9. The Berlin Wall Paled in Comparison to Nguema’s Lunatic Measures to Keep His People From Fleeing
Macias Nguema was murderous in both his public and private lives. The thought of other men having known his women sexually so displeased him, that he killed all his mistresses’ former lovers. Dissent was brutally crushed. Troublesome journalists were hacked to pieces, the bits thrown into the ocean to feed the sharks. In one particularly lunatic episode, 150 opponents were executed in a soccer stadium by soldiers dressed up as Santa Claus, while loudspeakers blared Mary Hopkins’ “Those Were the Days“.
News that displeased Nguema was “fake news”. When his statistics director presented figures he disliked, Nguema killed him. Nguema took a relatively prosperous Equatorial Guinea, and reduced it to a hellhole. The economy got so bad that 90% of the GDP eventually consisted of foreign aid. To keep people from fleeing, he destroyed boats, the railways, and mined the roads out of the country. He was eventually overthrown by his own family, when his insanity threatened them. In 1979, Nguema was arrested, tried by a military court, sentenced to death, and executed.
