The Rest Is History - 12 Days: Jean-Bédel Bokassa and the memory of pandemics

Episode Date: December 31, 2021

It's New Year's Eve - switch off the Hootenanny and tune in to hear Dominic recount extraordinary tales of coups, cousins and the rise of an emperor in the Central African Republic. Later on in the podcast, Tom questions whether the current pandemic will have a more prominent role in the history books than the often disregarded Spanish flu. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello, welcome to the last episode of The Restless History of 2021. It's the 31st of December, and as we go through the 12 days of Christmas, Dominic, today we've got two dates from history, both of are you know are not they're not exactly cheery are they well it's every new year every new year's eve my thoughts naturally turn to jean bedell bakasa the leader of the central african republic who later crowned himself emperor go on tom what are you gonna say well no so we've got him uh and then well, I'll save my choice. Go on then.

You save your choice. So I shall talk about Bacasa. So some listeners may remember that we had Tom Owolade talking about post-colonial Africa, the sort of decolonization and then the independent rulers and so on. And Bacasa is one of the bad boys, I think it's fair to say. He's the Caligula of... He is a bit. Is he, do I mean the N the bad boys, I think it's fair to say. He's the Caligula of... He is a bit.

Is Idi Amin the Nero? Yes, I think so. Idi Amin would be Nero. Idi Amin is more famous. Bacasa would be Caligula. I think Bacasa is the kind of connoisseur's choice. Well, also, the whole imperial stuff, the Napoleonic stuff, so there's a slight whiff of Napoleon in Egypt about this as well.

There absolutely is. So Bacasa, let's put this into context. Basically, the 31st of december 1965 is when he launches his the coup that will take him to power and in the end to imperial greatness but he begins life in 1921 um 100 years ago he's one of 12 children large families have been the theme of the 12 Days of Christmas because we remember some of you that... So is he Catholic? I would say they probably are. Well, Catholicism is probably there because they're in a French colony.

Yeah. So he's born to a village chief in a place called Bobangui, which is a, I mean, I'm reading from my notes, a large Mbaka village in the Lobay Basin. Elaborate on that, Dominic. Well, I don't actually know what that means.

Do you? It's in the equatorial forest, it says here. It was French equatorial Africa. So basically in the heart of Africa. The Central African Republic. Right. But this is a very kind of little known part of Africa. Chad, right?

It's kind of bordered by chad south sudan um to various other places it's it's now the central african republic is one of the two poorest places really on the planet i think this and niger are the two places with the lowest some of the lowest living standards so basically bakasa his father he becomes orphaned quite young i think his father was killed in a fight with some Frenchman or something. And he joins the French army, which if you're a self-improving kind of person

in Africa, is often what you do. It's what Idi Amin kind of did. You join the colonial occupiers army and then you work your way up there. He's a World War II veteran. He fights in France for the French. He actually fights his way into Germany. So he's been, this is the sort of

side of, the war hero side of him you don't often hear about. He carries on fighting for the French after World War II and he fights with them in Indochina in Vietnam. And he's actually... All that stuff, exactly. And he's actually given

the Légion d'Honneur. The French think very highly of him. 1960, Dien Bien Phu. All that stuff, exactly. And he's actually given the Légion d'Honneur. Is he? The French think very highly of him. 1960, his colony, his homeland, becomes independent. It becomes basically the Central African Republic. And its first president is a man who happens to be his cousin, who is a man called David Daco. So two years later, B bacasa leaves the french army and he

comes back to the central african republic and he becomes all this time he's been he's been serving with the french army well serving with the french he's always very close to the french he becomes later very close to valerie she's quite the same yeah um so he comes he becomes the commander of the central african army basically because he's got all this experience. He's only got 500 soldiers, so it's a tiny, minuscule army in this very, very poor country. And he becomes the boss of the army. There are various reports that he insists on wearing all his medals, which annoys people.

He wants to show off how important he is. And he also always wants to sit next to his cousin at ceremonies. And other people don't think he should do this. He doesn't like this. There are increasingly heated arguments about where you sit at the president's table. This is why you need a round table. Well, it is.

And Picasso takes this terribly seriously and is very put out. He doesn't get to sit next to his cousin. His cousin, foolishly, does not take it so seriously and thinks very put out he doesn't get to sit next to his cousin his cousin foolishly does not take it so seriously and thinks it's hilarious a beginner's error get to 1965 and there's military coups in africa left right and center as the as the original kind of founding fathers of independence are displaced somebody says to daco are you not worried that your cousin,

who's so cross about the seating arrangements at dinner, is going to pull off a coup? And he says, no, Colonel Bacasa only wants to collect medals and he's too stupid to pull off a coup d'etat. Oh dear. I mean, that is asking for trouble. As soon as you say that,

in Africa in the 1960s, a coup happens immediately afterwards. They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist. That's exactly what happens. So Bacasa decides, Daco starts to build up his own presidential guard and Bacasa thinks, right, it's now or never. You know, I've only got a few hundred men.

So on the 31st of December, 1965, he launches his coup. And Daco, the president, is arrested and is taken to Bacasa. Bacasa very bizarrely hugs him and says, I tried to warn you, but now it's too late. So they don't kill him, though. They actually just put him in prison. And so it actually is, by the standards,

Bacasa is not a monster because it's quite a bloodless coup. This sort of message goes out on the radio. Is he kept alive? He is kept alive. So, because he becomes later on, becomes president again later on after Bacasa is gone. So Bacasa addresses the public on Radio Bangui.

Do you want to hear his message, Tom? I'd love to. Yeah. He says, Central Africans, this is Colonel Bacasa speaking to you. Since three o''clock this morning your army is taking control of the government the daco government has resigned the hour of justice is at hand the bourgeoisie is abolished they don't

really have a bourgeoisie in the central african republic so is he he's a communist is he is he he's not he's just spouting the stuff that people so this is french rather than russian yeah well interestingly one thing, the French are not displeased about the coup at all because... Well, so I was going to ask about that. Because Daco, so they love Bacasa because he's been in their army and he's their pal. Daco had been cozying up to the Chinese, Tom.

He'd been trying to encourage aid from China. The French didn't like that at all. The French are, I mean, they keep quite tight reins, don't they? They do. On their former colonies in Africa. They absolutely do. They absolutely do. What you can get from the Central African Republic's biggest export is wood,

but it also produces gold and diamonds and uranium. Well, diamonds. Yeah. Well, diamonds will come up. So Picasso says the army will, you know, new era, all this tremendous. And he's a bit of a moderniser at first. So often some of these people who you think of as tremendous villains have these other sides to them.

So do you want to hear about his modernising? I'd love to. Band begging? I mean, I'd rather hear about the mad stuff. Tom-Tom playing, only allowed in the evenings and at weekends. Okay. So you try to play a Tom-om at three o'clock on a Wednesday in the afternoon, no good.

You'd be arrested. Polygamy is banned. Female circumcision is banned. He opens a public transport system with three bus lines. Okay, good. That's not bad. And a ferry system. And subsidises two new national orchestras.

Oh, this is wonderful stuff. I'd vote for him. However, there's a downside. He does carve up his finance minister with a razor after a disagreement about the budget in 1968. So that's a low, I think. Well, we can think of a number of prime ministers who would. Yeah, Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson.

Or Tony, of course. Tony and Gordon. Tony and Gordon. Yeah. Oh, my word. Or it's the Rishi. If Tony had only taken after him. Did he literally do that?

Or is that a slander? Some people say the finance minister was hanged or some other fate awaited him. But there was definitely a disagreement about the budget and there was definitely violence. There were rumours that he was engaged in cannibalism. Well, we're going to come to this. We're going to come to this.

So in traditional fashion, time goes on and he becomes more and more hubristic and on the 4th of december 1977 he crowns himself emperor of central africa and he basically has this massive coronation modeled on the coronation brilliant throne in the shape of an eagle doesn't it looks absolutely do you know i've always thought i every time i've looked at that i thought if i became um you know if i staged a coup and i became leader of a country that's exactly what i'd do i think if you have a coup that to my mind there are two reputable ways to go so one is to be like antonio salazar who was the economics economist who became dictator of portugal and he was very austere. And sort of, I think you could do that

and keep some degree of credibility. You could say, I'm just very professorial. I'm the father of the nation. Or you go the full Caligula. Or you go the full, I'll have a throne like an eagle. I'll give diamonds to people. I'll just go completely mad. So his coronation cost a third of his country's annual budget.

So basically, it also cost, interestingly, the exact amount of aid money that the French gave them every year. He spent the whole lot on his coronation, which was modelled on Napoleon's coronation. Which, in a way, the French must have felt flattered by. Well, they were feeling very flattered because he was giving President Giscard diamonds, which later would come back to bite Giscard

and cost him, some people say cost him, the 1981 French presidential election because this was absolutely scandalous that he was basically accepting diamonds from this African emperor. So even the French found that shocking? Well, they didn't find it as shocking as we would. I mean, they thought it was perhaps

slightly overstepping the mark. But yeah, he's kicked out in a coup in 1979 and Daco comes back. And Daco gives evidence of Bacasa's trial and says, I've seen butchered bodies in the sort of cold storage rooms of Bacasa's palace and Bacasa would snack on them. Bacasa's security chief testified

that he had personally cooked human flesh and served it to Bacasa on an occasional basis. There were rumours, Tom, that Bacasa had served his enemies to Giscard and other visiting Frenchmen. Now, we know that the French have interesting you know, they'll eat horse, snails. They eat horse, don't they? Yeah.

Whether they eat, like, former Central African Republican finance ministers. But I thought these were not true. These rumours were not true. I think they're probably not true. What actually does for Bacasa... Idi Amin did, right?as did right no i mean didn't that wasn't true either i think that's made up okay i think these are all slightly sort of distasteful slightly racist rumors aren't they but they're originating with within african discourse yeah themselves i suppose so yes but bakasa had done he had done a terrible thing, actually, Tom. So listen to this.

So what caused the coup was that at the beginning of 1979, he passed a law that all high school students should wear a uniform made in a factory owned by one of his wives. It's basically to enrich his wife. And when the students didn't like this at all, it was all about sixth formers and stuff. Were they nice uniforms? No, I think they were terrible.ers and stuff. Were they, were they nice uniforms or? No,

I think they're terrible. They're terrible. Okay. They probably very scratchy or something. They, they threw stones at his car and he was very put out by it, including they like lots of kids threw stones at his car. He was absolutely outraged by this.

He ordered his men to round up loads of children and kill them. And that's true, is it? Yeah. Kill about a hundred kids 100 kids you know what's it what's amazing about this um the 12 days of christmas is that we've we've chosen these i mean certainly i didn't think about the various ramifications but we've had a massacre of innocence i know we've got another massacre of innocence this happens a lot in history i suppose

amazing isn't it yeah so the french eventually pulled the plug. They thought he was embarrassment and that was enough. So in the end of 79, they got rid of him. But he wasn't executed or anything. I think he just sort of lingered on, died in prison or something like that, or died in exile. He didn't go to France, hang out with Giscard. Should we do some live research? Yeah, do some live research.

We haven't done some live research for a while. Here we go. He dies in 1996. Yeah, that's quite late. So he was tried. Yes, I knew he'd been tried in the Central African Republic for treason murder. He was found cleared of cannibalism,

found guilty of the murder of schoolchildren. He was sentenced to death, but it was commuted to life in solitary confinement. But then he was pardoned and released in 1993, and he lived a private life in Bangui and died in 1996. So he had, I mean we're talking about people with a lot of children. He had 17

wives and 50 children. Goodness. Yeah. That's a lot of Christmas presents. Yeah. There's a nice Christmas theme to end our discussion of the Emperor Picasso. Well I thought that was fascinating. Okay.

What's next? Well, we'll find out after the break. What excitement. What drama. All right. We'll see you after the break. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman.

And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. The tension has been mounting as we've been waiting to find what Tom has chosen as his New Year's Eve happy celebratory moment.

Tom, what is it? It's another killer. It's killed more than Picasso. It's killed more than Herod. It's killed more than the US Army. Wounded knee. it's coronavirus it's uh covid uh because it was on this day two years ago 2019 yeah that the world health organization was first informed of uh there being cases of viral pneumonia in wuhan i thought that this would be a suitably jolly note on which to end the series of podcasts

that we've done this year, because probably without COVID, we wouldn't have started doing the podcast in a way. I mean, we've been shaped by it, but we haven't talked about COVID at all as a historical phenomenon, whether it will be remembered by the history books, whether it will be forgotten, like Spanish flu famously has been forgotten. So I don't know what your views are on that, Dominic, whether you think that this will be remembered as a kind of seismic global event

or whether it will fade and pass away. It's really hard to say, Tom. I think Spanish flu is a very good example because Spanish flu, I remember reviewing a book about the Spanish flu about three or four years ago called Pale Rider

by Laura Spinney. A brilliant book, actually. Really interesting book. And what struck me then was Spanish flu famously killed more people than World War I. It had a colossal...

And it kept coming back in waves. I think there were four waves of the Spanish flu in about two or three years. So Spanish flu famously, not Spanish. American, I think, wasn't it? Yeah.

People think it probably started actually. I mean, I've seen things saying maybe it started on kind of pig farms in Kansas. That it was taken by American soldiers to the great troop camp at Eta uh in france and they're spread among the allied soldiers and then spread and spread and spread so so it's a contribute definitely a contributing factor to the collapse of the german army at the end of 1918 and then spreads throughout the world kills more people than the first world war you know there are places

have lockdowns places have all kinds of different measures to kind of cope with so the whole thing about the lockdowns um there were famous case examples of cities that did lock down and suffered far fewer casualties than cities that didn't and those were hugely informative on the readiness of governments to impose lockdowns this time around yeah although the the results of sp Spanish flu kind of lockdowns and measures were kind of mixed. So, for example, some places closed their schools. But I think in New York, if I'm remembering correctly,

and apologies if I have misremembered, but I think in New York the health people insisted on keeping the schools open because they said there we can observe the children and we'll be able to step in and act. And if we, you know... Were children more at risk and act and if we you know were children more at risk for spanish well children are much more at risk i mean that was the kind of hideous twist wasn't it that it was the young that were targeted by it rather than the old yes exactly that's why it rips through the armies in the first world war and then of course through kids exactly so lots of families would have lost

a child or known people who'd lost a child. And obviously that's what I think in terms of the sort of almost the imaginative impact. That's the big difference between the Spanish flu and COVID is that COVID is not a disease. So children have, as far as we know, touched blood so far have been immune.

I suppose the impact of Spanish flu is blunted by the fact that the First World War had gone on before, which was a visual display of destruction. The impact of COVID, I imagine for future historians, will be aggravated by the fact that it hit a globalised era of peace. Yeah, I think that's probably right. Because it's frontiers being closed, flights being cancelled, great cities falling silent. That is shocking because up until that point, everything had been so interconnected. And it's those interconnections that actually enabled COVID to spread as fast as it did. I mean, the weird thing about Spanish flu is it leaves so little impact on popular memory.

So, you know, if anyone's ever studied the 1910s and 1920s at school, you'd spend weeks and weeks and weeks on the First World War months. And then it's sort of, oh, the Spanish flu also happened. Let's move on to the Roaring Twenties. Well, we're going to be doing 1922, aren't we? I think it's going to be our first standalone podcast of the new year so anniversary obviously and that's the year in which um the wasteland is published and actually when you read the wasteland you do notice its presence in a way that i hadn't done the people sweeping over london yeah this kind of people coughing yeah this kind of sickness uh it's a kind of lurgy yeah it's there it's there on the yellow fog um so perhaps people will look back at the works of literature the works of art um

but people but nobody talks about the spanish flu yeah i mean in the 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s the spanish flu was gone as a subject of conversation wasn't it i mean people right so i reckon people will remember this i think it will be remembered as as a subject of conversation, wasn't it? Right, so I reckon people will remember this. I think it will be remembered as a kind of seismic historical event for two reasons. Go on. The first is that the world, just saying, has been so much more unconnected than it was in the early 1920s. And so the effect of lockdowns,

of governments putting up national barriers, seismically much, much greater. And people have been able to have lockdowns to the degree that they've been able to because of the improvement in technology. Yeah. You simply couldn't, you know, you couldn't do Zoom in 1920. No, no, no, of course. So people just had to carry on.

And, you know, quite a lot of people can die in the background without the mass of society noticing. Yeah. I mean, that's the kind of the grim truth of it. You know, every year we have, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people can die in the background without the mass of society noticing yeah i mean that's the kind of the grim truth of it uh you know every year we have you know hundreds and hundreds of people die of flu and barely registered so um the fact that you have all this amazing footage of the great you know the great streets of the great cities going silent i mean that's there it's recorded people will look at it, and they will serve as

very, very powerful visual signifiers of what happened. And I think the other reason, and I think this is still very much open, what the impact will be, is that China behaved disgracefully over the early months. And I think that a question that was seen as very much a kind of crankish, Piers Corbyn-esque perspective a year ago, the idea that it had been, you know, perhaps a leak from the laboratory at Wuhan, I think is now, it's more broadly accepted, as certainly as a possibility. I don't think the truth will ever be known. But I think that that will, I think that that has measurably darkened international perspectives on China over the past year. I think that globally people are a lot more suspicious of China than they were. I think that's possibly true.

Also coincides, of course, with the Chinese crackdown on the Uyghurs, doesn't it? Yeah, well, I think it's expressive of that. And Hong Kong. So there's sort of a series of things at once. I think what will make it remembered is probably the government response to it rather than covid itself so because the government response to it has obviously been when i say intrusive i mean it's obviously literally been intrusive in the sense that it has forced you to stay at home you have the app you have test and trace you have all these things

which obviously didn't really exist in the 1920s. It's obviously had an economic impact because of lockdowns. So I think it's been a catalyst. It's accelerated changes that were already underway. The death of the high street. The development of podcasts, for instance. The development of podcasts. It's actually an example of that, though, isn't it? The decline of traditional media and the rise of new media.

The move to online shopping and so on the developments of the digital economy all those kinds of things i mean they've been speeded up by covid they would have happened anyway but more slowly i think but also i suppose there's an argument i don't want to sound like a paranoid lunatic but there's there's um there's no i don't i won't sound like a paranoid you know, if you live in a world where you're showing your vaccine passport, where you sort of biosecurity age, I mean, that may well be the future. You know, we may all have. Well, we don't know, do we? We don't know.

It's too early to say. But it's completely plausible, Tom, that in the year 2080 on your phone, if phones still exist, you will have a record of all your vaccinations and you will need to show these things to get into various places, especially if there are more pandemics. So in that sense, COVID, because of the role of government. Yeah, the infrastructure is being set up for that.

The infrastructure is ready, but also the role of government more generally, furlough, taking on massive debt. I mean, we are going to be, those are going to be issues for the rest of our lives, actually. So, Happy New Year, everyone. We've recorded, so we've done, what, six episodes now in a block.

Of the 12 days of Christmas. And this was meant to be a kind of cheery, you know, bit of fun, bit of knockabout. It hasn't really, has it? I mean, some of them have, but... But you've made... Well, you've chosen... I know. What was I thinking?

Yeah. So we've got some much more cheery ones for the next few episodes of this particular series, haven't we? We've got births and... Well, we've got some deaths, but we've got births of writers. Yeah, we've got two calamities hitting the Roman Empire at various stages. But we've got... I think it's quite nice because we get to draw parallels

between events that we wouldn't otherwise do. Anyway, we should say goodbye and wish you a happy new year. Very happy new year. And we will see you in 2022. Tomorrow. With the next edition of the 12 or 13 Days of Christmas. Goodbye. tomorrow with with the next edition of the 12 or 13 days of christmas goodbye thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad free listening access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.