The Central African Republic has had a troubled history despite having large reserves of diamonds. Perhaps if they could better decide what was a felony and what was a misdemeanor. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
What do you say about the aesthetics of this stamp. Perhaps just that desperately poor countries shouldn’t do stamps showing bugs or rats.
Todays stamp is issue D1, a 50 Centimes postage due stamp issued by the Central African Republic on October 15th, 1962. It was a 12 stamp issue in various denominations showing various bugs. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether unused or canceled to order. I am going to need more evidence to believe it was really possible to send a postage due letter in the CAR.
The Central African Republic has suffered from troubled leadership since the move from being the French colony of Ubangi-Chari. The first leader Barthelemy Boganda was killed in a plane crash soon after independence. The surprise might be that be that a plane gets off the ground there rather than it crashes. Nevertheless, many in the CAR believe he was killed by his French wife who was estranged and had just took out a large insurance policy on him. I would need to see more evidence that an insurance company would be foolish enough to write a policy on a African independence leader.
In any case, leadership passed to cousin David Dacko. He had the idea to get his hands on the local diamond trade. He withdrew the concession given to a French company and decreed that any citizen could mine for diamonds. With Israeli help, he set up a diamond cutting operation in the capital where it would be taxed and then sent to Israel. Or course instead little of whatever diamonds are mined there go through that though they do end up in Israel. Thus CAR would stay desperately poor.
Draco had transformed the system to a one party state and so change was only possible by coup. This happened in 1966 with Coronel Bokassa now in charge. He promoted himself to General, than Field Marshall, of a 500 man Army, and finally to Emperor Bokassa I. This may sound ridiculous but isn’t it de facto what all these President for life guys do. In any case new crimes or at least misdemeanors were being committed. One of Bokassa’s most notorious crimes was when school children were protesting a school uniform policy when Bokassa’s Rolls Royce passed by. They threw rocks at it claiming the school uniform company was owned by one of Bokassa’s wives. Bokassa’s car stopped and he had 120 of the school children arrested. He followed them to the local jail where he berated them for their insolence. Rivals then claim he began breaking their skulls with his sold ivory walking stick. He then supposedly had there remains taken to the Palace where they could be frozen for later eating. Soon the French backed a coup which restored the “Republic” and put Dacko back in charge and the Emperor Bokassa in exile. He lasted 2 years this time before the next General’s coup.
Bokassa attempted to return to CAR in 1986 and was arrested as he stepped off the plane and put on trial for treason murder and cannibalism. The French in 1957 had made the consumption of human flesh a misdemeanor. The trial was televised and watched throughout French speaking Africa. Bokassa hired French lawyers. Among the charges was that human flesh was fed to visiting foreign dignitaries including then French President D’Estaing. Bokassa was not afraid to offer a vigorous defense. At one point he stood up an shouted “All I hear is Bokassa, Bokassa, Bokassa, do you really think I am the only man in this country to commit murder?” A not totally off base defense. The Court convicted Bokassa but not of cannibalism. The General who replaced Dacko the second time in 1981 had offered an amnesty to all previous misdemeanor crimes from before he took over. The convictions for murder did not mean much either. His Death Sentence was commuted to jail time and that was amnestied. The people enjoyed his performance at trial.
Well if I ever am invited to the C.A.R,, I will definitely practice veganism. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting