THE SILENCE OF THE LAMB CHOPS
John Simpson recalls his meeting with
Emperor Bokassa, whose 'cher cousin' is once more in the running for the French presidency
Paris THE POLITICAL graves are yielding up their dead, I thought, as the skull-like fea- tures smiled and the skeletal hands rose in the air. It was M. Valery Giscard d'Estaing acknowledging the plaudits of the crowd last Sunday. His centre-right UDF party had done well in the second round of the elections to the French National Assembly, and he was in a good position to contest the presidential election in 1995. It was the triumph of ambition over political likeli- hood. I remembered the day in 1982 when I tracked him down to the town of Chamal- ieres, near Clermont-Ferrand. He had just been elected to the local council, a year after losing the presidency to Francois Mit- terrand. He was gratified that a television crew should be interested in him, and embarrassed that we should have found him in such lowly circumstances. Was it really possible, I asked, for him to make a political come-back? 'But of course,' he said, with a rictus-like smile. And now here he was, 11 years later, showing that he had been right all along.
Political memories in France are short. When he left office, M. Giscard d'Estaing was a figure of fun. The satirical magazine Le Canard Enchaine revealed that he had accepted gifts of diamonds from the mon- strous Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Empire. The Emperor's coronation in 1977, furnished largely by France, cost the CAE the equivalent of a quarter of its gross domestic product. Two years later, after most of the bills had been paid, things changed. President Giscard d'Estaing sent in French troops to overthrow the Emper- or, who was shooting down a large number of school-children in the streets. They had been demonstrating against his decree that they should buy their school uniforms from a new firm of tailors (prop. E. Bokassa). After the coup there was a summary trial. The Emperor's French cook gave evidence that he had been obliged to stuff and roast the body of the leader of the opposition like a turkey. Whenever the Emperor felt threatened, or merely peckish, he would call for a slice. The cook seemed upset about the misuse of good truffles.
Time passed. Then one day in the sum- mer of 1986 I read that Bokassa had moved his place of exile to the outskirts, of Paris. No one was interested in him now, and any scandal he might divulge related to a peri- od which seemed as remote as the reign of Louis-Philippe. Yet the chance to meet a crazed imperial anthropophage doesn't crop up often. I booked tickets to Paris.
It was an interesting lesson in how the French presidential trade union protects its members. President Mitterrand might be M. Giscard d'Estaing's political enemy, but he made sure that passing journalists would not find it easy to get information about the diamonds, or anything else, from Bokassa. The authorities had ploughed up the private road to the imperial château, on the pretext that the telephone cables had to be replaced. They had confiscated the Emperor's driving licence. They had also warned him that if he spoke to a single journalist he would be sent back to Africa. But he was desperate to talk to someone, and we were invited round at once.
The Emperor looked like an African Richard Attenborough, short and pudgy. He had begun as an NCO in the French colonial army, and moved upwards like an ambitious 3rd-century Roman legionary: captain, colonel, general, emperor. He was not undignified; he had the quiet grandeur of the psychotic who believes himself to be Napoleon. And indeed, as he led the way into his darkened château, in which the curtains were closed and the shutters latched, there were portraits of Napoleon everywhere. What struck my colleagues and me with the force 'of an electrical charge, though, was the sight of the deep- freeze in the hallway, large enough to hold a medium-sized opposition leader. The producer kept the Emperor talking in the throne-room while I investigated. Uneasily, I lifted the lid: there was nothing inside except the silence of the lamb chops. I went back to the throne-room and shook my head. Everyone relaxed.
The Emperor was plainly mad; and yet there was something pathetic about him as he sat on his eagle-decorated throne, wear- ing his white and gold court uniform. `Never,' he said, 'have I partaken of human flesh. The very idea is abhorrent to me.' I remembered how the authorities had ploughed up the road outside; might they simply have fabricated the evidence to make his overthrow more acceptable to world opinion? Chiefly, though, he wanted to tell me about the diamonds. He showed me letters from Giscard d'Estaing Mon cher cousin', they began, and referred most- ly to the President's plans to come to the Central African Empire and mow down the wildlife for sport) and one from Giscard's brother suggesting a marketing deal for the diamonds. It was this that ended up in Le Canard Enchaine.
Bokassa fixed me with his crazy eyes, the brown of whose irises seemed to have leaked into the surrounding whites. 'When the French soldiers came to arrest me in my office,' he said, 'they tied me up in my chair. Then they said they were going to blow open the safe in the corner of the room. I used to keep a little pot of uncut stones in it, sixty-eight of them, just for myself. I said to them, "You might at least tell me where you are taking them." They laughed. The leader said, "We have orders to take them straight to the Elysee Palace." And to think,' he added, knuckling away the tear which had gathered in his eye when he thought of his little pot of dia- monds, 'that I regarded that man as my friend.'
Three months later, the Emperor returned to his empire, which had been downgraded to a republic again. Was it a whim of his own? Or were the French mak- ing good their threat about not speaking to journalists? In Bangui he was put away for life, and is said to howl at the full moon from his cell. His cher cousin, by contrast, is once more in the running for the French presidency. As for the diamonds, I couldn't find a single mention of them during the election campaign.
John Simpson is the BBC's Foreign Affairs Editor.
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