Félix Houphouët-Boigny

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Félix Houphouët-Boigny (1962)

Félix Houphouët-Boigny [ feˈliks ufwɛbwaˈɲi ] (born October 18, 1905 in Yamoussoukro ; †  December 7, 1993 ) was a doctor and politician . He was the first President of the Ivory Coast from 1960 to 1993 .

doctor

Houphouët-Boigny came from the family of the chiefs of the Akoué clan in the village of Yamoussoukro, who worked as planters. From 1915 he attended upper primary school in what was then the capital, Bingerville . From 1919 he attended the École normal William Ponty and from 1921 the Medical Academy of Dakar . After a shortened course of study, he graduated as an assistant doctor in 1925 and practiced until 1940.

Politician

In the Ivory Coast

In 1939 he became chief and worked as a planter. The discrimination against African planters led him to found the Syndicat Agricole Africain (SAA), the African farmers' syndicate , in 1944 . As chairman of this organization with around 20,000 - mostly wealthy - members, he had a nationwide political base. One concern was the fight against the forced labor practiced on many plantations .

The Parti Démocratique de Côte d'Ivoire (PDCI) emerged from this organization at the end of 1945, adding intellectuals and students from Abidjan to the previously rural base of Houphouët-Boigny .

In France

In the elections to the constituent assemblies in Paris , he was elected as a member of parliament in November 1945 and June 1946. In Paris, Houphouët-Boigny joined the "Republican Resistance Union" allied with the Communists . After the first draft for the constitution of the fourth republic failed in a referendum and the second draft provided fewer rights for the overseas territories, the African MPs met in Bamako in October 1946 . There Houphouët-Boigny was elected chairman of the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA) collection movement , to which most of the leading figures in French Africa belonged. In the elections of November 1946 he became a member of the National Assembly . His close collaborators included the future President of Guinea , Ahmed Sékou Touré .

After the communists left the government, the RDA came under pressure from the colonial authorities. After bloody unrest in the Ivory Coast, an arrest warrant was issued against Houphouët-Boigny on January 24, 1950 , but his parliamentary immunity protected him from this .

Between 1951 and 1956 he led a withdrawn life. In the mid-1950s, he turned away from the communists and towards politicians like Robert Schuman and François Mitterrand . In 1956 he became minister and worked with Gaston Defferre on the loi-cadre , the framework legislation for the French overseas territories.

After the collapse of the fourth republic, he was involved in drafting the constitution for the fifth republic and was a minister under Charles de Gaulle until April 1959 .

After returning home

After returning to his homeland, he took over the government there. De Gaulle appointed him Advisory Minister of the French Community in July. In 1959, Houphouët-Boigny spoke out against the imminent independence of African states: “Africa is not yet ripe for full sovereignty. We still need a lot of time before we are mentally and economically prepared for it. That's why I am a strong supporter of the French-African Federation, which, Communauté 'in their closest ties. "End of 1959, he nevertheless chose the independence of the Ivory Coast, which entered into force on 7 August 1960.

president

Boigny with Nicolae Ceaușescu (1977)

In the elections of November 27, 1960, he was elected president with 98 percent of the vote ; in the absence of other parties, his PDCI-RDA received all seats in parliament. In his 33-year rule he maintained close ties with France, the country was considered relatively wealthy and politically stable. At the beginning of his rule, he outlined the problems of transition towards French entrepreneurs as follows:

“The danger comes from the little whites […] who do not understand the passage of time, and from the simple, ignorant Africans who expect fable things from independence. […] You, Messieurs, should make sure that your employees do not say to the Africans: 'You want to be independent and you cannot even make a matchbox!' And I, for my part, will ensure that no African threatens his European employer. 'Now we're free, and now I want to live in your house.' "

As the representative of his country in the OAU , Houphouët-Boigny advocated bilateral talks with the otherwise politically discredited state in Africa with regard to the dialogue policy of the South African President Balthazar Johannes Vorster . At an internationally recognized press conference on April 28, 1971 in Abidjan , he justified the change in foreign policy he had proposed. This triggered a controversial discussion between the OAU states, which until then had largely isolated South Africa because of its apartheid policy .

It was not until the 1980s that his rule was confronted with growing economic problems. In 1983, Houphouët-Boigny moved the capital of the Ivory Coast from the coastal city of Abidjan to his native city of Yamoussoukro inland.

Until 1990, the Ivory Coast was a one-party system under Houphouët-Boigny . In the first multi-party elections on October 28, 1990, Houphouët-Boigny got 81.68 percent of the vote, while the later President Laurent Gbagbo received 18.32 percent. In the parliamentary elections one month later, the previous unity party PDCI-RDA won 163 of the 175 seats. After Houphouët-Boigny's death, the office of president was constitutionally transferred to Henri Konan Bédié , then chairman of the National Assembly.

Relationship to the religions

Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix

Houphouët-Boigny came from an animist family. During his time in Bingerville, he converted to Catholic Christianity. On this occasion he dropped his previous first name Dia and took the new name Félix. Faith played an important role in his life. During his political retreat between 1951 and 1956, he announced that he was devoting himself to asceticism and the spread of the faith. In 1960 he told a young party cadre that he felt called by God as a politician.

Houphouët-Boigny also attached great importance to the idea of ecumenism and interreligious relationships . In December 1964, he initiated a fundraiser to build three religious buildings in the heart of Abidjan: a Catholic church, a Protestant church and a mosque. In the 1980s he had the Notre-Dame de la Paix basilica built in Yamoussoukro, modeled on St. Peter's Basilica in Rome .

Overall, Houphouët-Boigny also had a very positive relationship with traditional African Islam. His first wife, Kady (Kadija) Sow, with whom he had five children, was the daughter of a Muslim trader from Senegal and a self-practicing Muslim. He also cultivated intense friendships with various marabouts , for example with the entrepreneur Yacouba Sylla and the scholar Amadou Hampâté Bâ . The latter served him for a while as his ambassador to Mali. In 1987 he had the Great Mosque of the Riviera built in Abidjan in memory of his former lover Bintou Camara, a niece of Hampâté Bâ, which is also known as the Mosquée Bintou . Houphouët-Boigny, on the other hand, was very reserved towards Arabism. This attitude was expressed, among other things, in the fact that he refused to establish diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia until his death .

Long after Houphouët-Boigny's death, Muslim clergymen appealed to him to give greater legitimacy to their demands for cooperation between the state and religions in Ivory Coast.

Others

The Institut Polytechnique Félix-Houphouët-Boigny in Yamoussoukro and the Félix-Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize are named after Félix Houphouët-Boigny . There is also a coalition of parties called the Association of Supporters of Houphouet for Democracy and Peace (RHDP).

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Félix Houphouët-Boigny  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Peter Scholl-Latour: Murder on the great river: A quarter of a century of African independence. dtv, 1991, ISBN 3-423-11058-9 , pp. 56-60.
  2. ↑ Peter Scholl-Latour: Murder on the great river: A quarter of a century of African independence. dtv, 1991, ISBN 3-423-11058-9 , pp. 24-25.
  3. ^ Ronald Meinardus: The Africa policy of the Republic of South Africa. Bonn 1981, p. 73, ISBN 3-921614-50-3 .
  4. ↑ Cf. Marie Miran: Islam, histoire et modernité en Côte d'Ivoire. Karthala, Paris, 2006. pp. 155f.
  5. ↑ Cf. Marie Miran: Islam, histoire et modernité en Côte d'Ivoire. Karthala, Paris, 2006. p. 166.
  6. ↑ Cf. Marie Miran: Islam, histoire et modernité en Côte d'Ivoire. Karthala, Paris, 2006. p. 155.
  7. ↑ Cf. Marie Miran: Islam, histoire et modernité en Côte d'Ivoire. Karthala, Paris, 2006. pp. 156-158.
  8. ↑ Cf. Marie Miran: Islam, histoire et modernité en Côte d'Ivoire. Karthala, Paris, 2006. p. 155.
  9. ↑ Cf. Marie Miran: Islam, histoire et modernité en Côte d'Ivoire. Karthala, Paris, 2006. p. 159.
  10. ↑ Cf. Marie Miran: Islam, histoire et modernité en Côte d'Ivoire. Karthala, Paris, 2006. p. 165.
personal data
SURNAME Houphouët-Boigny, Félix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION first President of Ivory Coast
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Yamoussoukro
DATE OF DEATH 7th December 1993