Jean-Hilaire Aubame was a Gabonese politician active during both the colonial and independence periods. The French journalist Pierre Péan said that Aubame's training "as a practicing Catholic and a customs official helped to make him an integrated man, one of whom political power was not an end in itself."
Background
Jean-Hilaire was born on November 10, 1912, in the Fang tribe (the most numerous ethnic group in Gabon) at Libreville, Aubame was orphaned at a young age. He was raised by the stepbrother of Léon M'ba, who became Aubame's chief political rival
Education
Jean-Hilaire Aubame was educated at Libreville
Career
He joined the French colonial administration and became a chief clerk. He was elected as a deputy for Gabon to the French National Assembly in 1946 and at the same time organised his Gabonese Democratic and Social Union (USDG) in opposition to Leon M’Ba’s Bloc Démocratique Gabonaise (BDG). The USDG was linked to the Parti du Regroupement Africain (PRA) of Leopold Senghor of Senegal.
He spent an increasing amount of time in France and was re-elected to the French Assembly in 1951 and 1956, where he was influenced by European Socialism: this allowed M'Bk to organise him in domestic politics, his party being confined mainly to the up- country Fangs. In the 1957 elections the USDG was only narrowly defeated, but M’Ba picked three of its members to join the government as ministers. He personally refused to join M'Ba’s coalition government after independence in 1960, but in the February 1961 elections, he merged his party in a single list with the BDG and was elected and appointed Foreign Minister.
But the two leaders soon began to disagree. He was demoted to Minister of State then dropped from the cabinet and appointed president of the Supreme Court. Meanwhile opposition to M’Ba was building up both inside and outside the Assembly and coalescing around Aubame’s leadership. Early in 1964 M’Ba tried to force him to resign his seat in the Assembly and, when this became an issue, called new elections.
While Aubame and the USDG called for a boycott, a group of young officers intervened on February 18, and nominated him as Head of State. Within two days the French paratroops had reinstated MBa.
Though not considered a coup organiser by most commentators, he was put on trial at Lambarene in August and, on September 10, condemned to 10 years’ hard labour and 10 years’ banishment, while the lieutenants who were really responsible were sentenced to 20 years each.
Albert Bongo had been a Special Commissioner in the Special Court that tried Aubame and when he came to power, on Leon M’Ba’s death in November 1967, he said that he had not forgotten the responsibility which Aubame had, nor his personal ambition which “led the country towards catastrophy”.
It was not until August 16, 1972, to mark the 12th anniversary of independence, when Bongo’s personal position was unassailable, that Aubame was considered to have expiated his complicity sufficiently to be released.
Personality
One of the veteran African parliamentarians, with 13 years in the French National Assembly and intimate friendships among the great Francophone African leaders, who were his contemporaries. His mistake was probably to neglect political organisation at home in favour of his overseas activities. He might have formed a viable alternative government when Leon M’Ba was deposed by the coup of February 1964 but was prevented from doing so by the intervention of the French paratroops.