Today's #quizzytime: Which dictator hated intellectuals so much he killed everyone wearing glasses, hacked journalists apart and fed them to sharks, banned medicine and used witch doctors and finally destroyed boats, the railways, and mined roads to stop people from fleeing?
It's not Pol Pot
Ans: Francisco Macias Nguema was born into a poor peasant family in the then-Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea, the son of a witch doctor from neighboring Gabon. When Equatorial Guinea gained independence in 1968, he was elected president.
When Nguema was elected Equatorial Guinea had a population of about 350,000. By the time his rule came to an end in 1979, over half had been killed or had fled into exile. He began by forcing the country’s entire Spanish population to leave and to leave their assets behind.
The Spanish settlers were reminder of a colonial rule but included a majority of the professionals, technocrats, and experienced civil servants necessary for the smooth functioning of the government. Both the economy and government took a nose dive.
Nguema eventually responded by abolishing the currency, reducing the country to a barter economy. He banned religious meetings, but not before forcing priests to preach that: “God created Equatorial Guinea, thanks to Papa Macias“, and “There is no other God than Macias Nguema“.
He made the latter the country’s official motto. Nguema ingested copious amounts of hallucinogens, which drove him insane. He abandoned the country’s capital to live in his native village, taking the entire national treasury with him, and burying the gold reserves under his bed.
When the Central Bank’s director objected, he was murdered. Nguema also accumulated a huge collection of human skulls outside his house, and beat people with them. . The capital’s main power station was closed, as Nguema declared he could meet the energy needs using magic.
Nguema had an inferiority complex when it came to those better educated than himself. So he declared war on them. Formal education was abolished, all libraries were closed, and the word “intellectual” was banned. All teachers he could get his hands on were killed.
All forms of media, from newspapers to radio to TV, were banned. Western medicine was prohibited as being anti-African, and witch doctors were used instead to treat the sick. Nguema’s anti-intellectual pursuits extended to murdering people who wore eyeglasses.
Even shoes were eventually associated with intellectuals, and banned. At the end of Nguema’s rule, only 6 intellectuals were still alive in Equatorial Guinea: 2 doctors, and 4 technical school graduates. He murdered all his mistresses’ former lovers. Dissent was brutally crushed.
Troublesome journalists were hacked apart, the bits thrown into the ocean to feed the sharks. In one episode, 150 opponents were executed in a soccer stadium by soldiers dressed up as Santa Claus, while speakers blared Mary Hopkins’ “Those Were the Days“.
News that displeased Nguema was “fake news”. When his statistics director presented figures he disliked, Nguema killed him. Nguema took a relatively prosperous Equatorial Guinea, and reduced it to a hellhole. The economy got so bad that 90% of the GDP eventually consisted
of foreign aid. To keep people from fleeing, he destroyed boats, the railways, and mined the roads out of the country. He was eventually overthrown by his own family, when his insanity threatened them. In 1979, Nguema was arrested, tried by a military court, sentenced to death.
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