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Mathieu Kérékou (; 2 September 1933 – 14 October 2015) was a
Benin Benin, officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It was formerly known as Dahomey. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the north-west, and Niger to the north-east. The majority of its po ...
ese politician who served as president of the
People's Republic of Benin The People's Republic of Benin (; sometimes translated literally as the Benin Popular Republic or Popular Republic of Benin) was a socialist state located in the Gulf of Guinea on the African continent, which became present-day Benin in 1990 ...
from 1972 to 1991 and the
Republic of Benin Benin, officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It was formerly known as Dahomey. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the north-west, and Niger to the north-east. The majority of its po ...
from 1996 to 2006. After seizing power in a military coup, he ruled the country for 18 years under an officially Marxist–Leninist ideology, before he was stripped of his powers by the National Conference of 1990. He was defeated in the 1991 presidential election but was returned to the presidency in the 1996 election and controversially re-elected in 2001.


Military background

Kérékou was born in 1933 in Kouarfa village,"Après 29 ans de pouvoir, le Président Kérékou tire sa révérence"
IRIN, 6 April 2006 .
in north-west French Dahomey. After having studied at military schools in modern-day Mali and Senegal, Kérékou served in the military by joining the French Army in 1960. Following independence, from 1961 to 1963 he was an '' aide-de-camp'' to Dahomeyan President Hubert Maga. Following Maurice Kouandété's coup d'état in December 1967, Kérékou, who was his cousin,'Kunle Amuwo, "The State and the Politics of Democratic Consolidation in Benin, 1990–1999", in ''Political Liberalization and Democratization in Africa'' (2003), ed. Ihonvbere and Mbaku. . was made chairman of the Military Revolutionary Council. After Kérékou attended French military schools from 1968 to 1970, Maga made him a major, deputy chief of staff, and commander of the Ouidah paratroop unit.


1972 coup and Marxist rule

Kérékou seized power in
Dahomey The Kingdom of Dahomey () was a West African List of kingdoms in Africa throughout history, kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. It developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in ...
in a military coup on 26 October 1972, ending a system of government in which three members of a presidential council were to rotate power (earlier in the year Maga had handed over power to Justin Ahomadegbé).Samuel Decalo, "Benin: First of the New Democracies", in ''Political Reform in Francophone Africa'' (1997), ed. Clark and Gardinier. . During his first two years in power, Kérékou expressed only nationalism and said that the country's revolution would not "burden itself by copying foreign ideology ... We do not want communism or capitalism or socialism. We have our own Dahomean social and cultural system." On 30 November 1974, however, he announced the adoption of Marxism-Leninism by the state. The country was renamed from the
Republic of Dahomey The Republic of Dahomey (; ), simply known as Dahomey (), was established on 4 December 1958, as a self-governing colony within the French Community. Prior to attaining autonomy, it had been French Dahomey, part of the French Union. On 1 Augu ...
to the
People's Republic of Benin The People's Republic of Benin (; sometimes translated literally as the Benin Popular Republic or Popular Republic of Benin) was a socialist state located in the Gulf of Guinea on the African continent, which became present-day Benin in 1990 ...
a year later; the banks and
petroleum industry The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry, includes the global processes of hydrocarbon exploration, exploration, extraction of petroleum, extraction, oil refinery, refining, Petroleum transport, transportation (often by oil tankers ...
were nationalized. The
People's Revolutionary Party of Benin People's, branded as ''People's ViennaLine'' until May 2018, and legally ''Altenrhein Luftfahrt Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, GmbH'', is an Austria, Austro-Switzerland, Swiss airline headquartered in Vienna, Austria. It operates schedul ...
(''Parti de la révolution populaire du Bénin'', PRPB) was established as the sole ruling party. In 1980, Kérékou was elected president by the Revolutionary National Assembly; he retired from the army in 1987.Abiodun Onadipe
"The return of Africa's old guard – former African leaders, mostly dictators, bid for a return to power"
''Contemporary Review'', August 1996.
It has been suggested that Kérékou's move to Marxism-Leninism was motivated mainly by pragmatic considerations, and that Kérékou himself was not actually a leftist radical; the new ideology offered a means of legitimization, a way of distinguishing the new regime from those that had preceded it, and was based on broader unifying principles than the politics of ethnicity. Kérékou's regime initially included officers from both the north and south of the country, but as the years passed, the northerners (like Kérékou himself) became clearly dominant, undermining the idea that the regime was not based on ethnicity. By officially adopting Marxism-Leninism, Kérékou may also have wanted to win the support of the country's leftists. Kérékou's regime was rigid and vigorous in pursuing its newly adopted ideological goals from the mid-1970s to the late 1970s. In 1974, under the influence of young revolutionaries - the "Ligueurs" - the government embarked on a socialist program: nationalization of strategic sectors of the economy, reform of the education system, establishment of agricultural cooperatives and new local government structures, and a campaign to eradicate "
feudal Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of struc ...
forces" including
tribalism Tribalism is the state of being organized by, or advocating for, tribes or tribal lifestyles. Human evolution primarily occurred in small hunter-gatherer groups, as opposed to in larger and more recently settled agricultural societies or civilizat ...
. Beginning in the late 1970s, the regime jettisoned much of its radicalism and settled onto a more moderately socialist course as Kérékou consolidated his personal control.Its relations with
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and other African governments in the region deteriorated because of the Marxism claimed by the Beninese regime and the support offered to the
Polisario Front The Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro (Spanish language, Spanish: ; ), better known by its acronym Polisario Front, is a Sahrawi nationalism, Sahrawi nationalist liberation movement seeking to end the occupatio ...
for the liberation of Western Sahara. The French government of
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing Valéry René Marie Georges Giscard d'Estaing (, ; ; 2 February 19262 December 2020), also known as simply Giscard or VGE, was a French politician who served as President of France from 1974 to 1981. After serving as Ministry of the Economy ...
feared the spread of Marxism in West Africa and decided to react. He was joined by Félix Houphouet-Boigny (
Ivory Coast Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire and officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital city of Yamoussoukro is located in the centre of the country, while its largest List of ci ...
), Gnassingbé Eyadéma (
Togo Togo, officially the Togolese Republic, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to Ghana–Togo border, the west, Benin to Benin–Togo border, the east and Burkina Faso to Burkina Faso–Togo border, the north. It is one of the le ...
), Joseph-Désiré Mobutu (
Zaire Zaire, officially the Republic of Zaire, was the name of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1971 to 18 May 1997. Located in Central Africa, it was, by area, the third-largest country in Africa after Sudan and Algeria, and the 11th-la ...
) and
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(
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), who, in addition to the diplomatic isolation and attempts to destabilize Benin economically, decided to organize an attempted coup d'état. This was Operation Shrimp, entrusted to the French mercenary Bob Denard, on 17 January 1977, but it failed completely. It was hoped that the nationalizations of the 1970s would help develop the economy, but it remained in a very poor condition. Kérékou began reversing course in the early 1980s, closing down numerous state-run companies and attempting to attract foreign investment. He also accepted an
IMF The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution funded by 191 member countries, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is regarded as the global lender of la ...
structural readjustment program in 1989, agreeing to austerity measures that severely cut state expenditure. The economic situation continued to worsen during the 1980s, provoking widespread unrest in 1989. A student strike began in January of that year; subsequently, strikes among various elements of society increased in frequency, and the nature of their demands grew broader: whereas initially they had focused on economic issues such as salary arrears, this progressed to include demands for political reform.


Transition to multi-party

In the period of reforms towards multiparty democracy in Africa at the beginning of the 1990s, Benin moved onto this path early, with Kérékou being forced to make concessions to popular discontent. Benin's early and relatively smooth transition may be attributed to the particularly dismal economic situation in the country, which seemed to preclude any alternative. Amid increasing unrest, Kérékou was re-elected as president by the National Assembly in August 1989, but in December 1989 Marxism-Leninism was dropped as the state ideology, and a national conference was held in February 1990. The conference turned out to be hostile to Kérékou and declared its own sovereignty; despite the objections of some of his officers to this turn of events, Kérékou did not act against the conference, although he labelled the conference's declaration of sovereignty a "civilian coup". During the transition that followed, Kérékou remained president but lost most of his power. During the 1990 National Conference, which was nationally televised, Kérékou spoke to the Archbishop of Cotonou, Isidore de Souza, confessing guilt and begging forgiveness for the flaws of his regime. An observer described it as a "remarkable piece of political theater", full of cultural symbolism and significance; in effect, Kérékou was seeking forgiveness from his people. Such a gesture, so unusual for the African leaders of the time, could have fatally weakened Kérékou's political standing, but he performed the gesture in such a way that, far from ending his political career, it instead served to symbolically redeem him and facilitate his political rehabilitation, while also "securing him immunity from prosecution". Kérékou shrewdly utilized the timing and setting: "Culturally as well as theologically it was impossible to refuse forgiveness on these terms."
World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development ...
economist Nicéphore Soglo, chosen as prime minister by the conference, took office in March, and a new constitution was approved in a December 1990 referendum. Multi-party elections were held in March 1991, which Kérékou lost, obtaining only about 32% of the vote in the second round against Prime Minister Soglo;Elections in Benin
African Elections Database.
while he won very large vote percentages in the north, in the rest of the country he found little support. Kérékou was thus the first mainland African president to lose power through a popular election. He apologized for "deplorable and regrettable incidents" that occurred during his rule. After losing the election in March 1991, Kérékou left the political scene and "withdrew to total silence", another move that was interpreted as penitential.


1996 presidential election

Kérékou reclaimed the presidency in the March 1996 election. Soglo's economic reforms and his alleged dictatorial tendencies had caused his popularity to suffer. Although Kérékou received fewer votes than Soglo in the first round, he then defeated Soglo in the second round, taking 52.5% of the vote. Kérékou was backed in the second round by third place candidate Adrien Houngbédji and fourth place candidate Bruno Amoussou; as in 1991, Kérékou received very strong support from northern voters, but he also improved his performance in the south. Soglo alleged fraud, but this was rejected by the Constitutional Court, which confirmed Kérékou's victory. When taking the oath of office, Kérékou left out a portion that referred to the "spirits of the ancestors" because he had become a born-again Christian after his defeat by Soglo. He was subsequently forced to retake the oath including the reference to spirits.


Disputed re-election, 2001

Kérékou was re-elected for a second five-year term in the March 2001 presidential election under controversial circumstances. In the first round he took 45.4% of the vote; Soglo, who took second place, and parliament speaker Houngbédji, who took third, both refused to participate in the second round, alleging fraud and saying that they did not want to legitimize the vote by participating in it. This left the fourth-place finisher, Amoussou, to face Kérékou in the run-off, and Kérékou easily won with 83.6% of the vote. It was subsequently discovered that the American corporation
Titan Titan most often refers to: * Titan (moon), the largest moon of Saturn * Titans, a race of deities in Greek mythology Titan or Titans may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional entities Fictional locations * Titan in fiction, fictiona ...
gave more than two million dollars to Kérékou's re-election campaign as a bribe. During Kérékou's second period in office his government followed a liberal economic path. The period also saw Benin take part in international peacekeeping missions in other African states. Kérékou was barred from running again in 2006 on two counts. The constitution not only stipulated an absolute two-term limit, but also required that presidential candidates be younger than 70; he turned 70 in 2003, during his second term. Kérékou said in July 2005 that he would not attempt to amend the constitution to allow him to run for a third term. "If you don't leave power," he said, "power will leave you." There was, however, speculation that he had wanted it to be changed, but faced too much opposition. On 5 March 2006, voters went to the polls to decide who would succeed Kérékou as President of Benin.
Yayi Boni Thomas Boni Yayi (born 1 July 1951) is a Beninese banker and politician who was the president of Benin from 2006 to 2016. He took office after winning the 2006 Beninese presidential election, March 2006 presidential election and was re-elected to ...
defeated Adrien Houngbédji in a run-off vote on 19 March, and Kérékou left office at the end of his term, at midnight on 6 April 2006.


Religion and symbolism

Born and baptized in the
Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...
faith, although he was a lapsed adherent, Kérékou allegedly converted to
Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...
in 1980 while on a visit to Libya, and changed his first name to Ahmed, but he later returned to the use of the name Mathieu. This alleged conversion may have been designed to please the Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (20 October 2011) was a Libyan military officer, revolutionary, politician and political theorist who ruled Libya from 1969 until Killing of Muammar Gaddafi, his assassination by Libyan Anti-Gaddafi ...
and obtain financial and military support. Alternatively, the conversion story may have been a rumor planted by some of his opponents in order to destabilize his regime. He subsequently became a
born-again Christian To be born again, or to experience the new birth, is a phrase, particularly in evangelical Christianity, that refers to a "spiritual rebirth", or a regeneration of the human spirit. In contrast to one's physical birth, being "born again" is d ...
. Some Vodun believers in Benin regarded him as having magical powers, explaining his ability to survive repeated coup attempts during his military rule. Nicknamed "the chameleon" from an early point in his career, Kérékou's motto was "the branch will not break in the arms of the chameleon". The nickname and motto he adopted were full of cultural symbolism, articulating and projecting his power and ability. Unlike some past rulers who had adopted animal symbolism intending to project a violent, warlike sense of power, Kérékou's symbolic animal suggested skill and cleverness; his motto suggested that he would keep the branch from breaking, but implicitly warned of what could happen to "the branch" if it was not "in the arms of the chameleon"—political chaos. To some, his nickname seemed particularly apt as he successfully adapted himself to a new political climate and neoliberal economic policies in the 1990s. He used the campaign slogan, "Experience in the service of youth."


Retirement and death

After leaving office in 2006, Kérékou stayed out of politics and spent time at his homes in Cotonou and Natitingou in northwestern Benin, his native region. He suffered a health crisis in 2014 and was taken to Paris for treatment. Although he recovered, he continued to suffer health problems, and he died in Benin on 14 October 2015 at the age of 82.Tirthankar Chanda
"Les «Caméléons» meurent aussi: Mathieu Kérékou s’en est allé"
Radio France Internationale, 14 October 2015 .
His death was announced in a statement by President Thomas Boni Yayi. No cause of death was stated."Benin's former president Mathieu Kerekou dies at 82"
Agence France-Presse, 14 October 2015.
A week of national mourning was declared.


References


Further reading

* Allen, D., Allen, C., Radu, M., Somerville, K., Allan, G., & Baxter, J. ''Benin'' (Burns & Oates, 1989). * Fredriksen, John C. ed. ''Biographical Dictionary of Modern World Leaders'' (2003) pp 252–253. * Strandsbjerg, Camilla. "Continuity and Rupture in Conceptions of Political Power in Benin, 1972-2001." ''Cahiers detudes africaines'' 1 (2005): 71-94. * Strandsbjerg, Camilla. "Kerekou, God and the ancestors: religion and the conception of political power in Benin." ''African Affairs'' 99.396 (2000): 395-414. {{DEFAULTSORT:Kerekou, Mathieu 1933 births Presidents of Benin 2015 deaths People of French West Africa Leaders who took power by coup Beninese evangelicals Beninese military personnel People's Revolutionary Party of Benin politicians Converts to Evangelicalism from Sunni Islam Beninese former Sunni Muslims Converts to Protestantism from atheism or agnosticism Beninese communists Communism in Benin Library of Congress Africa Collection related Converts to Sunni Islam from Roman Catholicism People from Atakora Department 21st-century Beninese politicians 20th-century Beninese politicians Former Marxists 20th-century presidents in Africa