A Bizarre Emperor and Imperial Coronation
Jean-Bedel Bokassa (1921 – 1996) was a military dictator of the Central African Republic, who declared the small landlocked country an empire. He then proclaimed himself Bokassa I, Emperor of the Central African Empire. When Central Africa gained its independence from France, the president invited Bokassa, who had been a captain in the French colonial army, to head the military. He accepted, then staged a coup and seized power. An admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte, Bokassa imitated him and crowned himself emperor. He then bankrupted his impoverished country with a lavish coronation that cost about 80 million dollars, with a diamond-encrusted crown that cost 20 million. The photo shoot, with such conspicuous spending amidst widespread poverty, was grotesque. Bokassa’s rule was marked by a reign of terror in which he personally oversaw the torture of suspected political opponents, before feeding their corpses to crocodiles and lions kept in his private zoo.
There were also accusations of cannibalism, triggered by photographs in Paris-Match magazine, of a deep-freezer that contained children’s bodies. Bokassa’s most infamous atrocity was the arrest of hundreds of schoolchildren in 1979 because they or their parents refused to buy school uniforms from a company owned by one of his wives. His imperial guard murdered over 100 of them, under Bokassa’s personal supervision. That was a final straw, and French paratroopers deposed him soon thereafter. Exiled to France, he soon wasted the millions he had embezzled and fell into poverty, which came to light when one of his children was arrested for shoplifting food. Bokassa returned to Central Africa in 1986, where he was tried, convicted of murder and treason, and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1993, and died three years later.
