Barthélemy Boganda

Barthélemy Boganda ( – 29 March 1959) was a Central African politician and independence activist. Boganda was active prior to his country's independence, during the period when the area, part of French Equatorial Africa, was administered by France under the name of Oubangui-Chari. He served as the first Premier of the Central African Republic as an autonomous territory.

Boganda was born into a family of farmers, and was adopted and educated by Roman Catholic missionaries after the death of his parents. In 1938, he was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest. During World War II, Boganda served in a number of missions and afterwards was persuaded by the Bishop of Bangui to enter politics. In 1946, he became the first Oubanguian elected to the National Assembly of France, where he spoke out against racism and the abuses of the colonial regime. He then returned to Oubangui-Chari to form a political organisation, culminating in the 1949 foundation of the Movement for the Social Evolution of Black Africa (MESAN), which became popular among villagers and the peasantry. Boganda was laicized from the priesthood after developing a relationship with and eventually marrying Michelle Jourdain, a parliamentary secretary. Nonetheless, he continued to advocate for equal treatment and fundamental rights for blacks in the territory well into the 1950s. As France conceded measures of representation to its colonies, MESAN won local elections and he gained influence in Oubangui-Chari's government, though his reputation suffered when he backed an unsuccessful economic scheme.

In 1958 French Prime Minister Charles de Gaulle proposed the creation of a French Community through which France's colonies could associate with the metropole. After being assured that Oubangui-Chari's membership in the community would not preclude it from securing independence at a later time, Boganda supported joining it. He sought to do so as part of a federation with other territories in French Equatorial Africa as a "Central African Republic", which he believed would bolster the financial situation of the member states. He hoped this would serve as the basis for a United States of Latin Africa, a conglomeration including other countries in central Africa. This never came to fruition, and on 1 December, Boganda declared the establishment of the Central African Republic for only Oubangui-Chari. Boganda became the autonomous territory's first premier as the President of the Council of Government, and began drawing up administrative reforms and preparing for the next election. He was killed in a plane crash on 29 March 1959, while en route to Bangui. Experts found a trace of explosives in the plane's wreckage, but a full report on the incident was never published, and the possibility of an assassination remains unresolved. The Central African Republic attained formal independence from France in 1960. Boganda's death is annually commemorated in the country, and his presence in the national collective memory remains politically potent.

Early life Little is known about Boganda's early life. He was born around the year 1910 (According to the French National Assembly and historian Pierre Kalck, Boganda was born on 4 April 1910.) He was posted in the Grimari region from 1941 to 1946 to evangelize the resident Banda population. Boganda was enthusiastic about his work and was angered by local resistance to some of his teachings and practices. This especially included his efforts which contravened local cultural norms, such as his encouragement to abandon polygamy and fetishism and work to enroll girls in school. His response to such hesitation sometimes included violence, and he was accused of beating people and once suggesting a recalcitrant chief be shot with a cartridge of salt. Despite this, he showed a measure of appreciation for some indigenous culture, and was particularly proud that some locals fearfully dubbed him mourou, or leopard, a traditional symbol of power and violence. Boganda believed that the church was providing him with insufficient support and, by the mid-1940s, was in conflict with the local government administrator and felt he was facing racial discrimination from colonial officials, settlers, and some missionaries. Further strain on his position was incurred when he fathered a child in the Bakala region, an action his missionary colleagues saw as scandalous. As a result of these tensions, in 1946 Boganda was transferred to a mission at Bangassou.

Political career National Assembly of France After World War II, Boganda was urged by Grandin to involve himself in politics. Despite this, Boganda remained a devout Catholic and sympathetic to missionary interests. The couple was married on 13 June 1950, and would later have two daughters and a son. and on 29 March the local court sentenced him to two months in prison (his wife was condemned to two weeks incarceration for aiding him). Since he was arrested in flagrante delicto, his parliamentary immunity offered him no protection. Boganda terminated SOCOULOLE later that year due to financial difficulties. Boganda's arrest occurred five months before the next round of French National Assembly elections, and he framed it as a campaign issue. He ultimately won re-election, defeating challengers from the RPF and RDA, and the colonial administration acceded to his return to office.

Co-operation with the French In 1952, the French government appointed more reform-oriented officials in French Equatorial Africa, allowing for a relaxation in tensions between Boganda and the local administration. In March 1953 RPF leader Charles de Gaulle visited Bangui. Boganda refused to see him due to his leadership of the party, but de Gaulle refrained from taking a public stance on the politics in Oubangui-Chari, a move which was interpreted as an expression of disapproval of the local RPF's tactics.

On 30 April 1954, disorder erupted in Berbérati when news emerged that two Africans who worked for a European—who was known for his abusive treatment of the locals—had died. The families of the deceased demanded the European's arrest, and a crowd gathered in the town and began rioting and assaulting public officials. Once word reached Brazzaville, the colonial authorities began mobilising troops to march on Berbérati, and Oubangui-Chari Governor Louis Sanmarco pleaded with Boganda to accompany him to the locale and intervene. The following day Boganda appeared before the crowd and told them that "the same justice would be administered to white as to black". Thus assured, the crowd dispersed and order was restored. The riot deeply worried the administration, which acknowledged in its own reports that Europeans' racism towards Africans was pervasive in the territory.

No substantial violence succeeded the Berbérati riot, and in the following months the RPF increasingly struggled as MESAN continued to grow. Boganda praised the educational and health work done by the colonial administration before the French National Assembly, saying "doctors, administrators, and colonists are our friends [...] We are not as ungrateful as we are black. We know how much has been done for our country". Addressing the Grand Council of French Equatorial Africa, he complimented Sanmarco and declared, "Oubangui-Chari has embarked on a positive undertaking at last, after years of negative grievances and sterile struggles, and a better future is ahead". With the assistance of the colonial administration, Boganda established his own coffee plantation stressing the importance of re-examining a federal relationship between France and its colonies. Boganda was not included in the new constitutional commission, to his dismay. De Gaulle hosted him in Paris in July, and upon his return to Oubangui-Chari he expressed to the Territorial Assembly that the loi-cadre was insufficient for the territory and the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa. He told the body he wanted assurance of "the people's right to self-determination and a voluntary freely-consented independence. The ways of introducing it are to be examined". The Assembly passed a motion repeating Boganda's demands.

De Gaulle proposed the creation of a new federal French Community that would encompass the African colonies. Boganda opposed Oubangui-Chari joining the community, fearing it would forestall independence. In August a meeting was held in Brazzaville between de Gaulle and political leaders in French Equatorial Africa. Boganda presented a petition signed by the leaders which requested that the new French constitution recognise the right of its colonies to declare independence. De Gaulle assured him that Oubangui-Chari's membership in the community would not preclude it from securing independence at a later time. A referendum was to be held in each colony in order to determine its support for the new constitution and joining the community; de Gaulle warned that while a negative vote would grant a territory immediate independence, it would also lead to the termination of all French aid. On 30 August Boganda told MESAN leaders he supported an affirmative vote in favour of the constitution,

Death Plane crash On 29 March 1959 Boganda boarded a Nord Noratlas plane at Berbérati, where he had been campaigning, for a flight to Bangui. The plane was owned by Union Aéromaritime de Transport, which transported the mail between the two cities. The plane went missing, and its wreckage was discovered the following day in the district of Boda. All four crew and five passengers, including the government's information chief and a member of the Assembly, were found dead. Boganda's body was recovered from the pilot's cabin.

The French General Secretariat of Civil Aviation ordered an inquiry and sent a team to investigate the crash site. A report was never published, but shortly afterwards the Paris weekly L'Express revealed that investigators had identified traces of explosive in the wreckage. The French High Commissioner ordered all copies of the reporting edition suppressed in the Central African Republic. No cause for the crash has ever been definitively determined. Many Central Africans believed that the crash was an assassination; in particular, many suspected that expatriate businessmen from the Bangui Chamber of Commerce, possibly aided by the French secret service, played a role. Michelle Jourdain was also suspected of being involved; by 1959, relations between Boganda and his wife had deteriorated, and he thought of leaving her and returning to the priesthood. She had a large insurance policy on his life, taken out just days before the accident. Historian Gérard Prunier wrote that "the probability of foul play was very high", noting, "The whites who worked for what was left of the Grandes Compagnies Concessionaires hated Boganda, who had been instrumental in finally getting compulsory labor outlawed in 1946. They also hated his intelligence, which was unsettling to their view of black inferiority".

Political consequences Boganda's funeral was held outside the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Bangui (pictured on a 1964 stamp). Aside from some minor disorder in Mbaïki, the country received Boganda's death in relative calm. Some of his followers suggested that he had not died and would return to the public in the future. His funeral was held on 3 April outside of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Bangui and attended by thousands, with Robert Lecourt representing the French government and Raymond Janot representing the French Community. Charles Féraille, a priest who had been personally acquainted with Boganda, declared that he had been "chosen by God" to lead the country. Goumba replaced him as interim President of the Council of Government, while Étienne Ngounio took over the office of Mayor of Bangui and the MESAN party presidency. Boganda's parliamentary constituency was declared vacant in the elections held on 5 April, which were handily won by MESAN, though with a sharp drop in voter turnout. With its founder gone, MESAN substantively ceased to exist aside as a label.

Dacko, with the backing of the French High Commissioner, the Bangui Chamber of Commerce, and Jourdain, offered himself as a candidate to lead the Council of Government. Goumba was hesitant to divide the populace, and after a month in power conceded the presidency to Dacko. Dacko became consumed with administrative work and, though he had initially retained Goumba as Minister of State, dismissed him after several months. In 1960 Goumba founded a new political party, the Democratic Evolution Movement of Central Africa (MEDAC), and claimed it carried the ideals of Boganda and MESAN. Frightened by its rapid growth, Dacko declared his intent to revive MESAN. Under his government, political focus moved away from the peasantry and was drawn to the creation of a new moneyed elite, mostly favouring officials who received large salaries. The Central African Republic received its full independence from France on 13 August 1960. Dacko pushed several measures through the Assembly which invested him as President of the Republic and head of state, and gave the government wide authority to suppress political opposition. By 1962 he had arrested Goumba and declared MESAN the sole party of the state.

Legacy Commemoration and political legacy The Central African Republic released this postage stamp featuring Boganda flanked by the national flag on 1 December 1959. Intended to commemorate Boganda, it was designed by Pierre Gandon.

The Legislative Assembly declared Boganda the "Father of the Nation" in June 1959. He was posthumously awarded Knight of the Legion of Honour, Grand Cross of the Order of Central African Merit, and Commander of the Order of Agricultural Merit. The Boganda National Museum, named for the former premier and hosted in his former Bangui residence, was opened in 1966. A secondary school and an avenue were also named in his honour, while a statue of him was erected at an independence memorial in the capital. Jean-Bédel Bokassa, leader of the Central African Republic between 1966 and 1979, promoted a cult of personality for Boganda as the founder of MESAN and the republic. Boganda Day is observed annually on 29 March to commemorate his death.

Mythical perceptions of Boganda's invulnerability persisted after his death, and his presence in Central African collective memory remains politically potent, serving as a unifying element among both the country's elite and the general populace. His phrase, zo kwe zo, was incorporated into the state's coat of arms. The preamble of the republic's 2004 constitution read, in part: "Animated by the wish of assuring to man his dignity with respect to the principle of 'ZO KWE ZO' enunciated by the Founder of the Central African Republic Barthélemy BOGANDA". Despite this, his political ideas have generally not been studied by successive Central African leaders. Historian Klaas van Walraven wrote, "his contemporary significance may lie precisely in the memory of his comportment and the widespread ignorance of his ideas".

Historiography Historian Georges Chaffard described Boganda as "the most prestigious and the most capable of Equatorial political men", while Prunier called him "probably the most gifted and most inventive of French Africa's decolonization generation of politicians". Historian Brian Titley suggested that Boganda's death "robbed the country of a charismatic leader" able to maintain legitimacy and in the long term facilitated General Bokassa's overthrow of Dacko and subsequent military takeover in 1966.

Boganda's life has some presence in French language histography, but much of what has been written about his biographical details, especially by Central African authors, is hagiographic in nature. His ideas and speeches have been more thoroughly incorporated into general analyses of political philosophies. Boganda is rarely mentioned in English historiography, and where he is included it is generally within the context of his Pan-African project of the United States of Latin Africa.