Three Down

Another tyrant falls

In his humid, upriver capital of Bangui two years ago, former French colonial army Captain Jean-Bedel Bokassa donned an ermine robe and mounted a giant eagle-shaped throne. As 3,500 formally attired guests looked on, he crowned himself Bokassa I, unchallenged Emperor of a landlocked, poverty-stricken country that he renamed the Central African Empire (pop. 2 million). At a cost of $20 million, it was the most extravagant coronation since that of Napoleon, Bokassa's idol. Then the new Emperor intensified an already psychotic reign of terror, which included the mass murder last April of 100 youths who refused to wear school uniforms.

The empire was mercifully short-lived. While Bokassa was away in Libya last week, he was deposed in a bloodless, midnight coup by former President David Dacko, himself overthrown by Bokassa in 1966. The downfall of the "Butcher of Bangui" gave Africa something to cheer about: the continent is now rid of its three most notorious dictators. In April, Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada was driven from Uganda by rebels and invading Tanzanian troops. Last month the equally despised President-for-Life of tiny Equatorial Guinea, Francisco Macias Nguema, was booted by a military coup.

In a radio broadcast, Dacko, 49, a former schoolteacher who was the first President of the former French colony after independence in 1960, proclaimed the country the Central African Republic again and promised to "return sovereignty to the people." At week's end French troops flew to Bangui to maintain order and perhaps to make sure Bokassa does not return from exile.

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