Background
Francisco Macías Nguema (born Mez-m Ngueme; Africanized to Masie Nguema Biyogo Ñegue Ndong) was born on 1 January, 1924 at Nsegayong village in Rio Muni in a Fang family.
Francisco Macías Nguema (born Mez-m Ngueme; Africanized to Masie Nguema Biyogo Ñegue Ndong) was born on 1 January, 1924 at Nsegayong village in Rio Muni in a Fang family.
Educated at local Catholic schools.
He started work in the Spanish colonial service in 1944 and he also had coffee farms. His political activities did not start before 1963. He then joined the IPGE, the oldest and Marxist inclined party, which drew its strength from the Fang majority in Rio Muni. It wanted a strong unitary constitution, fearing that politicians in Fernando Po were angling for self-government under Spain. The party was founded by the lawyer, Luis Maho, and then Clemente Ateba, but Macias soon asserted his personality and emerged as the leader.
From 1963 there was a measure of self-government. President of the Government Council was Bonifacio Ondu Edu, the leader of the moderate MUNGE party, which wanted independence, while maintaining strong Spanish links. Macias was somewhat uneasily Vice-President in the Council from 1964 to 1968, as he had much more militant and left-wing views than Edu.
In 1968 Spain suddenly became willing to comply with United Nations resolutions and grant independence. After constitutional talks and a favourable vote in the Spanish Cortes, there was a 61% favourable vote in a referendum for independence under a new unitary constitution, binding Fernando Po and Rio Muni together.
On September 22 Macias stood as a candidate in the elections for the Presidency. In the first ballot he obtained 36,716 votes to Edu’s 31,941, but there were other candidates and this was not an overall majority. A further election on September 29 gave him a majority and he became President forming his own government on October 12, appointing himself Minister of Defence. In the interests of national unity he formed a coalition out of the three main parties, but none of his main political rivals was given office, except Atanasio Ndongo, who became Foreign Minister.
In the ceremonies that followed happy crowds welcomed him in his home county at Bata, in contrast to the lack of enthusiasm at St Isabel in Fernando Po, where separatist tendencies still ran strong.
In February 1969 he suggested that the Spanish troops left in Equatorial Guinea should be withdrawn and buildings should cease to fly the Spanish flag. These proposals were resisted by the Spanish troops and riots followed, in which a young Spaniard was shot. Macias did not pacify the people and the Spaniards began a mass exodus from the country. On March 5, he arrested his Foreign Minister, Atanasio Ndongo, who had accused him of stirring up racial hatred in his broadcasts. Ndongo was charged with plotting a coup and thrown into prison.
On March 10, he called on the youth gangs to stop terrorising the Spaniards, but by April 15, most of the 7,000 colony had left the country, together with all the Spanish troops.
In the middle of the March crisis he suspended the constitution and threw many politicians into prison. By the end of March Ndongo had died by defenestration and Bonifacio Edu and two others also died while still in prison. Edu, who was suffering from a serious liver complaint, had not received proper treatment for his illness.
In February 1970, he merged all existing political parties into the National Unity Party, later renamed Workers’ National Party, and maintained a de facto state of emergency with his 1,000 strong National Guard and his Guinean Youth Movement.
Further riots occurred in 1970 against Portuguese settlers living in Fernando Po, after Macias had addressed a rally. For several days afterwards youth gangs had wandered the streets of Santa Isabel attacking whites.
The economy of the country suffered badly from the political shocks and bad relations with the whites and Macias had to bring in United Nations personnel to keep basic services going. He also patched up relations with Spain and signed new co-operation agreements in May and November 1969, while seeking new friends. He established diplomatic relations with China in October 1970 and signed a trade pact with the USSR shortly afterwards.
At the end of the Nigerian Civil War, many of the Biafran workers, unhappy with labour conditions on Fernando Po, took the opportunity to leave the country. Macias had a new labour agreement prepared at the beginning of 1971, specifying certain basic conditions of work, but the Nigerian government took a considerable time to ratify. Things deteriorated still further when about 50 Nigerian workers were killed, following demonstrations against the government.
In the last quarter of 1972 he became involved in a long wrangle with Gabon over two uninhabited offshore islands, which Gabon suddenly claimed. The OAU finally effected a reconciliation on November 13, 1972.
Best known as a leader of Idea Popular de la Guinea Ecuatorial (1PGE), a militant, extreme-left, anti-colonial political party, but he was also for four years the Vice-President in the Government Council, during the self-government period prior to independence. This should have given him administrative and political maturity. But his antipathy for Spanish colonialism did not cool when the colonial power pulled out and he was unable or unwilling to prevent the mass exodus of Spanish settlers in March 1969.
He has frequently been criticised for his frequent and forceful use of the National Youth Movement to enforce his will. He has made a bold attempt to get primary education started, but the economy has been debilitated by the removal of Spanish expertise and Nigerian workers, who also fled the country in large numbers, and he is finding it exceedingly difficult to get alternative assistance from the Communist countries, the UN or the OAU.
Born as Mez-m Ngueme, Macías Nguema was the son of a witch doctor who allegedly killed his younger brother. He belonged to the country's majority Fang ethnic group. As a boy of 9, Nguema saw his father punched to death by a local administrator when he tried to use his title of chief to negotiate for better wages for his people. Nguema was orphaned a week later when his mother committed suicide, leaving the boy and 10 siblings to fend for themselves.
With no higher court available to hear appeals, the decision of the Special Military Tribunal was final. Macías Nguema and the six other defendants sentenced to death were executed by a hired Moroccan Army firing squad at Black Beach Prison at 6 pm on the same day. During his execution, he was reportedly "calm and dignified".