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Equatorial Guinea is a special
place. The official name of the country is the Republic of Equatorial Guinea.
The main languages are Spanish (official), French (official), pidgin English,
Fang, Bubi and Igbo. The total population is under 500,000 about 24,000 of whom
currently live in exile and about 8,900 of whom languish in jail or have been
'disappeared'. As in many Spanish-speaking countries, the verb 'to disappear'
is a transitive verb. The currency is the Central African Franc (CFA). There
are several administrative regions.
The area of the country is 28,050
sq. km (10,940 sq. mi.), most of which is in the continental African area
between Cameroon and Gabon which was formerly known as Rio Muni. On Bioko Island,
formerly known as Fernando Po, the local people are primarily from the Bubi
tribe while in Rio Muni the major portion of the population is Fang. There are
substantial minorities of Fangs and Fernandinos on Bioko and a smaller number
of Bubi in Rio Muni. The religion is primarily Catholic (85%) while the rest
are traditional animists. For many years much of the plantation work was
carried on by Igbo from Nigeria but, after a series of nationalist calamities,
the Nigerians were driven out of the country and only a few Igbo remain. This
has been a constant source of friction with the successive Nigerian
governments.
After the Spanish colonising power
agreed to change, a constitution accepted by consensus of all political parties
involved, was presented and ratified through a national referendum on August
11, 1968. A few months later, national elections were held, under the
supervision of the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity (OAU).
In September 1968, Francisco Macias
Nguema was elected the first president of Equatorial Guinea and Equatorial
Guinea was granted independence from Spain on October 12 of 1968.
Macias was quick to form a
single-party state, and by May 1971, key portions of the constitution meant to
provide ethnic balance and democracy were abrogated. In 1972, the president
assumed complete control of the government and took on the title of
President-for-Life. A state of emergency was declared. By 1972, after Macias
Nguema had declared himself leader for life, many thousands of people were
tortured and executed in jails or beaten to death in labour camps. Priests were
arrested and schools and churches were closed. Being a journalist became a
capital offense. The leader even made fishing illegal and destroyed every boat
he could find. For several years, Equatorial Guinea was effectively closed off
from the world. By the time Macias' "rule for life" ended with the
coup and his execution in 1979, about half of the population had either fled
Equatorial Guinea or been killed. A sizeable portion of the remainder was to be
found in jail.
The Macias regime was characterized
by abandonment of all government functions except internal security, which was
accomplished by terror. The country's economic structure fell into ruin.
Religion was suppressed and education ceased. Since independence in 1968,
Equatorial Guinea has effectively been the preserve of the Nguema family and
its Mongomo clan. They are a subset of the majority Fang. The first president,
Macias Nguema, was a true African Caligula, who escaped international
condemnation primarily by the remoteness of his country and the competition for
international press attention from his contemporaries, Idi Amin and Jean-Bedel
Bokassa. Macias Nguema was overthrown and murdered by the present incumbent,
his nephew Teodoro Obiang Nguema in 1979.
Macias Nguema is famous for removing
the national treasury to his hut in his village where he stored the money on
the bare ground. By the time of his nephew's coup, the bottom twelve inches of
dollar bills had rotted from being stored in the hut. In August 1979,
Lieutenant Colonel Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo led a successful coup d'etat
against Francisco Macias Nguema, his uncle. The transition was fatal to Macias
Nguema's ambitions and to Macias Nguema in person. Power was then transferred
to a Supreme Military Council with the president having the power to rule by
decree, upon approval of the cabinet. A new constitution was drafted, and
with the assistance of representatives of the UN Commission on Human Rights,
came into effect August 15, 1982.
The practice of being a politician
in Equatorial Guinea is not without its risks. In an October 1978 appeal to the
Organisation of African Unity (OAU) concerning Equatorial Guinea, Amnesty
International said that it "is known that one in every five hundred of the
300,000 citizens in the country has been executed in the last decade, most of
them without trial". There can be no doubts, however, of the systematic
practice of torture in the Equato-Guinean jails or of the responsibility of
Teodoro Obiang over these facilities since 1975. The reports of Amnesty
International on the matter are a collection of horrors. In the monthly
bulletin for March 1978, Equatorial Guinea is defined as "an immense field
of torture from which the only exit is the cemetery ". In 1990 Amnesty
published a pamphlet titled Tortures in Equatorial Guinea that contains
information dating from 1968 to 1988 and in which it affirms repeatedly that
torture is normal practice in the military camps, jails and police stations in
Equatorial Guinea. Page 28 of the pamphlet contains descriptions of ten
distinct methods of torture used in one military camp in August of that year.
Various reports recount numerous cases of lengthy beating, rape, death by
starvation, absence of medical care, mutilations, crucifixion (the latter
during the final period of Macias' rule in which the Equato-Guinean regime had
decided to split with the church).
Torture continues to be common
practice in Equatorial Guinea. It is fair to say that it is the method
preferred by the authorities for dealing with the political opposition. All the
leaders and good part of the membership of the Equato-Guinean opposition has
been tortured on more than one occasion. Torture is applied without
restriction, however, to any citizen whenever the authorities feel that person
"needs a lesson". Politicians close to the president and members of
his party do not escape this rule. Arrests in the first semester of 1998 --in
the run-up to the trial against the Bubis-- saw the return of mutilations, the
taking of hostages from the families of the prisoners, and deaths from lack of
medical care. There have also been denunciations in the recent years of ritual
murders, although the murders have not had a political significance in every
case.
While in some other African
countries democratization was emerging, Equatorial Guinea opened the new decade
with a presidential elections in the 'old style', that is, with only one
candidate, Obiang Nguema, who won the elections of 1989 with 99% of the votes,
(voting not being conducted by secret ballot). However, some opposition seemed
to emerge, and, for the first time, the Catholic Church directed criticisms
toward the regime.
Perhaps due to international pressure,
Obiang Nguema initiated some political reforms in 1991. In July he approved the
principle of political plurality, while in November a national referendum was
conducted to adopt the new constitution; it was approved by 98.36% of the
votes, with a turnout of 94.26%. However the opposition claimed that "the
few human rights safeguards contained in the 1982 constitution were
removed." Nonetheless reforms were pursued, with the establishment of a
transitional government, and the amnesty for political exiles. However the
transitional government included only members of the single and ruling party
Partido Democratico de Guinea Ecuatorial (PDGE). Also, the ruling party refused
to accept the opposition's demand, that is, the holding of a national
constitutional conference as was taking place in many other African countries.
The next presidential elections took
place on 25 February 1996. Obiang Nguema won with 97.85% of the votes. As
Africa Confidential reported, the elections were completely unfair, since there
were "blatant cheating, no secret ballot, a disputed electoral roll and
the refusal to allow the opposition candidates to withdraw"; Obiang Nguema
was thus "elected" for another seven years. Only eight journalists
were present, and 14 electoral observers, including witnesses from Gabon,
Cameroon, and the OAU. It also appears that the opposition parties, prior to
the elections, were not able to present a single candidate.
The next election was much the same.
This weekend Obiang managed to get closer to the 100% mark. Obiang seized power
in a 1979 coup and his Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) has won
every election since a multiparty system was introduced in 1991.
One hundred parliamentary seats and
230 municipal councillor posts were at stake on Sunday. Casting his vote,
Nguema himself said the most important factor in this election was
turnout. "That would mean that people have understood the concept of
'emerging democracy', which means training people in democratic practices,"
he told journalists. He insured this with the carrot and the stick. Polling
stations were guarded by soldiers brandishing AK-47 rifles, while international
election observers monitored polling.
During the campaign, which does not
appear to have aroused much public enthusiasm, large sums of money were handed
out in the president's name. Cash and consumer goods, from satellite dishes to
flat television screens, were distributed at electoral rallies. In Ela Nguema,
a working class district of the capital, about 20-million African francs (€30
000, $46 000) in banknotes were handed out, according to national radio and
television. While money was distributed at election meetings, candidates
confined themselves to reading out the president's "message" and policies.
State media reported that smaller parties had been given more than €1,1-million
($1,7-million) and luxury cars to campaign for "the expansion of Obiang
Nguema Mbasogo's work".
Strangely enough there were no
protests from a cowed and beaten population nor street demonstrations. Apathy
and disgust were the rules. There was also no protest or demonstrations by the
‘international community’ against this travesty of the political process. No UN
Security Council protests were made. There was more international publicity and
fuss when Simon Mann, Nick de Toit and their Merrie Men attempted a coup
against Obiang than at this election.
The reason is clear. Equatorial
Guinea is awash with oil and natural gas. Equatorial Guinea has experienced
rapid economic growth due to the discovery of large offshore oil reserves, and
has become Sub-Saharan Africa’s third largest oil exporter after Nigeria and
Angola. According to the World Bank, oil revenues increased in value from $3
million in 1993 to $190 million in 2000 to $3.3 billion in 2006. From 2002 to
2006 the country experienced an average real annual GDP growth of 15.8 percent.
Oil exports currently represent over 90 percent of total export earnings.
However, a slowdown in oil production has caused GDP growth to decelerate to
6.8 percent in 2007.
This oil wealth has yet to reach the
people. Despite the rapid growth in real GDP, allegations abound over how the
Equatoguinean government has misappropriated its oil revenues. While the
government has made some infrastructure improvements to bolster the oil
industry, the average Equatoguinean has yet to experience a higher standard of
living from the oil revenues as evidenced by the country’s ranking of 120 (out
of 177) on the human development index in 2006. In January 2005, Equatorial
Guinea pledged to increase transparency in its oil revenues and is currently
implementing the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).
Currently, foreign oil companies are beginning to make development related
investments in education (Amerada Hess) and malaria prevention (Marathon Oil
and Noble Energy).
According to the Oil and Gas
Journal, Equatorial Guinea had estimated proved oil reserves of 1.1 billion
barrels as of January 2007. The majority of these reserves are located offshore
in the oil rich Gulf of Guinea. Since the 1995 discovery of the Zafiro field,
Equatorial Guinea's oil production has increased dramatically. In 1995, oil
production was 5,000 barrels per day (bbl/d), which increased to 385,970 b/d in
2006. While there has been some discussion of capping oil production in order
to extend the life of the fields and prevent economic instability, the
government appears reluctant to implement any measures that would slow
development.
According to the OGJ, Equatorial Guinea
had 1.3 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven natural gas reserves as of January
1, 2007. The majority of the reserves are located offshore Bioko Island,
primarily in the Alba and Zafiro associated natural gas fields. From 2001 -
2006, Equatoguinean natural gas production increased rapidly from 1 billion
cubic feet (Bcf) to 46 Bcf as new projects came online. The country is
currently marketing itself as a regional gas industry hub based on the recent
completion of an LNG facility on Bioko Island and plans for its expansion.
A license to drill for oil or
process natural gas in Equatorial Guinea is a prized achievement. Certainly it
outweighs any concerns about democracy, equality under the law, the end of
torture as a method of rule and such fripperies as free and fair elections.
Poor Zimbabwe doesn’t have oil, ergo
it can be a target for the ‘international community’. Equatorial Guinea has
masses of oil and this buys them immunity from scrutiny and protest. The
‘international community’ is corrupt and morally bankrupt. It is unlikely to
change.
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Gary K. Busch 
Posted by Robot| 06.05.2008 17:47