Postcolonial Africa

Give me your wildest Postcolonial Africa stories

I'll start:

>His private palace, seven miles outside town in Kawele, brimmed with paintings, sculptures, stained glass, ersatz Louis XIV furniture, marble from Carrara in Italy and two swimming pools surrounded by loudspeakers playing his beloved Gregorian chants or classical music. It hosted countless gaudy nights with Taittinger champagne, salmon and other food served on moving conveyer belts by Congolese and European chefs.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Butt_Naked
youtube.com/watch?v=6XqejqUK83A
youtube.com/watch?v=ZRuSS0iiFyo
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confraternities_in_Nigeria
youtube.com/watch?v=y3KEhWTnWvE
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

> Gbadolite was a remote village of 1,500 people living in mudbrick huts and not even marked on maps. But thanks to unlimited hubris and riches, a new town was hacked out of the tropical rainforest, with houses, schools, hospitals, municipal buildings, a five-star hotel, a 3,200m runway for the supersonic Concorde and – the pièce de résistance – three palaces of kleptocratic kitsch.

Crazy the place looks like a fallout game now.

Interesting thread OP. I wish I had more for you.

relative was a mercenary in equatorial guinea and he told me that the dictator and his son have a penchant for collecting vintage arcade games and pinball machines which they pay high prices for

This fucking guy
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Butt_Naked

>During Macías Nguema's government, the country had neither a development plan nor an accounting system for government funds. After the killing of the governor of the Central Bank, he carried everything that remained in the national treasury to his house in a rural village.[3] On Christmas Eve of 1975 about 150 of his opponents were killed. Soldiers dressed in Santa Claus outfits executed them by shooting at the football stadium in Malabo, while amplifiers were playing Mary Hopkin's "Those Were the Days."[10]
Macias Nguema by far

How was this guy not coup'd earlier?

This is some absolutly insane hardcore shit.

nguema is literally /ourguy/

The impressive stuff is that his nephew has not get couped yet, there are interviews where he braggs about being a dictator and torturing people just a little.

youtube.com/watch?v=6XqejqUK83A

This video strongly pertains to the thread.

still no Bokassa?

>Macías prohibió el uso de la palabra "Jesucristo" y durante su dictadura este debía ser referido como "El Hijo Bastardo De Una Puta Blanca Barata Con Un Coño Pestilente".
Macias forbid the use of the word "Jesus Christ" and during his rule it had to be referred as "The Bastard Son Of A White Cheap Whore With A Smelly Cunt".

B A S E D

>niggers

His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular frowns upon your comments

"On 18 January, street protests began in Bangui when he decreed that all schoolchildren and all students at Jean-Bedel Bokassa University must wear uniforms - only one supplier of uniforms existed, and it was owned by the Empress Catherine, Bokassa's wife.

Troops fired on the crowds and dozens, perhaps hundreds, were killed, but the unrest, mostly in the form of school strikes, continued until April, when Bokassa, now in a state of fury, ordered a round-up of the troublemakers. Mostly boys aged between 12 and 16, they were hauled off to Ngaragba Prison on the edge of Bangui. There followed a night of violence in which Bokassa personally played a leading part. Children were beaten to death, tortured, stoned and suffocated in overcrowded cells. The final death toll was about 100, and a few of the victims were as young as eight years old."

The Ogaden War is a neat little incident. Short version is:
>Somalis and Ethiopians both Soviet backed
>Somalis invade Ethiopia to conquer majority-Somali Ogaden region
>Soviets ask them to stop
>Somalis respond by ejecting all Soviets from country
>Soviets turn around and launch their largest airlift since WW2 to support Ethiopia
>Ethiopians and Cubans team up to kill Somalis
>Cubans launch only helicopter armored assault in history as part of counteroffensive
>Somali army collapses

The whole story's a lot more complicated than that, though, and it dates back to the Scramble for Africa. Ethiopia was super-expansionist at the time, and through skillful diplomacy and Italian incompetence managed to secure the borders of modern Ethiopia, extending the traditional boundaries of the country over large areas of Oromo, Tigray, and Somali populations. It was bad enough that ethnic Abysinnians and Christians were now a minority in their own country.

Anyways, the Ethiopians didn't live up to any of that noble savage bullshit, and in many respects were just as bad (if not worse) than many of the Europeans around them. In fact, when the Italians took over the country in 1935, the situation actually improved for pretty much every non-Abyssinian.

However, all that was short-lived. The restoration of the Ethiopian Empire was brought about by the Allies after WW2, and, with American support, they managed to get control of Italian Eritrea with its large Tigray population. Britain, meanwhile, had pushed for the unification of Italian and British Somaliland as well as Ogaden, the region of Ethiopia that was majority Somali. The other Allied powers shot down the proposal, but not before the Brits publicized the plan all over the Horn of Africa. In an era of Somali nationalism, it's thus not all that surprising that pretty much right from the country's independence in 1960 there was a major push to unite what was known as "greater somalia."

>cont

Holy shit

So Ethiopians being the tactful, respectful people that they were, they of course pushed their own irredentist causes (like Somalia as a whole belonging to Ethiopia) while putting in place a bunch of new policies that almost seemed to go out of their way to alienate and suppress the non-Abyssinians. All the while, you had popular dissent growing, as Emperor Haile Selassie was ruling as an absolutist monarch in an age of democracy. And as was common for dissenting movements at the time, they were almost exclusively left-leaning.

Somalia, unable to find support for their irredentist claims in the West, looked to the Soviets, who were happy to back them. While the Somalis built up their military and actively sponsored separatists in Ogaden, the Ethiopians were having a harder time getting support from the US, their major ally. They were largely given second-line equipment, and, although their Air Force would come to be arguably the best in Black Africa at the time, that came at the cost of it being incredibly small - their fighter corps was less than 20 F-5Es.

Somalia's democratic government fell to a coup in 1969, at which point Siad Barre took power. As the problems got worse in Ethiopia, the regime there fell as well in 1974 to a left-leaning junta that became known as the Derg. The Derg didn't really improve the human rights situation in Ethiopia, and, with its left-leaning sentiments, it unsurprisingly lost the support of the US. The Soviets jumped on this, providing gradually increasing support for the Ethiopians while still fully backing the Somalis.

>cont

Well? Is it?

Nice I read a little about the war between the Derg and Siad Barre in a book on the Cold War in the 3rd World. This is just extra icing on the cake.

>while putting in place a bunch of new policies that almost seemed to go out of their way to alienate and suppress the non-Abyssinians
Good. The galla and barya should know their place.

>"The Bastard Son Of A White Cheap Whore With A Smelly Cunt"
Attending to the mass must have been a pure bliss.

Unfortunately, Soviet efforts to lower tensions between the countries failed. On July 23, 1977, the Somalis invaded Ethiopia without warning or declaration of war. Some 25,000 Somalis - nearly the entire Somali Army - streamed across the border with T-55s and other Soviet-supplied equipment. They quickly overran eastern Ogaden, and it would be several days before the Ethiopians even realized they were fighting the regular Somali army and not just particularly well-armed rebels. The Ethiopian Air Force scored several victories and wreaked havoc on supply lines, but they were unable to stop the Somalis from overrunning much of the region. Ethiopian morale was incredibly low at the time - many soldiers were fleeing without fighting at all. And those who did stood little chance. Their equipment was bottom-of-the-barrel US equipment, and things like their M41 light tanks stood no chance against the T-55.

The Soviets were surprised by all this, and they tried to mediate. They pressured Barre to withdraw, while supplies to Somalia were cut and support for Ethiopia grew. As the Somali offensive petered out at the borders of Ogaden, Somalia was running low on supplies. As the Soviets seemed increasingly supportive of Ethiopia to the detriment of Somalia, he made a gamble to try to find a new source of weapons. Barre ejected all 20,000 Soviets from the country overnight and cancelled their rights to the naval base at Berbera that they had constructed. The hope was that such a break would allow them to gain the support of the West, or at the very least anti-Soviet states in the Middle East like Egypt and the Saudis.

Unfortunately, none of that materialized. Nobody wanted to support and unprovoked war of aggression, so, even though the US nominally backed the Somalis, no arms would come to reinforce them during the war.

>cont

This is an absolute classic

And while Somalia just burned all its bridges, the Soviets now had nothing stopping them from throwing their full support behind the Ethiopians. They launched their largest strategic airlift effort since WW2. Planes were landing in Addis Ababa nearly nonstop for months. Soviet Navy ships landed heavy equipment in Eritrea. A satellite launch was altered to provide intelligence on Somali forces in Ogaden. Supplies earmarked for Yemen were diverted. 17,000 Cuban regulars, hundreds of Soviet advisors, and a large contingent of South Yemeni support personnel were flown in.

While all this happened, the front had stabilized. The Somalis had outrun their logistics and were down to their last few tanks, so they stopped their offensive to regroup and prepare for one final assault. They had no idea what was going on across the border. Joint Ethiopian-Cuban airstrikes would continue to cripple Somali logistics during the time, and one airstrike in particular would knock out what remained of the Somali air force from the war.

Finally, after months of buildup, the Somalis were ready to go. They launched their final offensive to liberate Ogaden once and for all.

Less than six hours before the planned start of the Ethiopian counteroffensive. The Somalis ran headlong into a massive buildup of heavily reinforced troops. Their offensive bogged down immediately, and was turned into headlong retreat as soon as the Ethiopian counteroffensive began.

While the Ethiopians handled a frontal assault against the main body of the Somali forces, the Cubans were swinging around the Somali flank to the north. Using Mi-6 helicopters, they airlifted a large force supported by air-liftable armor to the Somali rear at Jijiga. The Somalis, who had regrouped at Jijiga and were preparing to fend off the Ethiopian assault, were caught unawares and thrown into a rout.

The Somalis were followed to the border and their army virtually destroyed. Ogaden was reclaimed and the war ended.

cool

What did the uniforms even looked like

>not liking based African shenanigans

Why doesn't HBO do a fancy Congo Drama show?

youtube.com/watch?v=ZRuSS0iiFyo

Any book recommendations?

>In fact, when the Italians took over the country in 1935, the situation actually improved for pretty much every non-Abyssinian.

Not really. Out with one barely held together and in with one that's is almost as barely held together

The source I got that from (granted it was written by a guy who used to be a part of the Oromo Liberation Front) made claims based on other sources that said systematic things like putting abysinnians in command of literally everything were stopped. It also probably helped that the Italians broke up the country into different administrative regions and attached ogaden to Italian Somaliland.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confraternities_in_Nigeria

>Soldiers dressed in Santa Claus outfits executed them by shooting at the football stadium in Malabo, while amplifiers were playing Mary Hopkin's "Those Were the Days."
youtube.com/watch?v=y3KEhWTnWvE
Eh, there are worse songs to die to.

The faraway tree

Dancing in the glory of monsters was alright
I say this as a guy for whom it was the first book he'd ever read about SSA history

because that would be racist, you can't show Africans genociding each other

>Africans having agency and complex political struggles is racist

Kek

More like it's an awkward topic. A good amount of refugees from the fighting in the Congo (Which is still ongoing) live in the United States.

Sounds just like Joseph Kabila and his NEET vidya obsession.

Great recap.
I have relatives who fought in the Somali Army during this war.

huh neat. Got any stories? I've been trying to learn more about the war but it's so hard to find good resources for it. Literally the only primary source from the Somali side I've found so far is a brief BBC radio interview with a Somali general.

French airlifting Moroccan troops into Zaire to fight them commies vs Cubans battling Afrikaners in Angola.

Which was crazier?

moroccan mercenaries were used to kill by firing squad incidentally

This is one of those figures you literally cannot believe actually existed every second you're reading about him.

Israeli commandos attacking the Entebbe airport in Uganda as a counter terrorist operation, successfully killing the terrorists and several assisting Ugandan soldiers will forever be one of the most memorable events in Cold War fuckery

that's straight out of codblops

Anti-xian Pagan LARPers can't even conceive of this level of bantz

t. proud Somali nationalist living in Sweden

>Born as Mez-m Ngueme, Macías Nguema was the son of a witch doctor who allegedly killed his younger brother. He belonged to the country's majority Fang ethnic group. As a boy of 9, Nguema saw his father punched to death by a Spanish colonial administrator when he tried to use his title of chief to negotiate for better wages for his people. Nguema was orphaned a week later when his mother committed suicide, leaving the boy and 10 siblings to fend for themselves.

>punched to death

Is there such a thing as an Eternal Iberian?

bump

Ask a Latinamerican and find out.

by one guy? that's pretty badass

"generic /pol/ comment"

What is the official line on why post colonial Africa is still shit now there's no whites there to "oppress" them?

Bunch of reasons. There's Neocolonialism, where the colonial powers realized it's easier to just fuck around and control their economy while letting the local government do whatever the fuck they want. This was a favored tactic for the French, with most of their former colonies still using the French Franc for a while. It varies with place, but essentially it's keeping a captive market for something that's beneficial to some first-world countriy's economy - usually cheap raw materials.

There's also things like there not being any real adequate transition. The Brits tried to do this with their colonies, and generally the period immediately after decolonization went (relatively) well for the colonies that completed that process. But many colonizers fought hard to keep their colonies and left with no real transition process. The Portuguese and Belgians were particularly bad with that - they gave 6 month's notice of the transition before they left. Worse, many of those countries left with the entire white population without any real educated local populace capable of taking the reigns. So all the political, economic, and military leaders were now gone, and usually the people who filled the power vacuum were guerilla leaders whose only experience in leadership was leading resistance movements - hardly something fit for leading a country.

And then you have weird combinations of shitty borders and nationalism/tribalism. The Horn of Africa's a good example here - Sudan was dominated by a more arab northern population that was at odds with the african southerners, Somalia was dominated by both irredentist nationalism fomented by the British and inter-tribal conflicts between somalis, and Ethiopia was fucked by the fact that Ethnic Abyssinians were often just as bad as the white colonial overlords and were a minority in their own country.

Corruption, inefficient state institutions at time of independence, limited native bureaucracy, neocolonialism, one party dictatorships, borders that are difficult to control, and no transition period in many places.

Then followed by a generation of horrific leaders who all tried to pull a Meiji out of their ass but just ended up corrupt and debt ridden.

African Paratrooper fetish coming in
Uganda #1

What does that have to do with my comment?

lack of cultural institutions and infrastructure.

basically Meiji succeeded because the shogunate had been a strong central government and managed to create and enforce local policy with career civil-servants.