As Gabon begins a month of mourning and condolences pour in for President Omar Bongo, the world’s longest serving President, who died on Monday at 73 in his 42nd year in power, it’s worth remembering that Bongo was precisely the kind of leader Gabon, and Africa, could have done without. Gabon has a tiny population and vast oil reserves, and after four decades of exporting hundreds of billions of dollars of crude, the biggest testament to the corruption and ineptitude of Bongo’s rule is that he somehow contrived not to turn his country into an African Kuwait. A third of all Gabonese still live on less than $2 a day, and as the oil fields begin to dry up, Bongo’s subjects are facing up to the reality that he sacrificed the country’s future to fund his own fantastically opulent lifestyle.
