Union, Travail, Justice

  Union, Travail, Justice

  Jonathan Edelstein

  I. THE TRIAL

  In a courtroom in Paris, they’re talking about a murder in Gabon – the murder that is my reason for coming.

  There are as many Gabonais in the hexagon these days as there are in Gabon, and it seems that most of them are in the cour d’assises where Alain-Bernard Bongo is being tried for corruption. The defendant sits impassively in a dark brown suit and checked tie, treating the proceedings as beneath his notice. The gallery is packed with his countrymen, who are silent yet anything but impassive.

  Bongo is Gabon’s most recent Big Man, the son and successor of Albert-Bernard Bongo, who in turn was the protégé of Léon M'ba, the powerful chef de département and mayor of Libreville. It is in the nature of Big Men to rise high and fall hard. M’Ba and the elder Bongo both held ministerial rank in the French governments of their time, only to end their careers with prison and disgrace. Alain-Bernard, too, was Minister of Mines and Energy under Sarkozy, and may yet be a prisoner under Hollande.

  The courtroom is nowhere near large enough to accommodate all the Gabonais who want to watch, and the crowd spills out into the hallway under the eye of watchful policemen. There, courtroom decorum is forgotten, and the air is filled with a hundred conversations, all on the same subject. They fall silent when they see me, but when I tell them I’m a reporter, their voices return redoubled.

  “They do this to every black minister,” says a lady in her forties who will identify herself only as Marie. “They can’t stand when a black man rises, so they put him in prison.”

  “If we don’t want Gabonais on trial for corruption,” an older man answers, “we should stop electing people who are corrupt.”

  That might be a tall order under normal circumstances. Gabon is far from Paris, and the Gabonais are rarely concerned with what their politicians get up to in the capital: they might even approve of corruption if it favors them. But this time might be different. Alain-Bernard isn’t on trial for ordinary financial peculation, or at least not just for that. He is also accused of complicity in the 2010 murder of two labor activists in the Moukouti oil field, a crime rumored to have been carried out at the instigation of Elf Aquitaine. The two Myene trade unionists’ deaths have become a cause celebre in southern Gabon, all the more so since the Sarkozy administration has been accused of covering up the crime.

  “He’s the scapegoat for Sarko’s sins,” Marie maintains.

  “He’s one of the sinners,” answers her interlocutor, “pretending to be a nun.”

  I return to the courtroom, and notice for the first time that Alain-Bernard is the only African outside the gallery. One of the jurors looks like she might be Algerian, but the others – the judges, the eight remaining jurors, the prosecutor, the defense counsel – all of them are from the hexagon. Europeans on one side of the bar, Africans stolid and silent on the other: it could easily be a tableau from colonial times.

  But on second look, Bongo isn’t the only black person in the well. There is a witness too, a woman in a plain gray dress that contrasts with the spectators’ finery, so slight and soft-spoken that it takes a second look to notice she is there.

  “What happened then?” asks the presiding judge.

  “They said they had a message for Etienne. That he should leave the oil field, or they would rape and kill his wife in front of his eyes and then kill him.”

  “Did you recognize any of them?”

  “No. They weren’t from Moukouti. They were Teke, from the Congo Republic.”

  “How could you tell they were Teke?”

  “From the way they spoke.”

  A couple of the jurors look unimpressed. But I am told there will be other evidence concerning the people who made those threats. And the Bateke, of course, are the Bongos’ ethnic group. The evidence is circumstantial, but it is adding up, slowly drawing the net tighter as each witness takes the stand.

  Outside again, I find Marie’s companion, who gives his name as August Onyemi. He is fifty-six, born in the last years of the colonial era, an infant at the time of the referendum that persuaded de Gaulle to allow Gabon to remain French. He has lived in Paris for thirty years, and owns a grocery store in the eighteenth arrondissement, but like all the Gabonais, he pays close attention to doings at home.

  “The grandfather” – he means M’ba – “was always in and out of trouble. He went to prison for fraud and embezzlement, and everyone knows he was involved in that cult murder in ’31, even though they could never pin it on him. But he kept coming back. He thought he was clever enough to get away with any crime, and so did the father and the son.”

  “Why do people keep voting for them, then?”

  He motions to me, pointing toward the exit, which is also toward the north. “Come and see.”

  I follow where he is going, and wonder if the secrets being kept in the courtroom might be revealed there.

  II. LA GOUTTE D’OR

  In the Goutte d’Or neighborhood in the eighteenth arrondissement, it’s easy to forget you’re in Europe. This was an Algerian district once, and many Algerians still live there, but more recently, they’ve made way for the West Africans. The Marché Dejean and the streets beyond are packed with stores and small shops selling African clothing and imported foods, and the smell of fufu, Senegalese dibi and nyembwe chicken fills the air. There are also, of course, people selling counterfeit handbags and calling cards and electronics of dubious provenance, as there are in any other street market, but this one has a distinct sub-Saharan atmosphere.

  It’s easy to tell which Africans are the Gabonais. Those from Dakar or Bamako or Brazzaville gather in groups and talk of bizness, the semi-legal street trade in which most are employed. Some of them are dressed in the outrageous pastel suits of the Congolese sapeur; the others, mostly, in jeans. The Gabonais are all French citizens and have legitimate businesses or civil-service jobs. Their papers are in order, and they feel less pressure to blend in, meaning that more of them – especially the women – wear traditional clothing.

  August Onyemi’s grocery store is on the Rue Richomme, a few blocks from the market, and it has become a gathering place. He is a patron: one of the early arrivals, one who has done well, one who others look to for support and advice. When we arrive, there are half a dozen people waiting to greet him, none of whom are customers.

  He introduces me and leads everyone to a table in the back room, where he pours coffee and listens. One of them has trouble with his landlord, another is out of work, a third has a son who was arrested for petty theft. A few of the problems are ones that August can solve himself; for the others, he rattles off names and cell-phone numbers from a list that he has obviously been compiling in his head for many years. He refills my coffee but otherwise ignores me; these are his clients in the old Roman fashion, and their needs come first.

  Finally, he motions to me again, but is still speaking to his countrymen. “He wants to know why people like Alain-Bernard get elected,” he says.

  “People owe them.” That’s the one who is facing eviction: Laurent, a man in his early twenties or even late teens, with a heavy accent that makes his French barely understandable.

  “Look at it like this,” says Honoré, who has trouble with the tax office. “We come here, we’re strangers. People think we must be Muslim, we’re criminals, we’re bad news. So we have to go to someone to find an apartment, to get a job. Patrons like August can help with the small things – for the big things, we need to go to his patron. Someone like the son.”

  “They’ve got the Bwiti sewn up too,” August adds, and something flashes through his eyes that is half reverence and half fear. I’ve heard of Bwiti: the faith
that the Bantu peoples of Gabon learned from the Mitsogho forest-dwellers they conquered, which centers on the visions brought on by iboga bark. It’s banned in metropolitan France as it was in Gabon itself until ten years ago, and the church condemns it in the harshest terms, but I’d bet money that everyone in the room has been initiated. And I don’t need August to draw me a picture: if iboga can’t be brought to Paris legally, then it has to come through organized crime, and the priests have to answer to the drug lords. Those, again, are people like Alain-Bernard, if not the man himself.

  I sip my coffee and consider that for a moment: a cartel that controls not only the newcomers’ livelihoods but their spiritual lives. Those who stay long enough and find secure jobs might graduate from financial dependence, as August has done, but religion remains a powerful hold.

  “Bongo wasn’t elected here, though,” I say. “He’s a deputy from Libreville.”

  “And you think it’s different there?” Honoré answers. “In Gabon, all the money comes from one place, and it all gets filtered through one person. If you want a job on the oil fields or with the government, or if you want to jump the waiting list for an apartment, you have to go to him.”

  I wonder why that state of affairs would be allowed to continue in a place where French law holds sway, and then I remember that it’s been broken up several times. M’Ba went to prison over that, and so did the elder Bongo, and they weren’t the only ones. But it always seems to revert to type. Gabon is a long way from Paris, after all, and the politicians aren’t the only ones with an interest in keeping things the way they are…

  “Of course, the son is just the one you see,” August says, and it seems that he’s been reading my mind. “There’s another you don’t, and it’s much more dangerous.”

  My mind went back to the trial, and I remembered who had reputedly put Alain-Bernard up to the crime. A Parisian company, whose directors must be terrified that the Gabonais deputy’s testimony would put them in the dock themselves.

  Elf Aquitaine.

  III. BIZNESS

  The Tour Elf rises forty-eight stories from the canyons of La Défense, just west of Paris. Its five glass-walled towers radiate money and power – a power that has, on more than one occasion, overthrown governments. Somewhere in Elf Aquitaine’s archives are secrets that could provide historians with years of work. But those secrets are not to be shared with casual visitors, and even less so with reporters.

  Instead, I am taken to meet Jean-Claude Etomba, a rising executive in Elf’s Gabonais operations. He is in his early thirties, and his sartorial style seems borrowed from the man on trial in the nearby cour d’assises: sharp suits, silk ties, shirts custom-made by a favorite Goutte d’Or tailor. His accent is that of a Parisian born, and he tells me that his father, a chef de canton in colonial Libreville, moved to France in 1972. He is a younger son but very much a favored one and, from all appearances, an aspiring Big Man.

  “Ask me anything,” he says expansively, after his Breton secretary has poured the coffee: unlike August, he would not stoop to pouring it himself. He looks out the office window – a fortieth-floor vista with a view of the Arc de Triomphe – and waits.

  I start with a safe question. “Are there many Gabonais working here?”

  “Not enough!” he answers with surprising passion. “But more every year. The company is making an effort to recruit Africans, both here and in the Libreville offices; we are even offering scholarships.”

  I can see that he wants me to ask who is responsible for that, so I do, and get the expected answer. “And what about engineers? One of the complaints that’s made is that everyone on the technical side is brought in from Europe – that you’ll bring in Germans rather than teach the Gabonais.”

  “I’ll admit,” he says disarmingly, “that we sometimes treat Gabon too much like an independent African republic, and that we may need to rethink how we deal with those countries as well. But you must understand that that kind of job requires a very specialized education. You can’t take a university graduate and put him right into engineering the way you can put him into executive training. Building a Gabonais work force takes time.”

  “There are those who say you’ve already had fifty years.”

  “Maybe we’ve neglected these things in the past. But we can’t change that; we need to start with where things are now.”

  I nod and sip my coffee, considering how to get to the questions I really want to ask. Obviously, I can’t simply ask if Elf has a chief political-murder officer, especially since the killing might be delegated some way down the chain of command.

  “You mentioned education,” I say instead. “Have you considered offering advanced classes to your field technicians? The unions say that you don’t offer enough chances to advance from within – that you don’t want to put in the resources to train the people who already know the territory and the equipment.”

  “’The unions’ don’t say that, Monsieur. A few discontented people who claim to speak for the unions do. And when they talk about promotion from within, what they really mean is promotion for their ethnic group. They would like us to favor people from the oil districts over those from elsewhere in France or even elsewhere in Gabon, and that’s not something we can do.”

  “Have you thought of offering classes to workers from all ethnic groups, then?”

  “Look.” Etomba put his coffee cup down emphatically. “People in the villages aren’t the same as people who’ve been to the university, or even those who grew up in Libreville. They’re still tribal. If we offered classes, it would become a fight among the ethnic groups as to who gets promoted. There are rivalries for jobs as things stand – fights, even murders.”

  I realize that I’ve just seen how a Big Man looks at the little, and I realize also that he’s alluding heavily to the murders of Etienne Kombila and Paul Méyé. That shouldn’t surprise me: he knows I’m reporting on the trial, and that the murders are a centerpiece of the corruption charges against Alain-Bernard. But that he would be so quick to suggest a cause, rather than disclaiming knowledge…

  “Have you investigated the murders, then?”

  “I hadn’t realized we were talking about specific murders. But if you mean the ones I think you mean – yes, of course. We investigate anything that happens on our oil fields. There are people who like to make false charges against us, as you may be aware.”

  “Then do you plan to present evidence to the cour d’assises that Kombila and Méyé were killed for ethnic reasons, rather than at Monsieur Bongo’s instigation? Or have you presented that evidence already?”

  “That’s a matter for discussion within the company.” Which meant no. On a political case like this, the juge d’instruction would have demanded that Elf reveal everything it knew, and company policy wouldn’t have been able to withstand the court’s subpoena. And that raised more questions: if Elf in fact had evidence that would exonerate both Alain-Bernard and itself, wouldn’t it have brought that proof to the court even before being asked?

  But those, too, are questions I couldn’t put to him directly. “Tell me,” I say, “would you say that your relationship with the oil workers’ unions is good?”

  “We recognize the unions, of course, as we are required to do under French law. And we obey the labor laws. But the unions don’t always act within the law, and when that happens, there can be a… breakdown in relations.”

  It takes no genius in psychology to sense his wariness: I can hear it in his voice and see it in his body. It’s clear that I won’t find anything else out from Elf Aquitaine.

  Not, at least, if I stay here.

  IV. MADAME INDÉPENDANCE

  Libreville, like Freetown (which has precisely the same name) and Monrovia (which doesn’t), was founded as a settlement of freed slaves. In 1846, the French Navy seized the Brazilian slaver L’Elizia and deposited its cargo by the Gabon Estuary, where they founded the port that now bears their name. Unlike Liberia or Sierra Leone, however,
the capture of the L’Elizia was a one-off. France never made a serious effort to establish a freedmen’s colony in Gabon, and the ex-slaves were quickly submerged within the native population. Libreville today is a microcosm of the territory: Fang from the north, migrants from the many southern nations, oilmen, foreign workers, Lebanese and Moroccan shopkeepers, and here and there, a Parisian.

  About half my companions on the seven-hour flight from Paris to Libreville are European, and the other half African. Most of the Europeans are destined for the oil fields, with onward tickets to Port-Gentil; the others are there to hunt buffalo and duikers or to see gorillas in the wild. One or two of the Africans also have the look of oil executives, and the others are coming home from school or visiting family or traveling on business. They’re a more talkative group than the Europeans, especially where families or groups of friends are traveling together, and their anticipation of returning to their homeland is palpable.

  A foreigner making enquiries in Gabon had best get to know the country – and since 2004, a country is what it is, at least according to its own laws. The Gabonais basic law describes the territory as an “overseas country within the republic,” although the difference between that and an overseas collectivity – Gabon’s status under the French constitution – is unclear. It may be one of those distinctions that makes sense primarily to politicians.