Omar Bongo. Photo: AFP/GETTYOmar Bongo -- The Telegraph
Omar Bongo, who has died aged 73, was the longest-serving president in African history, leading Gabon for 41 years and shamelessly looting the country's oil wealth.
A diminutive, dapper figure, who conversed in flawless French and alternated between pomposity, courtesy and cruelty as required, Bongo treated Gabon as a self-obsessed landlord treats his private estate. He considered everything inside its borders to be his personal property and elevated corruption to a method of government.
Read more ....
My Comment: A fitting death for this tyrant. He could not even be treated in his own country because of a lack of medical facilities.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is pictured at the two-day African trade summit Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) in Victoria Falls, to approve a free customs union. Mugabe on Sunday launched a new pact aimed at tearing down trade barriers across 19 African nations with appeals for external investors and an end to domestic conflicts.(AFP/Desmond Kwande)
Robert Mugabe's Lecture On Running Economies -- The Australian
IN an astounding reversal of fortune, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has taken over the leadership of Africa's largest trading bloc, using an address to the first major international conference to be held in his country in years to lecture fellow heads of state on how to run their economies.
At the same time, the 76-year-old despot has been buoyed by an unexpected affirmation from erstwhile arch-rival Morgan Tsvangirai, now the Prime Minister in Zimbabwe's power-sharing government, that the long-standing bad blood between the two men was now a thing of the past.
Read more ....
My Comment: I always recall a quote from Ray Bradbury when I read stories like this one .... the gargoyles have taken over the cathedral.