 Can the Ku in Gabon, which supposedly ended the Bongo family dynasty, truly be regarded as revolutionary? Did the Ku truly end the Bongo system in Gabon? While the Ku's in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger can be lauded as revolutionary, recent information has come to light that shows that the Gabon Ku is nowhere near revolutionary. The Ku may have removed Oli Bongo and his immediate family from power, but the fact is that the Ku will merely lead to a continuation of rule by the Bongo clan. If this were not the case, why did the Ku fail to elicit the same level of condemnation from the international community that the Niger Ku did? Why is France not being expelled from the country like it was in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger? It therefore means that there is something different about the Ku in Gabon, so in today's video, we will analyse the real reason for the Ku in Gabon and why it is not revolutionary. For more than five decades, the Bongo family has established itself in the government of Gabon through patronage, offering lucrative positions to associates and extended family. Their rise to power began in December 1967, when Bongo's father, Albert Bernard Beaumont, was backed by France to take over as president following the death of the country's independence leader, Leon Mba, who died of cancer after being boosted back into power following a Ku in 1964. Throughout his stay in power, Omar won every series of elections despite allegations of manipulation. He abolished the country's run-off system and replaced it with single-round voting as well as imposing a one-party system. Fueled by corruption and greed, Omar's regime circulated the oil wealth of the country among the elite to ensure loyalty. He expanded the Bongo family's employment opportunities into the military, parliament, and state commerce. In fact, Marie-Madeleine Barensou, the current head of the Constitutional Court, was Omar's ex-lover. With their accumulated wealth, the Bongo family lived in luxury. In 2007, a French police inquiry discovered that the Bongo family possessed 39 residences in France, 70 bank accounts, and nine luxury cars totaling 1.5 million euros. Although at the time his lawyers argued that the assets were not acquired through his 20,000 euro per month income, according to the United States Senate, from 2003 to 2007, Omar allegedly routed $100 million PDF in questionable funds through a New York City bank account. Despite the investigations made by France about the wealth of the Bongo family, France continued to be a close ally of the Bongos. According to François Conradie, a political analyst at Oxford Economics, the Bongos invested money in French politics for many years. Robert Bourguis, a Parisian lawyer who advised former French President Jacques Chirac and his Prime Minister Dominique de Vopin, claimed he was given $20 million in cash by five African heads of state, including Omar, to boost Chirac's election campaign. After Omar died in 2009, his son Oli Bongo took over the helm of leadership in Gabon. Like his father, each of his three election wins has been highly disputed, which led protesters to set fire to the country's parliament building after his re-election in 2016. Two years later, in 2018, Oli Bongo suffered from a serious stroke which led to his not appearing in public for nearly a year. It was while he was recuperating in Morocco in January 2019 that some soldiers back in Gabon attempted to unseat him. But the coup attempt failed. After his recovery, Oli began to make some political changes. He removed his sister Pasqualeen from her position as high representative of the head of state, and he demoted his half-brother Frédéric Bongo from his position as head of state to military attaché in South Africa. Bryce LaCruche Alejanga, a high-ranking French Gabonese official, was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison in 2021 as part of Bongo's anti-corruption operation. LaCruche Alejanga was once a powerful chief of staff, but he was charged with corruption and imprisoned after allegedly displaying too much ambition during Oli Bongo's recovery period. Following the dismissal of LaCruche, Bongo nominated his eldest son Nureddin as his advisor with the title of coordinator of presidential affairs. Meanwhile, during all these times, military coups were happening elsewhere in Africa, but the Bongo family remained unaffected because they bought off opponents and moved relatives to strategic positions in the government. Nonetheless, Bongo's efforts to protect his government from a coup may have aided Gamer, the current military hunter of Gabon, as ascension to power. When Bongo took over from his father in 2009, he fired Gamer, the late president's assistant. However, following the 2019 coup attempt, Gamer, who had been working as an attaché at Gabonese embassies in Morocco and Senegal, was recalled an appointed chief of the Republican Guard. So, why would someone who publicly promised to support his president with honor and allegiance just a few months before the coup turn around and lead the drive to depose him? The recent military intervention in Gabon that supposedly ended the Bongo family's 56-year reign was a long time coming. In fact, its origins can be traced back to 2018, when former president Oli Bongo on Dimba suffered a stroke. The political problem caused by Bongo's illness, as well as the ambiguous method by which he retained power through close family members throughout his convalescence, exacerbated tensions within power circles and created two groups. One group consisted of detractors who urged his resignation and tried to undermine the Bongo dynasties' hold on power in the oil-rich Central African country. These critics were largely instrumental in Albert Ondo Oss' emergence as a consensus opposition presidential candidate in the 2023 elections. The other group consisted of members of the ruling party, Democratic Gabonese, a party founded by the late President Omar Bongo. This group included party members who continued to perform an institutional charade of cabinet meetings and rubber stamp legislation to cover Oli Bongo's alarming absence and incapacity. The group also comprises influential clan members within the Bongo dynasty joking for rank and fortune amid the uncertainty surrounding Oli Bongo's health. Meanwhile, during this period, Sylvia Bongo on Dimba, Oli Bongo's wife, is believed to have grown in influence and was preparing her son, Nuridin, to succeed his father. All these tensions accumulated until the coup that occurred on August 30th in Gabon. Political analyst François Connery noted that the events that unfolded could be the result of internal disputes among Gabonese elites and extended Bongo family members. He stated that the coup was the wider elite in Gabon preserving itself by getting rid of the very narrow elite made up of Oli Bongo, his son Nuridin, and his wife Sylvia. Before the coup, there was little confidence that Oli Bongo on Dimba would lose his third re-election bid. His party controlled the legislative, regional, and local administrations as well as the judiciary and the state security apparatus. During the elections, voting was conducted under an internet shutdown while the arrest of local election monitors were decried by the opposition as fraudulent. A slew of last-minute legislative changes helped Bongo's party as well, and when the results were revealed, Gabon's electoral board stated that Bongo had received 64% of the vote while his major opponent, Albert Ondo Osser, received 30%. Obviously, due to the election results, the people of Gabon were going to protest for a recount of the votes and make so much noise and international focus. And because the Bongo family's elite did not want this, they decided to organize a coup that would kill two birds with one stone. This means that the coup would first assure the removal of Oli Bongo, whose poor health was already a concern and his close family. Furthermore, the coup ensured that power remained in the hands of the Bongo family as General Bryson Gamer, Bongo's cousin and a direct product of the Bongo clan was instantly placed as interim president. Some experts also believe that the coup was an attempt to thwart public protest plans that were brewing in support of Osser. This echoes the comment made by opposition leader Albert Ondo Osser, who told the Associated Press that the coup was a palace revolution engineered by the Bongo family to retain their power. Aside from Oli Bongo's illness, which is the root cause of the military intervention, another factor that encouraged the military intervention in Gabon is the contagion effect of recent successful coups in Africa. The series of coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger appeared to have demonstrated to Gabon's military that not only was a successful coup possible, it was acceptable. And true to their thoughts, after the military takeover, the people of Gabon came out in Libreville and danced in the streets. Shortly after the coup was announced, dozens of the former president's friends were detained, including his 31-year-old son, Nureddin Bongo Valentin, who has been charged with high treason and corruption. Images on national television have shown him and other close Bongo loyalists standing in front of luggage allegedly stolen from their houses. While all these point out that Ngema is a different breed from the Bongo clan, a source from the BBC says that all this is largely for show. He stated that Ngema simply wanted to send a strong message to the population by arresting the president's son and that the coup is very much a continuation of the same system, just with a different name. So, although the coup managed to end the reign of Oli Bongo, it did not remove power from the Bongo clan. But anything can happen, maybe General Ngema will lead a transition to civilian rule, hold elections, refuse to present himself for office, or he might just become the next member of the Bongo clan to rule. Only time will tell. What are your thoughts? Do you think the coup is an extension of the Bongo family dynasty? Do leave your thoughts down below, and don't forget to subscribe, like, and share this video.