By Selwyn Duke

We don’t hear as much as we should about Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean thug of a leader who has just stolen another election in his nation.  This is at least partially attributable to the fact that he’s not a politically-incorrect scoundrel, in that the group he most obviously persecutes is whites.  As to this, he long ago started seizing their very productive farms, thereby removing the land from the hands that had long fed the country.  The result is that while Zimbabwe was once a bread basket, it’s now a basket case and has trouble feeding its people.  But this piece isn’t about Mugabe.

This is because, if Slate writer Peter Maass is to be believed, there just may be a worse dictator plaguing the African continent.  He is Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang.  Maass writes:

. . . Mugabe may not be Africa’s worst. That prize arguably goes to
Teodoro Obiang, the ruler of Equatorial Guinea whose life seems a
parody of the dictator genre. Years of violent apprenticeship in a
genocidal regime led by a crazy uncle? Check. Power grab in a coup
against the murderous uncle? Check. Execution of now-deposed uncle by
firing squad? Check. Proclamation of self as ‘the liberator’ of the
nation? Check. Govern for decades in a way that prompts human rights
groups to accuse your regime of murder, torture, and corruption? Check, check, and check.

Obiang,
who seized power in 1979, had promised to be kinder and gentler than
his predecessor, but in the 1990s, even the U.S. ambassador to
Equatorial Guinea received a death threat from a regime insider, the
ambassador has said, and had to be evacuated. Not long
after that, offshore oil was discovered, but the first wave of
revenues—about $700 million—was transferred into secret accounts under
Obiang’s personal control. The latest chapter, written in the last
month, may be the least surprising, because Obiang’s ruling party won 99 of the 100 seats in legislative elections. A government press release,
hailing Obiang as the ‘Militant Brother Founding President of the
PDGE,’ carried the headline, ‘Democracy at Its Peak in Equatorial
Guinea.’

Of course, Maass might be a little biased, since he had a run-in with Obiang’s minions while in the country (an experience he describes).  Nevertheless, it’s an interesting piece about a villain who hasn’t yet had his 15 minutes of infamy.

Read the rest of Maass’ piece here.