on african presidents

Yesterday there was a fair amount of noise coming from the courtyard. Monsieur motioned for me to come over to the window and pointed downward. See those kids? he asked. There were four or five little girls playing in a circle, with a woman standing over them.

They're the family that just moved in on the second floor. It's one of the wives of the president of Republic of the Congo. (Actually he called it "Congo-Brazzaville," which was its name when it was a French colony.) They redecorated the apartment ... pharaonically.

This is true. I walked by their open door one day. It's all in gold and crystal and marble, and it's blinding. I am unsurprised to read in the Wikipedia entry on Sassou Nguesso this: When Sassou Nguesso attended the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September 2006, almost £14,000 of room service at the Waldorf Astoria was added to his bill during another five-night stay. His entourage, including several members of his family, occupied 44 rooms which together ran up a bill of £130,000. The bills on September 19 included two bottles of Cristal champagne charged at £400. This was pointed out by the British newspaper The Sunday Times to be "comfortably more than the £106,000 that Britain gave the Republic of Congo in humanitarian aid in 2006."

Monsieur also said that Sassou Nguesso "came to power after killing thousands of people." It's not quite that simple, but it appears that his government is not entirely aboveboard, shall we say. And it's true that quite a lot of people have died in the Republic of the Congo for political reasons and fighting between opposition groups, and he appears to have been in the middle of most of it. Sassou Nguesso was, technically, elected, but conveniently, "Sassou Nguesso won with almost 90% of the vote, his two main rivals Lissouba and Kolelas were prevented from competing and the only remaining credible rival, André Milongo, advised his supporters to boycott the elections and then withdrew from the race." Nice.