"LE GABON ENERVANT" OR "ANNOYING GABON"

English version   For several years now, a controversy has run through Gabonese collective memory: who truly wrote the lyrics of “La Concorde,” the national anthem adopted in 1960? The official version attributes both the lyrics and the music to Georges Damas Aleka. Another account, circulated on social media, puts forward the name of a teacher posted in Mitzic around the time of independence, Evariste Etoughe, said to have written the lyrics, with Damas Aleka credited as the composer of the music. This debate deserves better than a clash of press releases or a social media controversy. It deserves a factual clarification, carried out with the same rigor one would apply to any question of intellectual authorship. Three reasons argue for such an undertaking. 1 - First, a historical reason. A national anthem is not a simple song: it is a founding text, sung by generations of schoolchildren and citizens. That its origin should remain uncertain or contested sixty-six years after its ad...

 

  English version   Any clear-sighted and relentless observer of the mechanics of clientelism and the reproduction of courtiers, particularly in the current Gabonese political context, will bring to light the fact that, ultimately, nothing really changes. It is nothing more than a petty game of rent-seekers following one another in single file. The evolution of these labels, from the Ali-Boys to the BLA-Boys, arriving today at the Oligui-Boys; strikingly illustrates how the system reinvents itself in form without ever changing in substance. It is not new ideological visions that are emerging, but simply new networks of influence. Loyalty shifts opportunistically toward the new center of gravity of power to secure a seat at the table, or in the kitchen. The term "rent-seekers" (or  profiteers ) is of surgical precision here, because in a state structure where the distribution of wealth is tied to proximity to the top of the State, allegiance becomes the ultimate economic a...