President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast, Africa's oldest and longest-serving head of state and one of the last of a generation of African leaders to guide his people from colonalism, died yesterday. He was officially said to be 88 years old, but was widely believed to be much older.
His death was announced by Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara in a televised address 33 years to the day after the West African country gained its independence from France. Mr. Ouattara said the President had died at 6:35 A.M. Mr. Houphouet-Boigny recently underwent surgery for cancer of the prostate, but the cause of death was not immediately known.
The Speaker of Parliament, Henri Konan-Bedie, said that he had taken over, Reuters news service reported. The official television introduced Mr. Konan-Bedie as the new head of state as provided in the constitution. "The constitution confers on me in this tragic moment responsibilities of whose weight I am aware, the responsibilities of a head of state," Mr. Konan-Bedie, 59, said in a brief televised address. "I am assuming them from now."
Since becoming President of the Ivory Coast in 1960, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny (pronounced oof-WET bwahn-YEE) had presided over a tenfold increase in per capita income, to about $900 today, in what had been one of France's less developed African colonies. Of African countries south of the Sahara that do not export oil, the Ivory Coast has a per capita income second only to South Africa's. Agriculture Was Priority
A central element in the Ivory Coast's prosperity was Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's singular decision to give industrial development a low priority, believing it wiser to develop the nation's agricultural resources first, and only later concentrating on providing efficient ports, good roads, power and communications.
He also encouraged foreign investment with laws that imposed few restrictions on the transfer of profits and capital -- a policy that was scorned by his more nationalistic neighbors. The first 20 years or so after independence bore out his strategy well.
Coffee production increased significantly, catapulting the Ivory Coast into third place behind Brazil and Colombia in total production. By the early 1980's it became the world's leading cocoa producer. It also became Africa's leading exporter of pineapples and palm oil.
The Ivory Coast's rapid economic progress was often cited as a showcase for successful capitalist development in an African setting. And through a confluence of political acumen, eloquence and a calm and authoritative manner, this short, small-boned, almost delicate-appearing man, was able to avoid most of the fierce confrontation and political turmoil that have tormented post-independence Africa. Even his harshest critics, who called him a tool of neocolonialism, concede that he instilled a strong sense of nationhood among the country's nearly 60 distinct ethnic groups.
The stability that he built during his first two decades in office seriously began to erode in recent years. Much of the deterioration was caused by a dramatic slump in world commodity prices, which threw the economy into a tailspin. In recent months, for the first time in memory, some civil servants were not paid; and there was talk of huge future layouts.
Moreover, scores of Ghanaians were killed in the Ivory Coast last month after a soccer match in Ghana that Ghana won. That made many foreigners fearful for their safety.
In the wake of mounting street protests during the spring of 1990, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny reluctantly lifted the ban on opposition parties, opening the way for multiparty government. At the time, his principal political opponent, Laurent Gbagbo, a history professor, made an issue of the President's age, obliquely suggesting that he was not sufficiently fit for a seventh five-year term.
The President did little to deflect such criticism. In the waning days of the campaign, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny was virtually invisible, relying mostly on old television footage of himself in his younger days to sway the electorate. The tactic appeared to work: he swept to victory in presidential polls in October that year. A Wealthy Planter's Son
Felix Houphouet-Boigny was born Oct. 18, 1905 -- or up to seven years earlier, according to some unofficial accounts -- in Yamoussoukro, a town 160 miles north of Abidjan, then the Ivory Coast capital. The son of a wealthy chief who owned large cocoa and coffee plantations, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny made his way through the French colonial education system to become a prosperous rural doctor and successful planter.
He turned to politics in the mid-1940's, a tense period in which nationalists in France's eight West African colonies were clamoring for change and self-determination. In 1944 he was a co-founder, with other disgruntled African planters, of the African Agricultural Syndicate, a group organized to protect its members' interests against inroads made by French settlers. He soon rose to prominence and within a year -- after converting the organization into the Democratic Party of the Ivory Coast -- he was elected a deputy to the French National Assembly.
He immediately gained a reputation by securing abolition of the single most unpopular feature of colonial rule, a labor law that allowed French planters to conscript workers from any village in the country. That same year Mr. Houphouet-Boigny allied his party with a new regional movement called the African Democratic Rally. The movement, of which he was president, generally voted with the Communists in the French Assembly, because they had shown sympathy for African aspirations. 'A Bourgeois Landowner'
But after the Communists went into powerless opposition in the late 1940's, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny broke off the rally's ties with them. Explaining his reasons for having worked with the Communists, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny remarked: "I, a bourgeois landowner, I would preach the class struggle? That is why we aligned ourselves with the Communist Party, without joining it."
By this time, however, he had become much feared by the French as a dangerous African nationalist, and in 1950, after an outbreak of anti-colonial violence in his territory, he was ordered arrested. He managed to slip away minutes before the police arrived at his home and was never imprisoned, although many of his political allies were.
But once independence for the Ivory Coast was in sight, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny sought to continue close cooperation with Paris. He divided his time between Abidjan, of which he was mayor, and Paris, where he served in the National Assembly. By 1956 his relations with the French Government were cordial enough for Prime Minister Guy Mallet to appoint him a minister-delegate, the first African in a French Cabinet.
By that time Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's popularity and influence in the African territories, where anti-colonial sentiment was growing, had become formidable. One French magazine noted in 1956 that he "was the object of impassioned manifestations." His photograph, the magazine said, "was in all the huts, on the lapels of coats, on the corsages of African women and even on the handlebars of bicycles."
Returning to his homeland to head an independent Ivory Coast in 1960, he established uncontested personal control through a unique brand of paternalistic authoritarianism. As in many African countries, he sought to keep all dissent under the umbrella of a single party.
And he often subdued his opposition by largesse, giving his opponents patronage jobs instead of jail sentences. Several half-hearted coup attempts in the early 1960's were easily suppressed. All those arrested were eventually released. Later, he even made one of the plotters a minister. And until recently, the press, radio and television were tightly controlled.
He was so confident of his popularity and grip on the reins of power that virtually every year he took extended European vacations -- occasionally as long as six months.
Europeans, who became unwelcome in much of Africa after independence, were still eagerly welcomed in the Ivory Coast. In particular, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny continued close economic and cultural ties with France: the French population in the Ivory Coast grew from about 10,000 in 1960 to about 50,000 30 years later. And because of the important role he gave to French technical experts in Government, banking and business, some of Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's critics accused him, often from abroad, of being a neocolonialist. Overtures to South Africa
In international relations, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny, often went against the grain in Africa. In the late 1960's he supported the ultimately unsuccessful Biafran war of secession from Nigeria. He also sought, on occasion, a dialogue with South Africa. In 1973, however, he joined other African nations in breaking off relations with Israel, and the ties were not restored until 1985.
Mr. Houphouet-Boigny was subjected to worldwide criticism in 1979, when he granted asylum to Jean-Bedel Bokassa, the exiled leader of the Central African Republic. However, he subsequently found the presence of Mr. Bokassa, who had been accused of the massacre of hundreds of his countrymen, a continuing burden, both politically and financially, and in 1983 he ordered his expulsion.
The same year he realized a dream when Yamoussoukro, his birthplace and the seat of the traditional chieftaincy of the Baoule ethnic group was designated the Ivory Coast's new capital by the ruling party as "an expression of gratitude from the country to the father of a nation."
But soon afterward, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's popularity began to wane. His oft-repeated assertion that "not a single drop of blood has been spilled in this country since I've been President," was conclusively disproved in the late 1980's. Civil unrest increased after the sharp turn in the country's economic fortunes. Unemployment has become acute, especially in urban areas like Abidjan and violent crime has become increasingly common. Huge Cathedral in Birthplace
Mr. Houphouet-Boigny was also widely criticized at home and abroad for his decision to build a $200 million Roman Catholic basilica, Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, by some measures the world's largest Christian church. The air-conditioned edifice can accommodate 18,000 people inside and 300,000 more in a 7.4-acre esplanade outside. Yet, only about 15 per cent of the population is thought to be Catholic, with about another 20 per cent Muslim and the rest animist. The President insisted that the basilica was built on his own land and financed with his own money.
Until he was well into his late 80's, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny continued to make day-to-day decisions and visitors who met him said he was as lucid and relatively robust. But as his health began to fail, there were increasing complaints that he lacked the energy to carry the nation into a new era of growth. At the time of his death, he was the third-longest-serving leader in the world, after President Kim Il Sung, the North Korean leader, and Fidel Castro of Cuba.
Mr. Houphouet-Boigny had four children by his first wife and a daughter by his second wife, Therese.
Source: New York Times
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