Death of a Dictator

During 15 years of harsh and eccentric rule, President Ngarta Tombalbaye of Chad survived at least seven major assassination attempts. Last week his luck ran out. In a surprise sunrise attack, uniformed soldiers and police, led by General Mbailai Odingar, acting commander of Chad's 4,000-man army, stormed the white-walled presidential palace in Ndjamena, capital of this Central African nation. Tombalbaye's death was announced over national radio, and General Odingar claimed that the armed forces had "exercised their responsibilities before God and the nation." Almost immediately, thousands of brightly swathed men and women poured into the dusty streets of the sun-scorched city, singing, dancing and joyfully chanting, "Tombalbaye is dead."

A former schoolteacher and union leader, Tombalbaye entered politics in 1947 and became Chad's head of state when it gained independence in 1960 after 47 years of French colonial rule. Several months later the dictatorial Tombalbaye merged the main opposition party into his own Progressives--a move that allowed him to be elected President without opposition in 1962.

Despite his ruthless oppression of political opponents, Tombalbaye was never able to gain complete control of Chad, a country torn by traditional religious and tribal animosities. Starting in 1965 and later with the support of the French Foreign Legion, Tombalbaye fought a guerrilla war against the Moslem rebels from his country's northern and eastern desert regions. The Moslems, who constitute 52% of the population, resented the political dominance that Tombalbaye gave to the Bantu tribesmen of Chad's tropical south.

Mock Burial. More recently, Tom-balbaye's opposition has come from fellow Bantu military officers and members of his own party as well. In 1973 General Felix Malloum, then commander in chief of the army, was arrested for allegedly conspiring to overthrow Tombalbaye. Early this year Mrs. Kaltouma Guembang, former head of the Progressive Party's women's wing, was tried for attempting to kill the President by witchcraft. She allegedly hired wizards to pierce the eyes of a black sheep--symbolizing Tombalbaye--and bury it alive. The movement to oust Tombalbaye gained momentum last summer when, as part of an authenticity campaign called Chaditude, he ordered all high government officials, civil servants and military officers to undergo Yondo, a sometimes fatal initiation ritual. The ordeal, which Tombalbaye himself underwent as an adolescent, is known to involve flogging, facial scarring, drugging and mock burial (TIME, Nov. 18).

After last week's coup, Malloum was released from prison and named President of a nine-man Supreme Military Council that will administer Chad until a provisional government can be formed. Chad thus became the 18th of 37 black African nations to fall under military rule. The junta immediately suspended Tombalbaye's 1962 constitution, banned all political parties and arrested eight of the President's top aides. In a midnight radio address, Malloum promised to bring economic and social reform to Chad. Few countries are in greater need of improvement. More than three times the size of California, Chad has only 150 miles of paved highway and no railroad. Its cotton and cattle economy has been ravaged by six years of drought, and the per capita income of its 4 million citizens averages less than $80 a year.

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