From Dahomey to Benin, the key dates
Dahomey's Ambassador to France Emile Zinsou (left) shakes hands with Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville during a ceremony at the Quai d'Orsay on March 8, 1962 in Paris.
© AFP
Text by: Didier Samson
10 mins
Like many African countries, Dahomey gained independence in 1960. It opened the series on August 1.
And it is Hubert Maga who becomes its first president.
But the brand new state gains independence in a game of alliances of people and parties that already portends future political instability.
Back to the main dates in the political history of Dahomey, which became Benin, on November 30, 1975.
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In 1945, the French provisional government established dual-college representation for the colonies within the National Assembly.
The first brings together French citizens, Whites and the second the subjects of the colonial empire, the natives, that is to say the natives, blacks.
It is in this capacity that Sourou Migan Apithy was elected first representative of Dahomey and Togo alongside Reverend Father Francis Aupiais in October 1945.
But the two representatives of the same territory will be opposed very quickly and head-on.
The entire political history of Dahomey, which became Benin, was tied at this time.
At the Palais Bourbon in Paris (seat of the National Assembly),
Sourou Migan Apithy
joined the group formed by the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), while Reverend Father Aupiais found himself in the opposite group, that of the Popular Republican Movement (MRP).
Sourou Migan Apithy.
DR
The political currents expressed their opposition in October 1946 during the founding congress of the African Democratic Assembly (RDA) in Bamako.
The delegation of Dahomey holds an important place there with Sourou Migan Apithy elected vice-president and Louis-Ignacio Pinto president of the commission of general policy.
Emile Derlin Zinsou, for his part, refuses the post of secretary general criticizing the new GDR for its affiliation to the French Communist Party (PCF).
This quack at the African level is indicative of the animosities that the Dahomeans maintain between them.
From then on, the political history of Dahomey will be marked by alliances between parties which are formed and unmade according to the interests and quarrels of its leaders.
► To (re) read: Emile Derlin Zinsou, one of the founding fathers of modern Africa
Shortly before the constitution of the RDA, the Fourth Republic was born in France on October 13, 1946. It paves the way for the formation of the General Council by territory, including that of Dahomey which was created on November 15, 1946. Its representatives will constitute a Council of the Republic which will sit on the Grand Council of French West Africa (AOF) and on the Assembly of the French Union. It is at this same period that we locate the birth of the first great Dahomean party: Union progressiste Dahoméenne, UPD with Sourou Migan Apithy. A second influential group, the Popular African Bloc (BPA) also settled on the political spectrum led by Emile Poisson and Justin Tométin Ahomadégbé, from December 1946.
But in 1947, at the rate of political instability in France, a series of elections opened the way to a period of political unrest that had become the lot of this territory which was feverishly preparing for its autonomy. In addition, the remoteness of the Dahomean representatives within the institutions of the Fourth Republic in Dakar and Paris will promote the emergence of small groups and new leaders who have developed a field discourse with local concerns. Splits will appear within the UPD and will forever mark the political life of this future state.
In May 1951 the elections to the French National Assembly revealed a profound rupture.
The UPD implodes.
Legendary leader Apithy is challenged.
He goes to the elections with a “French Union” list.
The natives of northern Dahomey to whom the UPD steering committee had refused a second place on its list slammed the door and founded the Groupement ethnique du nord du Dahomey (GEND) which would later become the Dahomean Democratic Movement (MDD).
Its leader is Hubert Maga.
Sourou Migan Apithy overhauls his renamed party, the Republican Party of Dahomey (PRD).
►
To
(re) listen: Memory of a continent.
The independence of Dahomey
People's quarrels fuel currents with blurred lines within parties in the south of the country, while in the north Hubert Maga, a federator, succeeds in raising his movement to the rank of a unifying party. In August 1957, Hubert Maga's MDD became the Rassemblement Démocratique Dahoméen (RDD), while in the south a host of parties were born. On the sidelines of this political turmoil, history will continue to be written. In May 1957, Sourou Migan Apithy was elected vice-president of the Governing Council of Dahomey, the post of president being reserved by right to the governor of the colony.
On September 28, 1958, Dahomey said "Yes" to the referendum establishing the Fifth Republic in France and the French Community. On December 4, 1958, Apithy was the new President of the Governing Council. But ironically, unlike what happened in most of the former colonies gaining independence, this position of President of the Governing Council will not bring him to the head of the new state.
In April 1959, the first Dahomean National Assembly was elected without a distinct political majority. It is then a government of national unity which will lead the country to independence. Two large political groups were formed and opposed in the south of the country around two leaders, Apithy and Ahomadégbé, who were irreconcilable. This situation benefits Hubert Maga who receives the support of the Dahomean Democratic Union (UDD-RDA) of Justin Ahomadégbé. Maga was elected first president of Dahomey on July 26 and proclaimed the country's independence on August 1, 1960.
Political opposition in the new state is so violent that the army decides to put an end to it. On October 28, 1963, Colonel Christophe Soglo took power, thus opening the ban on military coups. In January 1964, he entrusted the reins of power to Sourou Migan Apithy. The latter is quickly dismissed from his functions and replaced by Justin Ahomadégbé. But new political tensions brought the military back to power in December 1965, with the same Christophe Soglo, who had since become a general.
At the rate of a military coup d'état every 18 months or so, all political leaders have, at one time or another, been elected President of the Republic.
It is in this context of chronic political instability and turbulence that the military installed Doctor Emile Derlin Zinsou as President of the Republic of Dahomey on July 17, 1968. The Zinsou presidency will be short-lived: he will be overthrown at the end of 18 months, December 10, 1969 by the military.
The president of Dahomey, Emile Zinsou (D), is pictured with Lucien Harmegnies, a member of the Belgian Socialist Party, on August 22, 1969 in Belgium.
© AFP
In May 1970, a Presidential Council was established between the enemy brothers: Hubert Maga, Justin Tométin Ahomadégbé and Sourou Migan Apithy. A rotating presidency every 2 years is planned before general elections. But a new military coup d'etat interrupted the experiment, on October 26, 1972. Commander Mathieu Kérékou took the head of a revolutionary military government which put a definitive end to the coups d'état. The military established a lasting power by developing a new national alliance which is rather a forced adherence to their ideals.
This regime transforms the political, social and economic life of Dahomey by involving civilians in the management of power. He decreed Marxism-Leninism as a state doctrine on November 30, 1974, before proceeding a year later, on November 30, 1975, to the name change. The People's Republic of Benin was born with the establishment of a single party, the People's Revolutionary Party of Benin (PRPB). November 30, is declared a national holiday instead of August 1.
But the single party and
the totalitarian power of Mathieu Kérékou are
leading the Beninese state to bankruptcy.
Marxism-Leninism is buried with, in February 1990, the first of the National Conferences in Africa.
The People's Republic gives way to the Republic of Benin with the return of the multiparty system inaugurating “democratic renewal”.
In 1991, Nicéphore Soglo became the first president of the new Republic of Benin.
• To listen :
→
Benin: "Some have never accepted the injustices of the colonial period"
→
Benin: 60 years after independence, the eyes of youth
→
Memory of a continent: Independence of Dahomey
→
Africa Archives: Portrait of Sourou Migan Apithy
• To read :
→
Emile Derlin Zinsou, one of the founding fathers of modern Africa
→
Independence of Benin: little-known photos tell of August 1, 1960
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