Barthélémy Boganda between charisma and cosmology: interpretive perspectives on biography in Equatorial African history

Barthélémy Boganda, the principal anti-colonial politician in Oubangui-Chari (now the Central African Republic) during the 1950s, was an extraordinary character. Little known in the Anglophone literature on Africa, Boganda developed into an exceptional orator and agitator who was politically unassailable by 1951. Orphaned by the violence of French colonialism, Boganda had been picked up by a colonial patrol in the rainforest and put into missionary care (1920). A good student, he gained a first-rate education that culminated in his ordination as Catholic priest (1938). In the mid-1940s, Boganda fell out with his superiors; his clashes with colonial administrators proved to be a catalyst for his subsequent political career. This chapter analyses the nature of Boganda’s personality and comportment against the backdrop of two issues: the trauma of his childhood years and the religious-cultural registers, as represented by precolonial cosmology and involving beliefs and values that Boganda inculcated during childhood. The chapter thus analyses his political style against the background of the mythological trickster figure, which, together with personal psychological traits, fed the nature of his charismatic leadership. In this way, Boganda’s life encapsulated both the horrors, tragedy, and emancipatory possibilities of colonialism in Equatorial Africa.