By the time Omar Bongo Ondimba died in 2009 after 41 uninterrupted years as president of Gabon he had fathered as many as 50 children. In that crowded field it was the French-educated Ali Bongo, one of seven “official sons” and a jazz-funk musician, who emerged as his successor.
Ali, now 64, was elected president a few months after his father’s death, a position he held until this week when he became the latest African head of state to be swept out of office in a coup. Thousands poured on to the streets of Libreville, the seaside capital, to celebrate the apparent demise of the Bongo dynasty.
“The army has decided to turn the page,” said Brice Oligui Nguema, a longtime confidante of both Bongos and head of the presidential guard, who led the coup. Nguema, a cousin of Ali, said the president, who had a stroke in 2018, was not competent to run the country and that the elections he had supposedly won — after an internet shutdown and a delay in counting — had not been transparent.