If I was to say the name Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo to you, not only would I probably pronounce it wrong, but you would probably not have the faintest clue who I was talking about. Yet if I was to say Robert Gabriel Mugabe, images of starving children, hyper inflation and rigged elections would probably spring to mind.
However out of the two Mbasogo is clearly more cookoo. He has been the President of Equatorial Guiani for 29 years. Before that he was a fighter, a governor of a province and then head of Black Beach Prison one of the most notorious hell holes on earth. Maybe this explains why he runs the country like a jail.
In mid 1979 he led a coup de tat against the President, his uncle President Macías who was executed a few weeks later by firing squad at Black Beach. He rewrote the constitution for a seven year presidential term and rule by decree. In the 1989 election he was the only candidate, in 1996 and again in 2002 the elections were unanimously declared by observers as fraudulent.
Equatorial Guinea is for all purposes a single party state with the ironically named Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea gaining 99 of the 100 seats in the legislature in the election in May this year. Mugabe only won 85% of the popular vote in the presidential elections in Zimbabwe.
We don’t see the problems because as one author writes:
“Equatorial Guinea is a small country with a population of less than 1 million, its economy is expanding in an oil boom, and Obiang’s “victory” did not require the obvious and crude violence of Mugabe’s ongoing terror. But Obiang’s enforcers don’t need to club people on the streets. His would-be opponents are too frightened to openly demonstrate against him. His is the Switzerland of dictatorships-so effective at enforcing obedience that the spectacle of unrest is invisible.”
But where it really starts to get creepy is when he starts saying stuff like the president is a god who is “in permanent contact with the Almighty” and “can decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to hell.” He is so in touch with god that two popes have invited him to the Vatican to have a three way (conversation) with god.
I might add that Mbasogo is rumoured to have consumed his uncle’s testicles after he was executed.
Mbasogo uses a PR company called Cassidy & Associates to clean up its international image… doesn’t this sound suspiciously like some other people a little bit closer to home.
What is that little something something that allows Mbasogo to get away with his reign of terror?… come on, you know what it is… OIL of course! The oil boom explains why Mbasogo can afford to cover his tracks , why inflation isn’t such a big issue, and why when he met with Condelleza Rice in 2006 she called him a “good friend” (Remembering that New Zealand has also been called a “close friend” of the USA).
So oil… the major oil companies have flocked there but where has the money gone? Into Mbasogos personal bank accounts, into the pockets of Cassidy & Associates, into arms, and the repression of democracy, freedom and all those things that we hold dear.
Oil is the reason we don’t hear George Bush condemning Equatorial Guinea’s leader in the same way he recently denounced Mugabe at the G8 conference in Japan. The simple fact is that the US do not want to draw attention that they are “friends” with a dictator and that they rent the land that their embassy is on, from a leader most would describe as Africa’s most brutal torturer.
So I ask you to spare a thought for the people of Equatorial Guinea who have languished – forgotten – by the West for too long. And hopefully the next time you protest, write about or discuss Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe you will also mention Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and the people of Equatorial Guinea.