François Tombalbaye

François Tombalbaye

François Tombalbaye around 1970

François (Ngarta) Tombalbaye ( Arabic فرنسوا تومبالباي, DMG Franswā Tūmbālbāi , born June 15, 1918 in Bedaya ; † April 13, 1975 in N'Djamena ) was the first president of Chad from 1960 to 1975 .

Early years

Tombalbaye came from a merchant family in southern Chad, which was part of French Equatorial Africa . He was born in Bedaya village, his parents were Protestants and belonged to the Sara-Madjingaye ethnic group . After attending school, he became a teacher and later union chairman. In Fort-Archambault he built the local association of the Parti Progressiste Tchadien (PPT) party founded by Gabriel Lisette in 1947 , part of the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA) collection movement .

Politician

From March 1952 he was a member of the PPT in the Territorial Assembly and was elected to the Council of French Equatorial Africa in 1957, of which he later became vice-president. He became Prime Minister of Chad in May 1959 after Lisette resigned due to increasing tensions between the north and south of the country. In the elections on May 31, 1959, the PPT received 57 of the 85 seats. With the independence of Chad from France he became president and also took over the defense ministry, in addition he remained head of government. His hope of preserving the unity of the former French Equatorial Africa in the interests of the relatively poor Chad was not fulfilled.

president

Tombalbayes PPT had a dominant position in parliament in 1960 with 67 of the 83 deputies. Opposition came mainly from the Muslim north of the country, even if the Northern Party, Parti National Africain (PNA) only had ten seats. After negotiations, Tombalbaye achieved the unification of both parties in March 1961. Other opposition parties were subsequently banned. In August 1962 he dissolved the National Assembly and governed increasingly autocratic , the PPT became a unity party . At the same time he began to nationalize the state apparatus, replacing French officials with local officials who were generally less competent. To finance this process, he took out a "loan" from the population, which was reflected in a strong tax increase. He was confirmed as president on April 22, 1962 and June 15, 1969, with no opposing candidates.

The greatest criticism of his Africanization program was that he left out the large Muslim-Goran part of the population in the north and the center of the country, which did not identify with the African south. The main opposition group was the Front de Liberation Nationale ( FROLINAT ), which had waged a guerrilla war against the government since 1966 . On November 1, 1965, uprisings in Guéra Prefecture claimed five hundred lives. This led to unrest in the north and center of the country, in which the neighboring states of Libya and Sudan were also involved. The most important movement at this time was the National Liberation Front of Chad (FROLINAT), whose center was the Tibesti and which also operated from Sudan. However, like all other groups in the region, it has been weakened by rivalries and division. Nevertheless, Tombalbaye's government was unable to get the rebels under control, which forced him to invoke agreements with France and ask for help. French troops intervened in the conflict several times between 1965 and 1972.

France demanded a series of reforms of the army , government and state apparatus in return for its intervention . Taxes and laws that Tombalbaye had arbitrarily enacted were to be revoked and the sultans were to be reinstated as tax collectors (they received 10 percent of the income for this). He agreed, and from 1969 a gradual liberalization process began in the country. Several hundred political prisoners were released on the occasion of the 1969 elections.

Another step towards liberalization took place in 1971 when Tombalbaye admitted to the PPT Congress that it had made mistakes. Government reform measures have been taken and more Gorans have been involved in forming the government. Progress came to an abrupt halt in August 1971 when an attempted coup with ties to Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi was exposed. Tombalbaye's attitude towards his neighbor in the north immediately became more aggressive, he even allowed anti-Gaddafi groups to operate from his country and broke off diplomatic relations with Libya. Thereupon Gaddafi supported the remnants of the FROLINAT opposition with formal recognition and help. Meanwhile, Tombalbaye responded to a student strike in the south by replacing the respected Chief of Staff Jacques Doumro with Colonel Félix Malloum . Like the entire Sahel region, the country was ravaged by a severe drought , and Tombalbaye lifted the amnesty for political prisoners. By the end of 1972, over 1,000 people had been arrested. At the same time he tried to reconcile himself with the Arab world in order to weaken Libyan support for FROLINAT and to stir up power struggles there. In 1973 Libyan troops occupied the Aouzou Strip . In return for the Chadian acceptance of the de facto annexation of the area, Libya promised to stop supporting the guerrilla group FROLINAT. Still, Tombalbaye felt insecure about its own government. In a bizarre series of events, he had high-ranking PPT leaders, including Félix Malloum, arrested for allegedly trying to overthrow him using magic in what became known as the "Black Sheep Plot" for allegedly sacrificing sheep . In August 1973 Tombalbaye dissolved the PPT and replaced it with the National Movement for Social and Cultural Revolution Mouvement National pour la Révolution Culturelle et Sociale (MNRCS). In the period that followed, an Africanization campaign began: The capital Fort-Lamy was renamed N'Djamena and Tombalbaye changed his first name from François to Ngarta. The Christianity was disparaged, missionaries expelled and all non-Muslim men aged between 16 and 50 had traditional initiation rites, known as Yondo , to endure, to be included in the military or the civil service. However, these rites were peculiar to only one ethnic group of Chad, Tombalbaye's own Sara tribe. To everyone else, these rituals seemed strange and incomprehensible.

Meanwhile the drought worsened. In order to improve the economic situation, many were forced to work in cotton production. With weaker support in the south, Tombalbaye took on the army and arbitrarily pronounced promotions and demotions. Finally, on April 13, 1975, after some of the country's leading officers were arrested for participating in an alleged conspiracy, a group of soldiers killed Tombalbaye and installed Félix Malloum , now general, as the new president.

See also

• History of Chad

literature

• Ronald Segal: African Profiles. Prestel 1963

Web links

• Election results in African Elections Database (English)
• Article on Tombalbaye's term of office, Paris 1996 (French)