BOGANDA, BARTHLEMY

born April 4, 1910, Bobangui, Moyen-Congo, French Equatorial Africa [now in Central African Republic] died March 29, 1959, near Bangui the major nationalist leader of the Central African Republic (formerly Ubangi-Shari) in the critical decolonization period of the 1950s. His strong popular support was unmatched by that of any other political figure in the four colonies of French Equatorial Africa. Stridently anti-colonial but pragmatic, he could (and did) make deals with the colonial administration and European businessmen to gain his ends. Born of a peasant family, Boganda became the first African Roman Catholic priest in Ubangi-Shari and was sponsored by the Catholic missions as a candidate in the November 1946 elections to the French National Assembly. He won against an administration-backed candidate but soon denounced the missions as well as the colonial administration and left the French Catholic party, the Republican Popular Movement, and the priesthood. In 1949 he founded his own party, the Social Evolution Movement of Black Africa, which he dominated completely. In the 1951 campaign a French administrator briefly arrested him for endangering the peace. From then on Boganda's prestige was essentially unchallenged. Even the French realized it was useless to oppose him and in 1953 appointed a new governor to conciliate him. In 1956 he also came to an agreement with French businessmen, who offered him financial support in return for European representation on municipal and territorial election lists. Secure at home, Boganda, in 1957 and 1958, turned his attention to French Equatorial Africa as a whole (which also included Chad, Gabon, and the French Congo). He hoped for a federation of these states under African rather than French control, and for the eventual creation of a United States of Latin Africa that would also include Angola, the Belgian Congo, Ruanda-Urundi, and Cameroon. By late 1958 this dream was shattered, and he turned back to the future Central African Republic, where he was killed a few months later in an airplane crash.