Léon M'ba
Gabriel Léon M'ba was a Gabonese politician who served as both the first Prime Minister and later, the President of Gabon, from 1961 until his death in 1967.
A member of the Fang ethnic group, M'ba was born into a relatively privileged village family. After studying at a seminary, he held a number of small jobs before entering the colonial administration as a customs agent. His political activism in favor of black people worried the French administration, and as a punishment for his activities, he was issued a prison sentence after committing a minor crime that normally would have resulted in a small fine. In 1924, the administration gave M'ba a second chance and selected him to head the canton in Estuaire Province. After being accused of complicity in the murder of a woman near Libreville, he was sentenced in 1931 to three years in prison and 10 years in exile. While in exile in Oubangui-Chari, he published works documenting the tribal customary law of the Fang people. He was employed by local administrators, and received praise from his superiors for his work. He remained a persona non grata to Gabon until the French colonial administration finally allowed M'ba to return his native country in 1946.
After returning from exile, he began his political ascent by founding the Gabonese Mixed Committee. After his party broke ties with the French Communist Party in 1951, it was allowed to run in French Gabon elections and he was elected to the Territorial Assembly in 1952. After becoming mayor of the capital city, Libreville, in 1956, M'ba quickly rose to prominence and was appointed the vice-president of the governor's council on 21 May 1957, the highest position held by a native African in French Gabon. In 1958, he directed an initiative to include Gabon in the Franco-African community further than before.
After independence, he served as the first Prime Minister of Gabon from 27 February 1959 until 21 February 1961. He became the first President of Gabon on 17 August 1960. Political nemesis Jean-Hilaire Aubame briefly assumed the office of president through a coup d'état in February 1964, but order was restored days later when the French intervened. M'ba was reelected in March 1967, but died of cancer in November 1967 and was succeeded by his vice president, Albert-Bernard Bongo.
Early life
A member of the Fang ethnic tribe, M'ba was born on 9 February 1902 in Libreville, Gabon. His father, a small business manager and village chief, once worked as the hairdresser to Franco-Italian explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza. His mother, Louise Bendome, was a seamstress. Both were educated and were among the first "evolved couples" in Libreville. M'ba's brother also played an important role in the colonial hierarchy: he was Gabon's first Roman Catholic priest.In 1909, M'ba joined a seminary to receive his primary education. From 1920, he was employed as a store manager, a lumberjack and trader before entering the French colonial administration as a customs agent. Despite his good job performance, M'ba's activism in helping black Gabonians, particularly for the Fangs, worried his superiors. In September 1922, M'ba wrote to Edmond Cadier, Lieutenant-Governor of Gabon:
His remarks upset authorities, and he suffered the consequences in December 1922, when he was sentenced to prison after having committed a minor crime of providing a colleague with falsified documents.
Under the colonial administration
''Chef de canton''
In either 1924 or 1926, M'ba reconciled with colonial authorities and was chosen to succeed the deceased chef de canton of Libreville's Fang neighbourhood. As the leader of a group of young Libreville intellectuals, he ignored the advice of elder Fangs and quickly gained a reputation as a strong, confident, and able-minded man. He once wrote in a letter that he was "issioned to enforce public order and defend the general interest" and that he did "not accept that people transgress the orders received from the authority that I represent."M'ba did not have an idealist vision of his job; he saw it as a way to become wealthy. With his colleague Ambamamy, he forced labour on the residents of the canton for his personal use, to cover his large expenditures. The colonial administration was aware of the embezzlement, but they chose to overlook it. However, beginning in 1929, the colonial administration started to investigate his activities after they intercepted one of his letters to a Kouyaté, secretary for the Ligue des droits de l'homme, who was accused of being an ally of the Comintern. Despite this suspected Communist alliance, the French authorities did not oppose M'ba's appointment as head chief of the Estuaire Province by his colleagues.
In those years, M'ba, a member of the Ligue, distanced himself from Roman Catholicism, but did not break completely with his faith. He instead became a follower of the Bwiti religious sect, which Fangs were particularly receptive to. He believed this would help revitalise a society which he felt had been damaged by the colonial administration. In 1931, the sect was accused of murdering a woman whose remains were discovered outside a market in Libreville. Accused of complicity, even though his involvement in the crime was not proven, M'ba was removed from power and sentenced to three years in prison and ten years of exile. Officially this was for embezzlement of tax revenues and his abusive treatment of the local labour force.
Exile in Oubangui-Chari
While exiled in the French territory of Oubangui-Chari, first in the towns of Bambari and then Bria, he continued to exert influence among Fangs via correspondence with his compatriots in Libreville. Worried by the situation, Governor-General Antonetti ordered in 1934, at the end of his prison sentence, that M'ba be placed under surveillance.During his years in exile, he wrote about the customary rights of the Fang people in the "Essai de droit coutumier pahouin" and published it in Bulletin de la société des recherches congolaises in 1938. This work quickly became the main reference on Fang tribal customary law. By 1939, the native ex-chief remained a persona non grata to Gabon, as stated in the letter from the head of the Estuarie Department, Assier de Pompignan:
In spite of being in exile, M'ba was employed by local administrators. Placed in secondary offices and having no proper power, he was an accomplished and valuable employee. Thanks to praiseworthy reports from his superiors, he was once again seen as a reliable indigenous element on which the colonial administration could rely on. In 1942, a sentence reduction was granted to him. Following his release, he became a civil servant in Brazzaville, where his prestige increased.
Political ascension
Return to Gabon and local politician
In 1946, M'ba returned to Gabon, where he was greeted exultantly by his friends. He was not reinstated as chef de canton; instead, he obtained an important position as store manager for the English trading house John Holt. That same year, he founded the Gabonese Mixed Committee, a political party close to the African Democratic Rally, an inter-African party led by Félix Houphouët-Boigny. The party's main objective was to obtain autonomy for its member states and oppose the Senegalese leader Léopold Sédar Senghor's idea of federalism. Playing on his past as a former exile, and through the network of Bwiti followers, M'ba managed to rally support from the Fang and Myènè peoples. His goal was to win indigenous administrative and judicial posts.Based on his success in Libreville, M'ba aspired, at one point, to become the head of the region, an idea which many notable Fangs supported during the Pahouin congress at Mitzic in February 1947. However, the colonial authorities refused to give him the position. Due to his relations with the RDA, which was linked to the French Communist Party, M'Ba was seen as a communist and propagandist in the colony; for the authorities, these suspicions had been confirmed when M'ba was involved in the 1949 RDA congress in Abidjan.
In 1951, the CMG decided to break its ties with the Communists, siding with the moderate position favored by Houphouët-Boigny while he did the same. At the same time M'ba, while maintaining his "rebellious" image to the electorate, became close with the French administration. However, the administration was already supporting his main opponent, Congressman Jean-Hilaire Aubame, who was M'ba's protégé and his half-brother's foster son. In the legislative elections of 17 June 1951, Aubame was easily re-elected, as M'ba only received 3,257 votes, just 11% of the electorate. In the territorial elections of March 1952, Aubame's Gabonese Democratic and Social Union won 14 of the 24 contested seats, against two for the CMG; however, the CMG received 57% of the votes cast in Libreville.
Rise to power
Initially rejected by the Territorial Assembly, M'ba allied himself with French representatives in the assembly. However, using his charismatic traits and his reputation as a "man of the people", he managed to win a seat there in 1952.He left the CMG to join the Gabonese Democratic Bloc led by Paul Gondjout in 1954, whom M'ba intended to overthrow. Gondjout, the secretary of the BDG, appointed M'ba secretary-general and formed a long term alliance against Aubame. In the legislative elections of 2 January 1956, M'ba received 36% of the votes versus 47% for Aubame. Though not elected, M'ba became the leader of the indigenous territory, and some of the UDSG began to ally themselves with him.
In the municipal elections of 1956, M'ba received support from the French logging industry, especially Roland Bru, and was elected mayor of Libreville with 65.5% of the vote. On 23 November he was appointed the first mayor of the capital. This has been cited as the BDG's first significant victory over the UDSG. In the French practice of holding multiple posts known as cumul des positions, M'ba served as both mayor and deputy.
In the territorial elections of March 1957, his reputation as a "forester's man" worked against him; the BDG finished second again, winning 16 of the 40 contested seats, against 18 for the UDSG. Bru and other French foresters bribed several UDSG deputies to switch their political party to the BDG. M'ba's party won 21 seats against 19 for Aubame's party after a recount. However, in the absence of an absolute majority, both parties were obliged to submit on 21 May 1957, a list of individuals that both agreed were suitable for election into the government. That same day, M'ba was appointed vice president of the government council under the French governor. Soon, divisions grew within the government, and Aubame resigned from his position and filed a motion of censure against the government. The motion was rejected by a 21–19 vote. With M'ba's victory, many elected UDSG members joined the parliamentary majority, giving the party a majority with 29 of the 40 legislative seats. Well installed in the government, he slowly began to reinforce his power.
After voting in favor of the Franco-African Community, similar to the British Commonwealth, in the constitutional referendum of 28 September 1958, Gabon became pseudo-politically independent. French journalist Pierre Péan asserted that M'ba secretly tried to prevent Gabonese independence; instead, he lobbied for it to become an overseas territory of France. In December 1958, the Assembly voted to establish the legislature, and then promulgated the constitution of the Republic of Gabon on 19 February 1959. On 27 February, M'ba was appointed Prime Minister. After M'ba openly declared for the departmentalization of Gabon in November 1959, Jacques Foccart, Charles de Gaulle's spin doctor for African policy, told him that this solution was unthinkable. M'ba then decided to adopt a new flag by affixing the design of the national tree, the Angouma, over the French flag. Again, Foccart, as a loyal Frenchman, refused.
From July 1958, a third political force tried to establish itself in Gabon: the Parti d'Union Nationale Gabonais, led by René-Paul Sousatte and Jean-Jacques Boucavel, created attempting to unite the southern Gabonese against the established BDG and UDSG. It was also supported by former UDSG members, "radical" students, and trade unionists. Though it voted against the constitutional referendum, PUNGA organised several events geared toward gaining independence and the holding of more parliamentary elections, which were also supported by the UDSG. In March 1960, after independence had already been obtained, M'ba cracked down on PUNGA, claiming its goal had already been reached. He filed an arrest warrant for Sousatte for conspiring against him and searched the houses of UDSG members, who he accused of complicity. Intimidated, three deputies of the UDSG joined the majority.