A Grotesquely Lavish Coronation Amidst Widespread Poverty
Jean-Bedel Bokassa, self-proclaimed Bokassa the First (1921 – 1996), was a military dictator of the Central African Republic from 1966 to 1979. He declared the small country an empire, and himself Bokassa I, Emperor of the Central African Empire. His rule was marked by terror, corruption, and bizarre behavior. He was a captain in the French colonial when Central Africa gained its independence from France, and the country’s new president, a distant cousin, invited him to head its armed forces.
Bokassa accepted, and a few years later, staged a coup, seized power, and declared himself president. A worshipper of Napoleon Bonaparte, he emulated his example and crowned himself Emperor of Central Africa. He bankrupted his impoverished country with a lavish coronation that cost about 80 million dollars. It included a diamond-encrusted crown that cost 20 million. His governance was marked by a reign of terror in which Bokassa personally supervised the judicial beating of criminal suspects. Among other things, he decreed that thieves were to lose an ear for the first two offenses, and a hand for the third.
