The Emperor Who Ate His People 2

📅 March 4, 2026

There were the villas and the shopping complexes, there were the airstrips at hunting parks and the hundreds of millions of francs lodged in the Swiss, Belgian and French bank accounts. There were the châteaux in France; the sixty-room chateau of Saint-Louis Chavanon, the twenty-room chateau of Villemorant; the chateau of Hadricourt, owned by Catherine; the chateau at Mezy- sur-Seine. These were properties sitting on land ranging anywhere from twenty to four hundred hectares…

Back in his country, his citizens were living on less than 40 cents per day – if they were very, very lucky, that is. 

In spite of these the French indulged him, bearing his excesses, providing aid. After all, their business interests lay there, and the internal affairs of the little republic was not of significant concern. But it was when he proposed the idea of transforming the republic to an empire and having a coronation to officially become emperor that they decided that maybe this little man was going a little too far. 

But too far? With Bokassa? There was no such thing as too far with Bokassa. He had thought it. He would therefore do it. 

The reason for this obsession with being emperor was not curious. He obsessive love for the French was widely known. Their former president, Charles de Gaulle, he worshipped (and was reportedly devasted and openly teary when the man died). The present president, Giscard d'Estaing, he respected highly and gave handfuls of diamonds on both official and unofficial visits. His command of French itself was perfect.

But it was Emperor Napoleon he adored the most. He had a library full of books on the man, had his walls adorned with countless paintings of him. Dressed like him. Was almost certain that he was an African reincarnation of the man, considering their both short statures, large egos, and stellar military backgrounds. 

So, he set about with his plan. 

First there were specific committees to make this a success; the special guest committee to take care of the 2,500 invited foreign guests, the clean-the-capital committee, responsible for making the streets as spotless and beggar-less as possible, the sculptors and singer committee that had to invent poems and construct things.

The throne had to be a golden eagle – which was exactly how it would be. It cost $2,500,000 (two million, five hundred thousand). His costume had to be pristine. That cost some $145,000 (one hundred and forty-five thousand. His crown had to be Napoleonic. That one alone cost another $2,500,000 (two million, five hundred thousand). Matter of fact his entire jewelry cost a total of some $5 million. 

Then there was the banquet. 

Bokassa, a large eater himself, was bent on making his guests eat till they threw up on their shoes. 240 (two hundred and forty) tons of varied meals were therefore transported straight from Europe. 40,000 (forty thousand) bottles of vintage wine were flown in from France. But wine isn’t champagne, and champagne isn’t wine. Those had to be flown in, 24,000 (twenty-four thousand) bottles in all. All these didn’t include Bokassa’s favorite scotch whiskey which were in stunning abundance.

There was also the question of logistics that needed to be answered.

The vehicles in that small bush kingdom were mostly two-wheelers, old and rusty and screeching. Foreign guests couldn’t afford to ride in those. There had to be luxury rides like, say, Mercedez-Benzes. These were promptly ordered from Germany, then shipped to Cameroun and air-freighted to the empire. Sixty of them in all. Air freight charges alone cost $5,000 (five thousand dollars) per car. 

The total cost of the preparation for the one-day coronation was some $22,000,000 (twenty-two million dollars). 

The annual budget for the whole of that country in that particular year was $80,000,000 (eighty million dollars), and their population was 2.5 million. 

 

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Emperor Bokassa had a cane. This was no ordinary cane. It was a stick in every sense of the word, made from 100% ebony and capped at the end with the heaviest, most solid ivory in the world. That cane was a bloody menace, no pun intended.

It was the cane he had used to beat Banza senseless on the night of Banza’s foiled coup. It was the cane he beat Catherine’s driver to death with when he discovered Catherine had been seeing a friend without express permission, and that worse, her driver wasn’t reporting it. It was the cane he had beat a prison guard half to death with when he lost the prisoner he was escorting. It was the cane he had broken the head of an Associated Press’ journalist with when he judged him (the journalist) a spy. Most people, people before they were dispersed to Ngaragba or the afterlife, were usually unfortunate recipients of very long and very vicious thrashings from that cane. 

It was that same cane he had used to gouge out a schoolchild’s eye. 

This, right here, was the beginning of his end.

But, perhaps, we’re moving a bit quickly. 

Let’s rewind.  

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Bokassa had always had a violent, sadistic soul. This was no news. Those who seize power by the gun expect to have power seized from them in far more brutal manners, and, in fact, being unpredictably merciful and/or brutal was sometimes the safest place to operate from. 

Sometimes he had people fed to crocodiles and lions, and he once passed a law slicing thieves’ ears with scissors.  Few years back, he had allegedly strangled a mistress after sleeping with her. 

People knew this. People accepted it. 1979 was the year that would change everything.

A year earlier, February precisely, an announcement had been made that school uniforms be a requirement for schoolchildren. Initially the announcement had been ignored for its buffoonery. One, civil servants had not been paid. The government was bankrupt (the pointless coronation of 1977 had made certain of that). Now these people struggling to live were being asked to look for an equivalent of $20 for a fucking uniform that was sure to go back to the very man who had put them in this (considering the only retail stores who sold these “uniforms” were his wife’s)? No! 

A year later, the year that everything changed, one of the largest secondary schools in the country suddenly stopped letting students in who didn’t have the uniform. Same thing happened in other schools in quick succession, prompting a demonstration. But as usual, Bokassa, the ever thoughtless, blood-thirsty buffoon, ordered an immediate crackdown and broke it up. This was January of 1979. Take note that Iran was already getting hot, and that their Shah, Mohammed Reza, was on the verge of getting overthrown. News of this gave the students even more morale to fight to overthrow their government.

Unable to suppress the protests quickly gaining ground, Bokassa decided to do it himself. And Bokassa being Bokassa ended it in less than two days. But while it solved an immediate problem, it quickly created another because when those schools reopened, none of the students showed up. This stance, they held for up to three months, sorely testing Bokassa’s patience in the process. Meanwhile, revolutionary meetings were going on in the background. 

If brutality worked before, brutality could work again. This was all Bokassa knew and that was exactly what he resorted to. First, he ordered the closure of all schools, directing the army to occupy them and arrest any unfortunate rat bastard caught there. The students, a step ahead, avoided holding meetings altogether and the soldiers, frustrated at this, decided to take their brutality a step further, raiding every house in sight, arresting students of all ages, and throwing them in one-man cells in Ngaragba in batches of thirty and twenty.

The following morning, many had suffocated and died. But even this had been the least of the horrors. 

Bokassa, it turned out, had also been personally involved in their deaths, for he was reported to have driven to the prison and used everything within reach, from bars and chains and hammers to his ebony cane, to break bones, stab and rip flesh, and smash skulls. Then he had gotten himself drunk, returned at least twice, and continued with the onslaught. An eight-year-old had been shot too and another had had an eyeball pried out by the emperor’s cane. Over a hundred students had died. 

This was the redline, and he had crossed it. Yes, political enemies could be imprisoned, democracy could be suspended, protests could be repressed, massive theft could be tolerated. Even a goddamn coronation costing a third of that bush kingdom could be overlooked. But children? Beating them, killing them? And worse, in such a callous, hands-on way? No! The French had had enough. The world had had enough.

First was the commission of enquiry into the massacre which Bokassa tried, with resounding failure, to influence. Then came the personal betrayals; the resignation of his ambassador to France, his prime minister in secret collaboration with David Dacko to overthrow him. And then the call from Élysée Palace telling him very bluntly to step down. 

As was expected, he didn’t. 

The aid stopped. He had bankrupted the economy, he had no money and he couldn’t pay his soldiers so now he knew he was truly in deep shit, because with no soldiers, how was he to repel the bunch of hyenas coming from him? His allies had begun to distance themselves from him, and some had begun to form alliances seeking to overthrow him? He had to find a way. It was risky, but something had to be done, and fast. It was a trip outside of his country to beg financial resources from Gaddafi. If he left his country, he might come back to very unpleasant surprises.

He did experience an unpleasant surprise for it was on that trip that he learned that the French military had landed in his country, taken control of it and re-installed David Dacko as head of state. The emperor had quickly become an ex-peror. The fall was swift. With properties confiscated, monies seized, bank accounts frozen, every country on earth declining to take him in, and all his wives quickly leaving him with fifteen children to care for, he became, truly, a man alone.

Years passed, and after pathetic attempts at attention and futile attempts at taking back power, he returned to his country. Trials came, a few years of imprisonment were dished out to him, then a presidential pardon. At the age of 75, now religious and completely penniless with only a few neighbors and even fewer relatives occasionally dropping by to bring him meals and companionship, the man Bokassa who once had his country in a stranglehold died of a heart attack, thus proving the words of Julius Caesar true, that: 

It was the wont of the immortal gods sometimes to grant prosperity and long impunity to men whose crimes they were minded to punish in order that a complete reverse of fortune might make them suffer more bitterly.

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Not many books have been written on Jean-Bedel Bokassa. Even Wikipedia and the Encyclopedias are largely inadequate in shedding light on such an interesting figure. I therefore had to rely heavily on Brian Titley’s brilliant book, Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa as well as scraps of info from distant corners of the internet.