The international community who condemned coup, everybody knows that Gabon was a dictatorship, but they shut their mouth.

AKINWOTU: Laurence Ndong was just appointed minister of communication. She says countries who criticize Gabon's coup were not vocal about widely discredited elections that kept Bongo in power. There have now been nine coups in Africa in the last three years, almost all in former French colonies. The new transition period is expected to last two years before new elections, Ndong says. But it's not set in stone, and the pretext for an extension is already there.

NDONG: We are not in a hurry because we have a chance, we have the opportunity to make our country to start again.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking French).

AKINWOTU: Talk of the political future dominates everyday discussion in Gabon. On call-in radio programs, some are skeptical of the new transition government, but most are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES CRASHING)

AKINWOTU: Back on the beach, Minko is optimistic about the future. He believes people will see the coup as a lasting turning point.

MINKO: Years to come, I will be sitting somewhere, if God will allow me, and I would tell the story to my grandson, telling them how we felt when this thing happened in Gabon. We just get rid of something that was not good for Gabon and for the population.

AKINWOTU: Emmanuel Akinwotu, NPR News, Libreville.

(SOUNDBITE OF EVENINGS' "STILL YOUNG")

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