Barthélemy Boganda

Barthélemy Boganda ( April 4, 1910 - March 29, 1959 ) was a politician of what would later become the Central African Republic .

Barthélemy Boganda on a contemporary postage stamp

priest

After training at a Catholic seminary, he was ordained a priest in 1939 . For the next ten years he worked at various mission stations. His church career ended in 1949 when he married a French woman.

Politician

Boganda became the leading politician in what was then the French colony of Ubangi-Shari in the 1950s . In the elections of November 10, 1946, he became a member of the French National Assembly . Politically, he oriented himself towards the French party Mouvement républicain populaire (MRP) . He was rare in Paris and founded the Mouvement pour l'évolution sociale de l'Afrique noire (MESAN) party in Central Africa on September 28, 1949 .

prime minister

United States of Latin Africa proposed by Boganda in 1957

After Gaston Defferres loi-cadre came into force in 1956, he formed a government for his country and also became mayor of the capital Bangui . In September 1958 he supported de Gaulle's constitutional referendum for the V Republic , which was passed in Ubangi-Shari with 98.1% of the vote. On December 8, 1958, he became Prime Minister of the now autonomous Central African Republic. The Territorial Assembly adopted his draft constitution on February 16, 1959.

United States of Latin Africa

An important concern for Boganda was to secure the unity of the states of the previous French Equatorial Africa for the future, which failed due to the resistance of the relatively wealthy Gabon under Léon M'ba . As a counterweight to the Arab and formerly British regions of Africa, Boganda proposed the merger of the former French, Portuguese, Spanish and Belgian colonies of Central Africa to form Les Etats-Unis de l'Afrique Latine (French) and Estados Unidos da África Latina (Portuguese) in 1957. in front.

death

Boganda's death in a plane crash in 1959 plunged his country into crisis. As his successor, his cousin David Dacko prevailed against the brief Prime Minister Abel Goumba . Another of his relatives, Jean-Bédel Bokassa , overthrew Dacko in 1966. As early as May 1963, Boganda's originally democratic MESAN had been converted into a unity party .

Trivia

• The flag designed by Boganda was originally introduced in 1958 for the planned United States of Latin Africa and was retained under the name Central African Republic on August 13, 1960 after the country gained independence .
• The day of his death is a public holiday in the Central African Republic .
• The stadium of the capital Bangui was named in his honor Complexe Sportif Barthélemy Boganda .
• In the TV series The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones (episode On the River of Death, December 1916 ), Barthélemy Boganda is rescued by Belgian soldiers from a jungle village depopulated by a smallpox epidemic and placed in the care of religious sisters in a fictional plot .

literature

• Barthélemy Boganda , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 25/1959 of June 8, 1959, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)