Black History Month 2018: The Only Miracle

DIS A HIGH CLASS NIGGA

Equatorial Guinea is the most ridiculous country in Africa.

There isn’t much of interest to say about precolonial Equatorial Guinea. It consists of the island of Fernando Po and a swath of the mainland of Central Africa between Gabon and Cameroon. The island is named after the Portuguese explorer Fernão do Pó who first discovered it in 1472.

The Portuguese used Fernando Po and nearby islands like São Tomé and Príncipe as their forward bases in the region for the slave trade. The area was generally neglected though until the Portuguese and Spanish signed the Treaty of El Pardo which granted Spain the rights to the region between the Niger River in Nigeria and the Ogoue River in Gabon. The Spanish never succeeded in occupying the region though – it became British Nigeria and French Equatorial Africa — and Fernando Po was mainly used as a base by the Royal Navy to suppress the slave trade in Central Africa.

In the 19th and early 20th century, Spain lost its empire in Latin America. It lost Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to the United States in the Spanish-American War. Equatorial Guinea in sub-Saharan Africa, however, was of the few possessions that Spain managed to hold on to. It was a Spanish colony from 1900 until 1968. The Spanish built some plantations there and it had become the most successful country in sub-Saharan Africa when it was launched as an independent country in 1968.

EQUATORIAL GUINEA

FRANCISCO MACÍAS NGUEMA

Equatorial Guinea became an independent country under President Francisco Macías Nguema who was arguably the worst dictator of post-colonial Africa.

In 1969, he began his dictatorship with speeches denouncing Spanish imperialism, which resulted in a pogrom against the Spanish. He succeeded in exterminating his political rivals and chasing out the 7,000 Spaniards who were the country’s business owners, professionals, teachers, and civil administrators whom he quickly replaced with members of his own family and ethnic group.

The next target of Papa Macías was the church and the schools. He closed all libraries in Equatorial Guinea, banned newspapers and printing presses and banned the word ‘intellectual’. He closed all Catholic mission schools which he reoriented toward his cult of personality. Children were taught political slogans instead of Christianity like “There is no God other than Macías” and “God created Equatorial Guinea thanks to Papa Macías. Without Macías, Equatorial Guinea would not exist.” Every church was required to display a portrait of Papa Macías and priests were ordered to refer to him in their sermons as “The Only Miracle.” Eventually, he banned all religious meetings, sermons, funerals and Christian names. He outlawed Christianity and expelled foreign priests or sold them for a ransom.

Papa Macías had all the former lovers of his mistresses executed. He simply killed the husbands of the women he wanted. After he publicly executed the director of the central bank, he had a presidential palace built for him on the mainland in his native village. He retired there with the only pharmacy in Equatorial Guinea and the national treasury which he kept buried in suitcases in a bamboo hut next to his house. He built up a huge collection of human skulls and enjoyed entertaining his guests around campfires with talks about the good old days in Africa before da Whyte man stole his civilization.

Among other things, Papa Macías enjoyed consuming large amounts of African drugs like bhang and iboga and trolling foreign diplomats with his claim that Adolf Hitler was “the Savior of Africa.” He enjoyed literally crucifying his political opponents and over a third of the population fled Equatorial Guinea as the economy collapsed under his rule. He ordered the death of everyone in Equatorial Guinea who wore glasses, mined the roads leading out of the country and ordered the replacement of Hispanic names with African ones. Western medicine was banned for not being authentically African. He liked to celebrate his birthdays by having prisoners shot by a firing squad dressed in Santa Claus outfits in Malabo’s stadium, while loudspeakers played his favorite song, “Those Were the Days.”

PRESIDENT TEODORO NGUEMA OBIANG

If something can’t go on forever, it will stop.

In the case of Equatorial Guinea, the dictatorship of Papa Macías came to an end after his nephew Teodoro Nguema Obiang overthrew his regime in a coup and put him on trial for killing 80,000 people. The old man lost his grip on power when he started ordering the execution of his family members. Papa Macías was sentenced to death 101 times and was shot in 1979 by a Moroccan firing squad.

Teodoro Nguema Obiang was the second president of Equatorial Guinea … actually, he is still the president in 2018. He has been the president of Equatorial Guinea for the past 38 years. This makes him the second longest serving national leader in the world. He has seen many politicians come and go:

TEODORO NGUEMA OBIANG MEETS THE OBAMAS 

Anyway, Equatorial Guinea stagnated along under Obiang’s dictatorship until Exxon-Mobil discovered a massive oil field in 1995. It transformed the country into one of Africa’s latest gold rush empires.

EQUATORIAL GUINEA HITS PEAK OIL

EQUATORIAL GUINEA GDP PER CAPITA

Don’t be fooled by Equatorial Guinea’s misleading GDP per capita.

The vast majority of the population never saw any benefit from the exploitation of the country’s oil wealth by Chevron and Exxon-Mobil. Theodoro Obiang and his son Teodorin Obiang have used the state as their personal bank account while it was ranking in roughly $3 billion a year in the 2000s. Among other things, the old man who is now in his seventies spent $55 million on a Boeing 737 with a gold plated bathroom. In recent years, he has been building a jungle palace in Oyala and has proclaimed himself the god of Equatorial Guinea who is “in permanent contact with the Almighty.”

VICE PRESIDENT TEODORÍN OBIANG NGUEMA

Obiang’s son and heir apparent is Vice President Teodorin Obiang Nguema. Teodorin is a real world African prince. He is the politically incorrect version of Black Panther’s T’Challa: the scion of the ruler of a wealthy African country who is the embodiment of every racist stereotype of Africans which he gleefully shares with the world with his platinum life posts on Instagram.

I’ve featured his $38.5 million dollar mansion above overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Malibu mansion. That’s Teodorin on one of his many $66,000 Tron motorcycles. He is also the proud owner of the Batmobile featured in The Dark Knight. He owns a $200 million mansion in Paris, two $7 million homes in South Africa, his own private submarine which he has shared on Instagram, a $30 million Gulfstream G-V private jet, two yachts worth $250 million (the Ice and the Ebony Shine), a $2 million Maserati, two Bugatti Veyrons worth $2 million and $1.3 million. He also owned eight Ferraris, seven Rolls Royces, five Bentleys, four Mercedes, two Lamborghinis and an Aston Martin. He owns $400,000 worth of motorcycles, a $245,000 basketball signed by Michael Jackson, a $275,000 pair of Michael Jackson’s gloves and a $80,000 park of his crystal-covered socks.

TEODORÍN SAILING THE MEDITERRANEAN OFF CAPRI, ITALY

TEODORÍN SIDE PROFILE

TYPES OF MANKIND

Teodorin once commissioned a German company in 2008 “to design a “mega yacht” worth $380 million, nearly three times what Equatorial Guinea spends on health and education in a year.” That’s really just the tip of the iceberg. The Obiangs have blown through the wealth of Equatorial Guinea while the vast majority of the country’s population survives on less than $2 a day.

Equatorial Guinea is ranked #135 in the UN Human Development Index. The average per capita income is collapsing after Peak Oil was hit a few years ago. The oil boom is over and the black gold which has provided the wealth of the country is evaporating as fast as Mansa Musa’s legendary gold mines. The Only Miracle and his family though will go down in history as a laughingstock.

Note: Yahya Jammeh, the former president of The Gambia who discovered the herbal cure for AIDS, has taken up residence in one of Obiang’s jungle palaces in Equatorial Guinea.