[Debate] (Fwd) Sharife v Françafrique

[Patrick Bond]

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6209

Khadija Sharife:

Propping up Africa's Dictators

"We cannot assure our development on our own," stated France's pet 
dictator and Africa's longest-serving ruler, Omar Bongo. The Gabonese 
leader was talking about national economic development, but he might 
just as well have been talking about his own personal economic 
development. Transparency International's French chapter singled out 
Bongo, who died this month at 73 after ruling his country for 41 years, 
for a spectacular misappropriation of state funds. The lawsuit, lodged 
via civil party petition, charges Bongo, Denis Sassou Nguesso of the 
Congo, and Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea of acquiring vast 
patrimonies in France including expensive real estate, capital, villas, 
and cars that cannot be justified by official income.

One example is the son of Equatorial Guinea's dictator, who owns a $1.4 
million Bugatti and a $35 million Malibu mansion, all on a $4,000 
monthly salary. His father, meanwhile, has siphoned over $2 billion 
overseas, half of it housed in Washington's Riggs Bank under multiple 
bank accounts. The suit lists Bongo's assets, and those of his 
relatives, as 70 bank accounts and 39 luxurious apartments in Paris and 
Nice. Sassou Nguesso and family's asset sheet revealed over 110 bank 
accounts.

The investigation, denounced by Sassou Nguesso as "neocolonialism," was 
given the go-ahead by French magistrate Francois Desset in early May — 
much to the dismay of France's public prosecutor. The case could result 
in the restitution of state wealth as well as initiate mandatory 
corporate country-by-country reporting, automatic exchange of 
information, and public disclosure as to state revenue.

There is indeed an air of neocolonialism to the investigation, but not 
for the reasons Sassou Nguesso suggests. Obiang, Bongo, and Sassou 
Nguesso have benefited enormously from the neocolonial relationships 
that France and the international financial system have set up with key 
African countries.

A Peek at Françafrique

The portrayal of Africa's strong-arm leaders as lone rangers obscures 
the system underpinning the dictatorships and delinks dictators from 
their primary source of sustenance. The rhetoric of French-controlled 
development endorsed by Bongo is a subset of France's postcolonial 
Africa policy — Françafrique — designed to create structural dependence 
and domination by reasserting geostrategic control over natural 
resources through the use of black "governors." The pulse of the 
Françafrique ideology — fric is slang for cash — is rooted in shadow 
economies sustaining respectable corporations, various intersecting 
shadow networks, secret services, private lobbies, and political and 
diplomatic relationships between the official and unofficial political 
elite. These forces are individually and collectively able to mobilize 
substantial economic, political, and military support.

This web of influence is itself dependent on Africa's ambitious but 
compliant dictators and their respective armies. The policy of 
continuity is revealed in the number of French military interventions in 
Africa. Between 1997 and 2002, for example, France intervened over 34 
times, 26 of which were conducted outside of the UN's umbrella. During 
the past five years, French military troops in Gabon, Chad, Central 
African Republic, Senegal, and Cote d'Ivoire have either increased or 
remained the same. France's Minister of Defense admits to 10,000 
specialized soldiers active on the continent (2004-07).

France meticulously devised its decolonization policy to tie the vested 
interests of handpicked native governors with French national interest. 
France drew up secretive defense agreements, which are still active 
today, that authorized it to legally maintain military bases in Cote 
d'Ivoire, Gabon, Togo, Cameroon, Djibouti, the Central African Republic, 
Senegal, and other countries. These bases facilitated direct French 
military intervention, which dictators feared could be used for them as 
much as against them.

Clauses contained within the agreements also ensured that France was 
legally entitled to be informed of and maintain priority access to 
natural resources including uranium, oil, and gas. African governments 
were forbidden from engaging in military, trade, and other forms of 
cooperation with nations regarded as a threat to their former colonial 
overlord. France signed these Military Cooperation Agreements with 27 
African countries from 1960s onward.
Insurance Policy

The network of agreements with African countries represent France's de 
facto insurance policy. Following the example of Félix Houphouët-Boigny 
— the former French civil servant, first president of Cote d'Ivoire's 
from 1960 to1993, and architect of Françafrique — African leaders have 
shaped and normalized the inherited legacy of colonialism. In doing so, 
they have also subsequently internalized the economic, cultural, and 
political imperialism and cultivated an atmosphere of compliance 
concerning French interests in Africa.

"The cause of poverty is very simple," said François-Xavier Verschave, 
former president of the French NGO Survie. "We have illegitimate 
governments which represent external interests. A number of these 
presidents are paid by Elf [the former French oil company later merged 
with TotalFina], for example. They serve Elf and France but not their 
own country. They get their medical treatment in France, their children 
study in France: they therefore don't concern themselves with health and 
education at home."

Dictator Gnassingbé Eyadéma, for instance, ruled Togo for nearly 40 
years until his death in 2005. But the country was really run by 
telephone, as Jacques Foccart, France's chief advisor for Africa and the 
mastermind behind the Françafrique system, made all the key decisions. 
"They knew my telephone numbers and I knew theirs," Foccart stated 
coyly. Houphouët-Boigny, another crucial instrument, was allegedly in 
the habit of conversing weekly with his close friend Foccart. When asked 
what Foccart's role was in French policy, Louis Joxe, de Gaulle's deputy 
Prime Minister Louis Joxe stated, "nursemaiding presidents and making 
sure that African civil servants were paid at the end of the month."

Known as Monsieur Africa, Foccart also handpicked, interviewed, and 
found satisfactory the future leader of Gabon, Omar Bongo. "Bongo has 
been protected by hundreds of French troops in Libreville, who sit 
(still today) in barracks connected to one of his palaces by underground 
tunnels," says Nicholas Shaxson, author of Poisoned Wells. Gabon, the 
focal point of the system, is also known as Foccartland. The Elf Affair, 
Europe's biggest corruption scandal since World War II, was centered in 
Gabon.

"Gabon's oil industry served as a source of secret offshore financing 
that was made available to sections of the French élites, and for the 
furtherance of French interests abroad," says Shaxson. "Congo's oil 
industry was treated as an appendage of Gabon's."

The Corruption Connection

Resource-rich nations such as Gabon, dependent on payments from 
multinationals, are particularly vulnerable to corruption. Through 
contracts, often negotiated in secret, regimes deliver huge concessions 
to corporations in exchange for generous gifts. These concessions 
include tax holidays, low royalty rates, exemption from environmental 
and human rights regulations, and control of national infrastructure. As 
80% of Africa's exports are primary commodities exploited by 
multinationals, Africa's political economy — largely shaped by lopsided 
contracts — renders states accountable only to corporations. Each year, 
more than $148 billion leaves Africa in capital flight, routed through 
offshore financial centers before ending up in secrecy jurisdictions 
such as Switzerland.

"At the root of it all was this strange intercontinental relationship 
which - of course - snaked through a whole menagerie of tax havens. This 
offshore source of slush funds was used notably for the secret financing 
of French political parties," said Shaxson. "French companies were able 
to get access to the Elf System in order to source huge bribes to win 
overseas contracts in a range of countries from Germany to Spain to 
Venezuela to Taiwan."

France doesn't deny the existence of Françafrique. Indeed, by publicly 
acknowledging the system, France has neutralized, sanitized and 
interpreted the nature of its reality. In 2008, for example, France's 
foreign aid minister Jean-Marie Bockel speech recognized the active 
state of the network's political machinery when he said that he wanted 
"to sign the death warrant for Françafrique."

But it doesn't seem like Françafrique will be buried any time soon. In 
the early 1990s, President Chirac — who would call on Foccart to serve 
as his Africa hand at the age of 81 — said of Africa, "(the continent) 
is not yet ready for democracy."

Now fast-forward to 2008. Last year, French President Nicholas Sarkozy 
sent in troops from Gabon to defend the throne of Chad's brutal dictator 
Idriss Deby, a repeat of 2004's intervention. Since the year 2000, 
France has stealthily engaged with Mozambique, Madagascar, Senegal, 
Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, Congo, Liberia, and the Gulf of 
Guinea. Unlike the United States, though, France treads lightly, 
attracts little or no attention, and leaves few footprints behind.

Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Khadija Sharife is a journalist and 
visiting scholar at the Center for Civil Society (CCS). She’s based in 
South Africa.