The people of Togo have had more than enough of the Gnassingbé clan. The dynasty – first father, now son – have been running the small West African state like their own personal fiefdom since 1967, thus giving them a couple of years on the delightful Assads in Syria. The corrupt father Eyadéma, a veteran of the French army, seized power in a military coup against the man who led the Togolese independence struggle, Sylvanus Olympio. In a pattern all too familiar throughout West Africa the egalitarian ideals of the original independence struggle gave way in a military coup supported by former colonial powers to install a reliable anti-communist dictator. Olympio, like Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was murdered to make way for a more ‘stable’ alternative.
Eyadéma was the classic dictator, sporting inevitable sunglasses, with the populace forced to clap every time his limo went by. While Eyadéma adopted the anti-communist stance then popular with his French patrons, his son Faure has switched to the anti-Islamic fundamentalism position favoured by Washington and Paris these days. Any democratic opposition is portrayed as Boko Haram-loving thugs who must be dispatched using a heavy hand.
