Francois Tombalbaye is the first president of Chad. Tombalbaye was born in southern Chad and began his career as a teacher. He was an activist in the Chadian Progressive Party, Local RDA, the African Democratic Rally. In 1960, when Chad strivied for independence from France he was elected president but the plan quickly turns to dictatorship.
Background
Ethnicity:
The Sara (kameeni), better known as the descendants of the legendary Sao, are the largest group in Chad, making up to 32% of Chad's population. They are a mostly non-Muslim people — about a sixth of them are believed to be Christians, with most practicing traditional faiths — who reside in the central African nation of Chad and neighboring countries.
Francois Tombalbaye was born on June 15, 1918, at Bessada in Middle Chari, close to the city of Koumara. He was from the most numerous tribe, the Sara, he prominent ethnicity of Chad's five southern prefectures. As a young man, Tombalbaye studied to become an educator in the Republic of Congo's capital of Brazzaville, due to the lack of in-country schools.
Education
François Tombalbaye educated in Brazzaville (then the capital of French Equatorial Africa, now capital of the Republic of the Congo)
Career
He had little formal schooling though he worked later as a schoolteacher in Fort Lamy, Fort Archambault (Sahr), Koumra and Kyabe. Elected in 1946 president of the Chad Autonomous Trade Union, he took part in June 1947 in the formation Chad Progressive Party, PPT, as it's local section of the Rassemblement emocratique Africain and was put in charge of party activities in the Middle Chari and Logone regions.
On March 30, 1952, he was elected Councillor for Middle Chari to the Territorial Assembly. Re-elected on March 31, 1957, in May he became member of the Great Council for French Equatorial Africa and later its Vice-President.
Beaten in the 1951 legislative elections by a coalition supported by the chiefs and the French administration the PPT was again defeated in the 1952 territorial elections, by 30 seats to six. In the March 1957 general elections he was part of the coalition under Gabriel Lisette, the PPT leader who won victory by getting 47 seats out of 65. In the 1958 referendum the PPT secured a 98% affirmative vote in favour of membership of the French Community; Chad got self-government on November 28, 1958. But coalition rule brought four successive provisional governments between December 1958 and March 1959.
Tombalbaye kept himself in the background until Lisette showed that he could not form a permanent government. He then became Prime Minister and Minister of Justice in March 1959 and chose his own cabinet, with Gabriel Lisette as Vice-Premier and seven ministers each from north and south, though the southerners had the most important jobs. On May 31, 1959, he held fresh elections and won 57 out of 85 seats in the new assembly. He then thoroughly purged the administration and saw his country through to full independence on August 11, 1960, becoming Head of State, Prime Minister and Defence Minister. A few days afterwards he reinforced his own position by expelling Gabriel Lisette from government while he was on holiday abroad. From that time on he pursued his main objectives of a centralised leadership backed by a ruling party, strengthened by successive purges. He added Justice to his portfolios in February 1961. He then forced the merger of the main opposition party, the African National Party, with the PPT on March 18, 1961, and in January 1962 he dissolved all other opposition parties. This prepared the ground for the March elections with a single “national union” list of government supporters.
On April 14, 1962, the National Assembly approved the presidential type constitution that he had introduced and he was elected President on April 23 by an electoral college.
During the period 1962 to 1965 repeated plots against himself and the government were unearthed. Riots in Fort Lamy in 1963 resulted in 20 deaths and the arrests of the former Prime Minister. In October 1965 a tax riot at Mangalme was the signal for rebellion among Muslim dissidents in the Tibesti region, and isolated pockets in the south.
By August 1968 he considered the rebellion was bad enough to invoke the Franco-Chad Defence Pact and call in French troops. They sent two missions and by September 1969, 1,600 French¬men were serving. Tombalbaye secured his re-election on June 15, 1969, as President and by June 1971 he was sufficiently in control of the rebel areas to get the withdrawal of the French troops.
President Pompidou visited Chad in January 1972 and expressed French support. Throughout the war Libya had backed the FROLINAT rebels but in December 1972 he pulled off a coup by persuading President Qadafi to extradite the FROLINAT members living in Libya, and to grant Chad 23,000m. CFA francs (£40m. approx.) for economic and social projects, in return for which Tombalbaye broke off relations with the Israelis.
Religion
His policies angered Muslims and other groups, leading to his assassination during a military coup in 1975.
Politics
In preindependence days, as a native Chadian and no. 2 in the party he was able to oust Gabrielle Lisette, formerly a West Indian administrator, from the leader¬ship of the Chad Progressive Party (PPT). He imposed his own tough, autocratic rule and gave rein to an administration that ruled with a heavy hand in the north. But after he had defeated his constitutional opponents, he was unable to bring the national unity which he continually preached. He was prepared to fight with grim determination, and French support, in five years of sporadic guerilla war against the Muslim rebels of the north. He provided a national rallying point and maintained his authority with his own people.
Finally after the war had fizzled out he pulled off a master political stroke which gives a clear indication of his character. He overthrew a long-standing friendship with Israel, which had given Chad much aid and technical assistance over the years and in return gained a £40m. grant and an assurance from Libya that it would drop its support of the rebels.
Personality
A Protestant schoolteacher, in a Catholic country, from the most numerous tribe, the Sara. Ambitious and persistent in politics
Quotes from others about the person
General de Gaulle once wrote “His defiant passion will keep him up to the task.”