- CONGO Students challenge neo-colonial regime LAST NOVEMBER saw thousands of Congolese school students on the streets in anti-government protests (see International Viewpoint, No 90, January 13, 1986). This highlighted the extent of the crisis reached by the country's neo-colonial regime, which all its Marxist-Leninist rhetoric could not conceal.
The movement expressed the discontent of the youth in the face of austerity policies being implemented by a corrupt regime. It also reflected similar sentiments amongst the masses as a whole. These events revealed the nature and form of neo-colonial domination and exploitation which exists in most Black African states, whatever the political regime. They show that beyond the anti-imperialist speeches and the professions of faith of the regime there exists a military clique, based on a particular ethnic group, implementing widespread repression of the masses.
presidential guard who were shielding him.
Incidents continued in the Quinze ans quarter of the city in particular, until midday, as the school students made their return journey. The result was 11 wounded.
After a relatively calm Sunday the movement began again on November 11, this time on a still more intense level. It erupted first in the School of the Liberation where the students, after chasing the headmaster out, organised a mass meeting of all the school students. They divided up into groups who were responsible for rounding up students from other schools and colleges (the May 1 Technical School and the Red Flag and Lumumba schools) and the students from the university. Some went to the Sassou-Nguesso palace to show their opposition to the measures taken by the government and to demand the withdrawal of the minister for youth and sports, Oba-Apounou, from the secretariat of the UJSC of which he is a member.
After being prevented from entering the palace by the presidential guard who opened fire, the school students attacked the administrative buildings, smashed windows in nearby ministries and set about any cars which happened to be in the parking lot.
Other young people attacked the Ecole de la Jeunesse (school for young people), set up by Oba-Apounou, and the university rectory because of the refusal of students there to support the school students. Throughout the morning the students dominated the stunned and panicked city, shouting their slogans in the streets: For grants without competitions, or 'Sassou-thief. The school and college students also attacked any symbols of power and wealth that they came across on their way. They smashed the windows of certain shops and banks and ransacked official or luxury cars. The youth have had enough!
A military truck carrying supplies was pillaged and the driver was forced to flee. The residence of the president of the National Assembly and of the minister for youth and sports were also the object of attacks by the groups of young people.
One group of students went and placed flowers on the grave of the former president of the republic, Marien Ngouabi, whilst another chanted slogans supporting expresident Yombi-Opango, shouting: sassou-thiel, omb to power. 'Sassou-thief, Yombi to power!' International Viewpoint 10 February 1986
MICHEL LAGUENAUD
Saturday, November 9, 1985, saw the opening in the Palais des Congres in Brazzaville of the fifth congress of the youth organisation affiliated to the dominant single party - the Union of Socialist Youth of the Congo (UJSC).
According to custom the students were obliged to pay tribute and form the guard of honour for the delegates and dignitaries of the regime. In honour of the occasion students from the teacher-training colleges (CEG) and second-year school students from Brazzaville were freed from their classes for the task.
On this occasion to everyone's great surprise school and college students arrived en masse chanting the slogan, 'a grant for everyone, without competition' [la bourse pour tous sans concours!]. They were carrying banners and writing this slogan on the walls of school and other buildings along the route. They were responding to the decision of the Council of Ministers on November 6 to suspend the system of an automatic grant awarded to every student who passed the baccalaureat [exam] and wished to continue their studies at university. This system was to be replaced by a competition to award the grants.
When they arrived at the UJSC congress venue the school students threw themselves at the security 18 forces who, once over the initial surprise, charged at them, wounding several. The students responded by throwing stones at official cars parked round the Palais des Congres. The minister of secondary and higher education, who was a particular target, was forced to flee. And for the first time, the president of the republic, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, was forced to use the back door in order to get into the Palais des Congres, without a fanfare or an escort apart from some Cuban commandos of the
RÉPUBLIQUE
Bangui
CONGO
C. AFRI
•Lopi
C.
Dongoug
Ngoila ®
R.
Ouesso•
Implonda
M
2
•Lebango
Mossaka
CONGO
Djambala
•Omoi
Dolisie
BRAZZAVILLE pre éopoldville
Noice
Cabinda
That day the confrontation with the police force was extremely violent. Their forces were deployed very early in the areas around the schools and they showed themselves to be especially brutal. They tried to disperse the students with gunfire and created panic amongst the population and the traders. The police were subsequently reinforced by air and artillery army batallions. The balance sheet of the day was fairly impressive: four dead and about thirty seriously wounded. Amongst the wounded was the head of careers and grants officer and a commissaire of police.
Throughout Monday military trucks patrolled the city unceasingly whilst armoured cars were sent to special strategic points. The next day, Tuesday, the regime shut down all educational establishments in Brazzaville and put the whole town under
President Sassou — Nguesso on an official visit in Paris in 1983 (DR)
Ville and put the whole own under tight police control.
In order to understand the reasons for the November 9 and 11 demonstrations, which were the first since November 1971 (1), it is important to look at two aspects of the crisis of the regime in Congo. First, the economic crisis, capped off by tensions within the state apparatus and the crisis of the school system. Second, and above all, it is important to examine the reasons why the government announced the new measures on the eve of the youth organisation's congress.
The youth organisation is affiliated to the ruling Congolese Party of Labour (PCT) and the usual tactic of the government was to proceed through consultations prior to taking action even if such consulation was purely for show. (2) Undoubtedly, the government was so convinced of its ability to control the mass movement that it thought that it could take these measures and that the UJSC congress would give their support in spite of everything. Also the government must have been relying on the Sunday rest day to quieten down the protest movement. The fact that the movement actually began to grow on the Monday shows just how profound the discontent was.
The Congolese economy, in the last five years, has, in large part, if not exclusively, been built up on the basis of oil production. From 1979 to 1982, the Congo's oil production went up by 20%, which provoked a real euphoria in the country. From the returns on this the ruling class was able to launch three different projects:
- A restructuring of the ruling class by deliberately concealing the tensions between the rival factions within the state apparatus, in order to guarantee the durability of an ethnocentric and regionalist military power;
A widening of its social base through a clever policy of redistribution of oil payments via ethnic or family networks or through a large pool of brokers;
- The financing of a five-year plan aimed essentially to create a road network supposedly to open up the country's hinterland but in reality concentrated on the north of the country where the president of the republic comes from.
Since 1983, however, the Congo has had to face a stagnation and even a decline in overall oil production from six million tons in 1984 to 5.5 million in 1985. This was combined with a fall in the price of oil and in the value of the dollar. At the same time debt repayments are continually going up and in 1985 they represented 40% of the revenue from oil, that is 140 thousand million CFA francs as compared with 18 thousand million CFA francs in 1980 (one dollar equals about 375 CFA francs).
The Congolese ruling class have thus had to pay a price for their own economic stupidity characterised by an investment budget of which 55% was allocated to buildings and public works as against 12% allocated to agriculture which should have been the major priority; and a foreign trade policy which saw 45 thousand million CFA francs devoted to the importing of basic agricultural foodstuffs. There developed a state sector which was grossly and artificially inflated in order to enlarge the social base of the regime. This sector now employs 38,000 people and shows a net deficit of 30 thousand million CFA francs. There is also a higher rate of inflation in 1985 than all the other neighbouring countries.
Faced with the refusal of France to spread out the payments of the bipartite debt, which increased to 40 thousand million CFA francs in 1983, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) intervened in order to force the Congolese leaders to cut down on operational expenditure and to slash the investment budget especially in regard to the road-building programme.
In spite of a timid opposition by the PCT the Congolese leaders ended up conceding to the IMF demands by elaborating a whole programme of measures to accompany the five-year plan. This was known as the Programme for Structural Adjustment (PAS). It is nothing more than an austerity plan tailormade for the IMF. The regime's political and economic crisis
In the meantime the Congolese leaders had taken certain precautions. They had organised a series of information campaigns throughout the country to explain that the PAS was not a mere IMF decree but a rational solution. Such campaigns were aimed to pacify the bewildered base of the regime as well as sections of the army who were beginning to grumble. To this end the prime minister had to explain that the army was not affected by the PAS and that the road-building programme would go ahead whatever the cost. This pointed up the dilemma facing the ruling class: whether to continue with the road building and risk the wrath of the IMF or whether to interrupt the programme
1. From 1970 to 1974, there were several demonstrations and strikes of students and school students in the Congo. However, the 1971 strike was the only one which was exclusively organised by school students.
2. A few days before its congress, the UJSC was officially made the youth organisation of the PCT.
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International Viewpoint 10 February 1986
and undergo the scrutiny of the people. All this was in light of the fact that the roads which remained to be built (even those in the North) were not those linked directly to the president's region.
In fact the PAS, rather than attacking the regime's absurd schemes or the exorbitant financial benefits accrued by its representatives, largely attacked the workers and peasants, the school students and students by proposing a decrease in wages; the abolition of automatic grants; and a decrease in the health and education budgets and cutbacks in publicservice personnel. (3)
From this point onward it was , his point reasonable to suppose that the restrictions imposed by the IMF would, on the one hand, bring about a disintegration of the social base of the regime and on the other, a resurfacing of the divisions within the ruling class, which had been obscured since Sassou-Nguesso's coming to power on February 5, 1979. (4)
It was most probably in preparation for such an eventuality that Sassou-Nguesso provoked a crisis within the PCT Central Committee by accusing the regime's number two, JP Tehistere-Tchicaya of wanting to destabilise the country, through attributing to him the responsibility for the February 1982 bomb attack on Brazzaville airport which left several dead. (5)
Despite the lack of real charges against him, Tchistere-Tchicaya was thrown out of the government, put under house arrest and then jailed. This manoeuvre enabled the president to get rid of all his enemies in one fell swoop by relegating them to junior posts (6) and to consolidate almost absolute power into his own hands (as president, head of state, president of the council of ministers, head of government, minister of defence in charge of state security), by leaning on his family clan (7) and certain members of the February 22 Movement (M22). The most eminent of these was Camille Bongou the permanent secretary of the PCT and the second most important person in the regime. (8)
However, after the third congress of the PCT in July 1983, which confirmed Sassou-Nguesso's victory, the divisions began to re-emerge. First, at the Central Committee plenum in July 1985, where SassouNguesso launched a very violent attack against Pierre Nze, a former minister of foreign affairs, which was aimed cuite simply at getting him off aimed quite simply at getting him ort the Central Committee in a similar way to Tehistere-Tchicaya. But SassouNguesso had not taken account of the wiliness of this former bureau. the wiliness of this former bureaucrat of the Federation of Black 20
African Students of France (FEANE). Accused of having enfringed the principles of democratic centralism by putting out his analysis of the national political situation in the foreign press, Nze succeeded in turning the accusation around and pleading on behalf of the workers who, through the PAS, were being made to bear the brunt of the mess the regime was in. His break with democratic centralism, he explained, stemmed from profound disagreement with the conduct of economic affairs in the country. He finished by demanding that government leaders bring home the 'thousands of millions of CFA francs stashed away in Swiss or Brazilian bank accounts'. For the first time SassouNguesso found himself in a minority and Pierre Nze was not excluded.
Other internal conflicts emerged leading up to the preparation of the fifth congress of the UJSC and came to a head around a conflict between the president of the republic and the permanent secretary of the PCT, Camille Bongou. For the latter there was no doubt that the post of the first secretary should be separated from that of the minister for youth and sports. Sassou-Nguesso was, rightly, afraid that the departure of his nephew from the position of general secretary of the UJSC would reduce his capacity to keep an eye on the youth and so he categorically rejected the proposal.
A leaflet put out on this occasion exhorted, in the current jargon, 'the revolutionary forces to be extra vigilant to ensure that those people who had favoured the death of Marien Ngouabi did not bring about the downfall of President Sassou-Nguesso.' Such people's 'dark designs had already been realised since they had managed to prise the president away from his comrades of February 5, such as X Katali, PD Ngolo, JP Tchistere-Tchicaya, L Sylvain-Ngoma'
This leaflet, obviously produced by the leadership of the UJSC under
Such aberrations are legion: at the time of the adoption by the PCT of the PAS in the July, 1983, congress, the government coming out of the congress was increased by five ministers. The apparatus of the party doubled its number of fulltime workers. More recently, the secretariat coming out of the last congress of the UJSC went from 15 to 25 members, all party functionaries with a monthly salary of 372,000 CFA francs. The council of ministers voted for a law which increased the president's salary to 2.5 million CFA francs from 1.5 million.
For a more thorough analysis of the economic and political situation in the Congo in the last few years see 'Inprecor" (IV's sister publication), No 101, May 13, 1981, and 'IV' No 48, March
Oh. Anounou constituted a thinlv Oba-Apounou, constituted a thinly veiled invitation to reconsider the current alliance between the president of the republic and the penitent members of the M22 and a clear invocation to go back to the former leadership team, which came directly out of February 5, 1979.
The struggle for the control of the UJSC apparatus had dominated the scene in the last while and this is what made everyone assume that the school students' demonstrations on November 9 and 11 were just the latest expression of the trial of strength between the M22 faction and the Sassou-Nguesso faction. In fact, the latter, who was taken by surprise by the school students' actions, started blaming almost everyone for having started them. He blamed the religious groups who had not yet been recognised or legalised; he blamed the prime minister for not taking into account the situation in society at large before implementing certain measures; and he blamed YombiOpango supporters, because some of the | demonstrators were shouting, *Long live Yombi, Yombi to power'. The response of the trade unions
In the case of this last suggestion, the regime brought forward circumstantial evidence to support the thesis that Yombi-Opango supporters were manipulating the naive school students. Trade union meetings and meetings of parents were organised around the theme of 'we must learn to look after our children so that they cannot be misled'. A meeting of support for the president would also be prepared at the same time. But these meetings, instead of being sessions to register support for the regime, produced discussions which ended up questioning government constitutional council was created.
The Oyo clan, named after the village where the president of the republic was born, has seven members in the government and in the Central Committee of the PCT and 14 on the Central Committee of the USJC. The most well known are Ndinga-Oba, minister of foreign affairs, and Oba-Apounou, minister of youth and sports and first secretary of the UJSC, respectively uncle and nephew of Sassou Nguesso.
8. The February 22 Movement (M22) came out of the mobilisations of August 1963. For several years this organisation appeared as the repository of the main gains of the mobilisations. But the logic of entering into the state apparatus caught up with it after the downturn in the mobilisation and the decline of the movement. This led many leaders of the movement to openly join up with the regime.
9. The same decree which abolished the automatic grant system also forbad certain religious sects. Moreover, the prime minister was summoned to explain himself on television and before the UJSC congress. International Viewpoint 10 February 1986
12. 1984.
12, 1984.
This
5.
fact
Tchistere-Tchicaya the members of of the PCT.
The most is reported by Madame in an open letter to
Committee the Central blatant case is that of the prime minister, Louis Sylvain Ngoma, for whom the post of president of the
measures to abolish the automatic grant. For the trade unionists and the parents alike realised that the grant constituted a source of revenue for ordinary families who have one or even several children registered at university.
The leadership of the Congolese Trade-Union Confederation (CSC) asked each federation to make proposals on this. The documents produced by the federations went beyond the simple compilation of good advice and became real political texts. This was especially true in the case of the federation of bank workers (FESYBAC) (see box).
23
U Cd MARIER NGOVABI
LOIRE IMMORTELLE AUCE MARIER NGOUABI
Immortal glory for the former president but what for the people? (DR)
During a meeting of support for the regime, Sassou-Nguesso, whilst maintaining his accusations against the 'dark forces' tried to tone down the government proposals by inviting *all the mass organisations and all parents to find new ways to allocate the grant, given that it cost the state almost ten thousand million CFA francs'. This statement represented a slight retreat by the government.
The accusations being thrown around by the authorities that the students' actions were motivated by different factions are basically without foundation. They betray a panic, which increased when the November 9 and 11 demonstrations began to affect the Poto-Poto and Ouenze quarters. These areas are largely populated by those ethnic groups of the North which make up the social and ethnic base of the regime much more than the Bakongo areas do.
The students who were arrested swore that they did not belong to any political group and asserted that the slogans supporting Yombi that they had chanted were intended as pure provocation. This could well be the case since the leaflet given out the next day by supporters of Yombi itself indicated an obvious mistrust of the motives for the school students' demonstration. On the other hand, it is not exeluded that some supporters of the ex-president were involved with the demonstrators especially in the Ouenze quarter. (10) The regime therefore had to face the fact that this represented a massive rejection of its policies among its own social base as well. The November 9 and 11 school students' movement was a spontaneous expression of popular discontent which was felt deeply by young people. It was, above all, dictated by the objective situation into which the PAS was forcing people. That is why this movement received the backing of the whole population and even some sections of the army.
More specifically, the school students' revolt on November 9 and
11 was also an expression of a fundamental crisis of the neo-colonial education system. The system is based on contradictions which it is becoming more and more difficult to overcome in the current financial and economic situation. The contradiction stems from the weakness of an economy structured around extraneous needs, which, during a period of stagnation, has had to absorb an influx of new students. This was aggravated by the fact that the government, instead of consolidating the productive system, got itself into debt in the excitement over oil and then ended up introducing an austerity policy under the diktats of the IMF.
The Congolese school system is not very different from any colonial system in that it provides a general education geared to a job in the government bureaucracy. The SassouNguesso regime and its five-year plan did not improve on this.
Coupled with the creation of the road network, whose effect was to bring the rural population to Brazzaville (the population has increased by 155,000 inhabitants in six years), the school system has helped discourage young people from going into agriculture. This has led to a constant decrease in the labour force and a massive rural exodus. Indeed it could not be otherwise since the peasantry gets no help from the government, and the agricultural schools in Loubomo, Ngoyo and Mouyondzi only receive 48,000 CFA francs in yearly subsidies to cover about 200 students each.
The PCTs reaction, however, is to do nothing but praise the example of the town of Ouesso in the Sangha region, which is the centre of cocoa beans. They do not mention that the cocoa-bean plantations are dying off because of the rural exodus and that the drinking chocolate served up at breakfast comes from the Cameroon.
The school system in the Congo is thus aimed at internalisation and consolidation of the market relation of forces in which economic power is concentrated in the hands of a minority. The productive apparatus is dominated by imperialism, and therefore the possibility of extracting economic surplus or even of an enjoying some social advancement can only be realised in the sphere of distribution (trade and business) and within the bureaucratic apparatus of the regime for which the school equips you. The regime contributes to this by building phoney schools like the PCT school or the Ecole de la Jeunesse, which train civil servants and service the PCT but are paid by the state. These schools have managed to intice 1,062 teachers away from primary education in seven years in order to throw them into the PCT and UJSC apparatus. This is in a country which had only 6,892 teachers in 1978 when the haemorrhage began.
Despite their socialist rhetoric, the ruling class is very attached to the dominant relation of social forces, and under pressure of more demand for schooling in the Congo they have had to impose a more and more strict selection system. (11)
November 9 and 11 saw the beginnings of a new type of school- and college-student movement. It was much less an expression of a political radicalisation characteristic of the stu-
10. We note, all the same, that in its frenzied burst of reorganisation, the regime cancelled the participation of Congolese football clubs in competitions abroad. This measure hit the military football club as well as the club 'Etoile Rouge' in the Ouenze quarter. The latter club has always symbolised the unity of the North, and it is very probable that this measure was seen as a break-up of alliances and a betrayal by the authorities. Many supporters therefore took part in demonstrations to protest against this decision.
11. From 1969 to 1984, the number of those attending school trebled, with an annual rate of 10%, that is, nearly 3.5 times more than the rate of increase of the population. At the level of secondary education, the number of students went up by 467% in ten years. More and more parents have to take charge of the provision of local school equipment and have even had to contribute furniture on occasions. There are still many students who have to take classes sitting on the floor.
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International Viewpoint 10 February 1986
FESYBAC WE ARE publishing below some extracts from a document drafted November 18, 1985, by the Trade Union Federation of Banks (FESYBAC) for the Congolese Trade Union Confederation. The text, which incorporates the thoughts of the trade union delegation, is intended to answer the directive of the permanent secretariat of the Congolese Trade Union Confederation (CSC) dated November 13, 1985, concerning the current political situation expressed by the events of November 9 and 11, 1985.
On the political level, this document notes the increasingly bourgeois direction of government members and of political leaders, a direction that does not differentiate them from the behaviour of the capitalists, and further notes their 'authoritarianism' and the 'tendency to the development of a personality cult'. The text also criticises the feudal character of the trade union, expressing itself through the lack of militancy of the members of the trade-union leadership' and it 'condemns the act of the military who fired on unarmed people' . The regime is judged to be 'too needlessly police-like' and reference is made to the unpopularity of policies for which the regime is supposedly accountable, but which are in reality forced' on the country.
On the economic level, the PAS was presented as 'the consequence of bad management of public affairs. But 'the government's base feels the effects of the PAS while statement the political leaders become increasingly bourgeois'. The negative financial situation of the public sector was analysed as revealing a 'poor choice of management by the political leadership'. Also given as causes are 'the bad choice of projects' and 'prestige spending.
A series of social objectives in the fields of health, education and nutritional self-sufficiency were reaffirmed.
The following proposals were finally put forward: 'permanent contact with the government's base for a better dissemination of information; reinforcement of the South-South economic dialogue; grants-in-aid from the treasury as a priority to children of the poor and to the most deserving; decentralisation of the university system; strengthening of a system of control over examinations in order to avoid evasion; a census of foreigners in the country; reduction of operating expenses, civil service salaries and advantages for political officers; consolidation of a number of ministries and secretariats of the central committee; holding a national conference on education in the Congo; the development of a patriotic spirit in the members of the Popular National Army (APN)'
And the document ends with the following commentary:
*With the collection of all this information the workers of FESYBAC hope that the political leadership will reflect on the discontentment manifested here' dent struggles in May 1968 and of the National Youth Movement of the National Youth Movement of the Revolution (JMNR) which came out of it. (12) This new radicalisation is the product of a crisis of the neocolonial states. The specific demands of the movement are the best expression of this. They also demonstrate the movement's objective limitations.
Very early on, this movement showed both its strengths and the limits of its strietly economic goals. In demanding the withdrawal of Oba-Apounou from the head of the UJSC, and in denouncing prevarication (they demanded What have you done with the oil revenues') the youth have spontaneously made the links between the economic and political situation. The hardening of the movement which has been noticeable from. November 11 is the product of this development. For although initially spontaneous, the school-student revolt has shown a continuing maturation.
Although the November 9 and 11 moment can be characterised as being essentially around economic demands, it also showed itself to be radicalising politically by attacking the symbols of the regime. (13) The students denounced wastage and corruption. They built a united movement that swept away those ethnic divisions which weigh so heavily against collective awareness.
Also, on the ground, the movement showed a real capacity for organisation by setting up liaison between the different schools, by outsmarting police traps and in organising general assemblies in the playgrounds. 22
One problem, lack of solidari however, was the ty from i students which still exists in the schools and colleges.
lack or solidarity trom students in higher education for the school students' struggle, even though the latter went to the campuses for assistance. The movement could have broadened out and involved students outside of Brazzaville as well. But because of these problems it remained focused on the capital city. Today, the students, tomorrow, the workers.
The movement was full of contradictions throughout. We just have to look at the example of the flowers placed at the foot of Marien Ngouabi's statue. It is true that for a whole generation of young people brought up on a diet of PCT ideology, Marien Ngouabi is a symbol — especially since a large section of the youth were not part of the tradition of school-student struggles initiated during the 1971 strikes.
It is obvious that the November 1985 school students' movement has had to pay the price of a certain lack of direction which would have allowed it to coordinate its activity with other educational establishments in Brazzaville; to prepare actions outside; to stamp its own political line on the movement so that it could not be used by any faction within the neocolonial regime (such as the Yombi supporters or others); and above all. would have allowed it to prepare activity after November 11. The apparent calm which followed these events does not hide the tension colleges.
The only resort for the SassouNguesso was repression. More than sixty people were taken in for questioning by police and some students are still in prison and have been beaten and tortured. As well as maintaining the demand for 'grants without competitions, , the school students now have to take up the demand for the release of their comrades.
Today it is the students who are going into action; tomorrow it will be the turn of the workers, when they begin to feel the pinch of the PAS. Civil servants have already felt it in the form of a cut in wages last November, which was portrayed as an increase in pension contributions.
In any case the school students' movement must find a way to unite with trade unions and organisations of parents who, as the FESYBAC document shows, are more and more opposed to the idea that their children should pay for the regime's mess.
12. The JMNR was the youth organisation of the MNR, the ruling group in the country after the August, 1963 revolt which overthrew the Fulbert Youlou regime. Although not really autonomous from the party, the JMNR appeared as a more radical current with its armed units, references to Che Guevara, control of the popular quarters etc.
13. Contrary to what the state-controlled press said, the only things that were touched were the symbols of the regime (black cars belonging to PCT high-ups), places and objects representing capitalist over-consumption from the oil revenues (supermarkets, Mercedes cars etc) and residences of certain important people who were particularly hated such Oba-Apounou and the figurehead president of the National Assembly, Ganga Zanzou.
International Viewpoint 10 February 1986