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The Witch Doctor President and Other Horrific Rulers

Khalid Elhassan December 25, 2019 32 min

15. The Central African Emperor

Jean-Bedel Bokassa. The Famous Birthdays

Africa has had no shortage of bloody-minded and bizarre rulers. For sheer delusion, however, it is difficult to top Jean-Bedel Bokassa (1921 – 1996), the military dictator of the Central African Republic from 1966 to 1979. He declared the small landlocked country an empire, and himself Bokassa I, Emperor of the Central African Empire. His years in power were marked by bloodthirst, murder, terror, corruption, and increasingly bizarre behavior.

Bokassa was a captain in the French colonial army when Central Africa gained its independence from France, and the country’s new president, a distant cousin, invited Bokassa to head its armed forces. He accepted, and a few years later, staged a coup and seized power, declaring himself president.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.