Right off the bat, I know what you’re thinking. You have 2 questions, right?
What happened to mans’ face; and
How do you even pronounce homeboy’s name?
Short answer to question 1 is “I don’t know”.
With regard to question 2, I’ve tried and tried but the fruit of my efforts has been something eerily close to if the sound of gargling and chewing bubblegum procreated. So yeah, same answer.
But his name doesn’t matter. All we need to know is that N’Garta was a bad man - in both the normal and the Michael Jackson sense.
He would become the first President of Chad, before anticlimactically being deposed in a military coup by military fat cats who he wrongly assumed were on his side.
N’Garta Tombalbaye was born in the village of Bessada in southeast Chad in the year of our Lord 1918.
We don’t know much about his early life - maybe because it was so painfully boring that there was literally nothing to report on it. Or he intentionally hid it from the public record to avoid shame. There is no in between here.
What we do know is that as a young adult, Tombalbaye worked as a teacher and quickly formed part of the political life of his nation.
For some context, 1940’s Chad was probably one of the worst times and places in recent history to be an African. But considering that you’re probably reading these words on a tiny screen that is slowly eating away at your eyeballs while you’re holed up at home as a global pandemic ravages the earth, maybe that isn’t 100% accurate.
Anyhow, Chad was a part of the French colonial empire at the time. Now, being colonised sucked. But being colonised by France was like having to run a marathon barefoot on hot coals while the Comedy Central roast of YOU plays in headphones that are permanently affixed to your ears; basically adding insult to injury.
To add to the complexities, there was tension between the different ethnic groups within the country known as Chad.
In one incident, a Muslim trader publicly dissed N’garta’s Sara people by calling them “mere beasts”. N’Garta boldly coordinated and led violent protests in the capital city in response. Talk about not being able to take a joke.
The French weren’t particularly amused by N’garta’s heroics and banned him from teaching. Left with no other source of income or influence, but with a dogid belief that his cause was just, our friend set his sights more firmly on politics.
His first step (a misstep it turned out to be) was to get a job as the Director of an independent newspaper called AEF Nouvelle. Sounds like a glamorous job but it really wasn’t. At any rate, he didn’t have this post for very long because the French were to shut the publication down. Something about publishing too many naughty articles that were less than complimentary of the croissant-ingesting overlords.
Never a quitter, N’garta ran for a seat in the colonial territorial assembly. This was sort of like Parliament - you know that place where grown adults go to behave like kids, except it was the make-believe Chadean version.
N’garta actually won the seat in 1952 - not that this was much of a surprise because I can’t imagine he had much credible competition. He was later elected to the French Equatorial Africa general council (another pretty useless body), where he served as Vice-President.
Inevitably when your star is on the rise, there’s an old geezer somewhere to stifle your glow. And in African politics, this old geezer is usually a has-been from yesteryear who fought for liberation or something or other.
Indeed as N’garta got more involved in local politics, tensions between him and other politicians, particularly Gabriel Lisette, arose.
A note on Lisette: this dude was born in Panama but somehow landed the schweeeet gig as the colonial administrator of Chad. Colonial administrators were basically like class monitors (glorified snitches) who would report to the French if anyone was getting out of line in their colony.
At some point, the penny dropped and he realised that subjugation wasn’t exactly the optimal way for people to live. He then founded Chad’s first African political party: the Chadian Progressive Party (PPT). The PPT demanded that blacks be free to rule themselves yada yada yada...you get the picture.
Back to N’garta...
Our boy was already part of the PPT but the main part of his beef with Lisette centred around reforms concerning whether the federation of colonies of French Equatorial Africa was to be maintained.
Who actually won the argument proved to be sort of irrelevant because N’garta, who was the Secretary General at the time, was later appointed to succeed Lisette as head of the PPT. Lisette was forced to step down, but for his sins, still managed to get a spot as the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of economic coordination and foreign affairs in the colonial government.
N’garta became leader of Chad’s colonial government in 1959. In truth, the colonial government was to France what Pinocchio was to Gepetto: lots of fun but not real and certainly not independent.
In 1960, Chad finally gained independence. Well, maybe “gained” is a stretch. They didn’t gain independence so much as France probably got tired of the shenanigans, realised that the colonial enterprise was too expensive and buggered off. Same difference though.
Chad was now a self-governing state with N’Garta Tombalbaye as its first president.
N’garta did what all of us would do if we finally got everything we ever wanted: he acted a fool.
First order of business was to ban all political opponents by banning all political parties other than the PPT. All real, potential and imagined political rivals were snuffed out like a shoddy cigar as N’garta strengthened his python-like grip on power.
Oh, he also made sure that there was no room in his heart or his country for Lisette or his friends. In fact, a week before Chad became independent Tombalbaye kicked him out of the PPT, declared him a noncitizen and banned him from stepping his ashy feet on Chadean soil ever again. Lisette was travelling abroad while all this happened. Cold.
The people of Chad could see what N’garta was trying to do (lets face it, you don’t exactly need to be Einstein to figure it out) and not everyone was feeling it. Riots ensued.
In response, Tombalbaye dissolved Parliament - which is probably the literal opposite of what the rioters were going for.
N’garta was also kind of eccentric, to put it mildly. He ordered all his officials and close members of his inner circle to undergo a ritual called Yondo. This was essentially an initiation ritual that involved physical abuse, such as being buried alive and really difficult endurance tests like crawling naked through a nest of ravenous termites.
In addition to all this, Christianity was frowned upon and missionaries were steadily booted out of the cownthry.
All non-Muslim males in the south between the ages of 16 and 50 were forced to undergo traditional initiation rites if they wanted to advance in the civil service and the military.
Kind of weird, but really not all that terrible, dictatorially speaking. And look, it's not like everything N’garta did was bad but there was certainly madness in his methods.
For example:
He nationalised the civil service, and replaced French officials with locals (yay!).
But the locals had no training and didn’t have a clue what they were doing (nay!)
N’garta imposed a National Loan to fund local industry (yay!)
But the loan was funded by imposing spin crushing taxes on an already impoverished populace (nay!)
He had good relations with other African leaders (yay!)
...like Mobuto Sese Seko of Congo (aww maan!)
A note on Mobuto: it's probably worth dedicating several volumes of these emails to the champion of corruption, the king of kleptocracy and the doyen of dictatorship that was Mobuto. For now, all we need to know is that this dude was as unsavoury as they come.
Back to N’garta...
He was something of a pan-Africanist (yay!)
But not really. Because of long tribal animosity between the people in the north of Chad and those in the south, N’garta (a southern) didn’t really include the northerners as part of his plans to uplift the continent and all that.
In fact, it was the tribalism that ultimately led to his downfall.
It's important to know that since independence, many people in the north saw independence as a sham; just a way to shift authoritarian control from white Europeans (the French) to black southerners (N’garta and friends).
And look, they weren’t exactly wrooooong...but rioting in the streets was probably not the most effective way to show your displeasure to a maniacal strongman who wouldn’t hesitate to order his goons to pop 3 bullets into your scalp for so much as sniffing the wrong way.
But alas, citizens in the north rioted. 500 of them were shot and killed. Things only escalated from there as the disturbances moved across the north to the center of Chad. Always up for a good scuffle, Muammar al-Gaddafi of neighbouring Libya got involved - supporting the northern Chadeans.
A note on Gadaffi: his legacy is complex and could also be the subject of multiple volumes of this series.
For now, all we reeeally need to know is that he probably got involved because there had been a close relationship between the northern Chadeans and Libya. That and it helps if the neighbours are quiet so that members of your household don’t get any ideas about making a noise.
Back to N’garta...
Things were getting a bit heated. In desperation, N’garta did what many leaders across former colonies after him have done: he asked the ex-coloniser for help.
France agreed to step in as long as N’garta agreed to ease up on the corruption, reform the army and civil service, release political prisoners, form an inclusive government and remove arbitrary taxes and laws.
You know, basically run the country like a country and not his personal tuckshop.
Reluctantly, he agreed to France's terms and things sort of improved for a bit. So much so that France withdrew their troops from Chad in 1971.
The party was short lived though. In August of 1971, government insiders discovered that there was a plot afoot to oust N’garta from the presidium. And to make it worse, it seemed like that wily old fox Gadaffi was involved in it.
Our man was not having it; he promptly cut off all diplomatic relations with Libya. In response, Gadaffi increased his support to splinter groups in Chad that were anti-N’garta.
While all this was going on, students in the south went on strike. They were probably tired of the food in the dining halls. Or maybe they had real problems. Who knows...
While all this was going on, Chad was in the middle of a crippling drought that left multitudes of people on the brink of starvation. And I mean, for an autocrat, ensuring the welfare of your people isn’t a part of your job description, the problem with a drought is that hungry people soon become angry people. And there’s nothing worse than that.
While all this was going on, N’garta was fighting a growing sense of unease and paranoia. Which makes sense when people are actively trying to kill you.
So yeah, whenever you’re having a bad day, remember that this is the excrement storm that our friend was facing.
Paranoia got the better of N’garta and he arrested senior members allegedly for using witchcraft to overthrow him in what was known as the "Black Sheep Plot.” And if you’re wondering why it was called that, its because the animals sacrificed were...black sheep.
This didn’t satisfy him so eventually he just threw the whole PPT in the bin and formed a new political party.
While he was doing all this, the drought got worse. To try and improve the ailing economy, natives were forced to volunteer (which kind of goes against the entire meaning of the word) on cotton plantations.
Hmm...forced volunteers on cotton plantations. Where have I seen that before?
As you’d imagine, this wasn’t well received and even the southerners began to rebel against him.
The straw that eventually broke the camel’s back, or at least N’garta’s back, was his decision to re-shuffle the army by making weird promotions and demotions. There was really no need for him to do this and may have just been as a reaction to his loss of support among the citizens.
More army officers were arrested in connection with yet another attempted coup. This proved to be N’garta’s final act because soon after, a group of soldiers killed Tombalbaye and secretly buried his body. The military installed his successor, Félix Malloum, as the new head of state.
People danced in the streets.
As I’m sure we shall all do when this ordeal is over.
And that's the history lesson for today, folks! I guess the moral of the story is to keep your cool when things get tough; you could end up making costly decisions. Oh and be nice to your neighbours.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Tombalbaye https://www.nytimes.com/1975/04/14/archives/president-of-chad-is-killed-during-a-military-takeover.html