A Joke Letter That Sent a Student to Africa as a Token Dignitary
In 1976, word reached Paris: Jean‑Bédel Bokassa, Emperor of the Central African Empire, would hold a grand coronation and invited heads of state worldwide to attend.
News of the event drew attention not only from the French government but also from another group: the Kingdom of Basoche. This was no real sovereign state, but a long‑running, playful prank organization run by a dozen university students, something like an underground student union. Among them was 23‑year‑old Didier, a mischievous undergrad. He wrote a letter to the Central African Embassy in France.
The letter read:
Your Majesty Emperor Bokassa, I am the King of the Kingdom of Basoche. I have learned of your upcoming coronation and send my congratulations. I wonder why I have not received an invitation, so I may come and pay my respects in person.
Didier wrote the letter purely out of boredom, a harmless prank. Months later, to his shock, he received a formal reply from the Central African Embassy. The letter earnestly invited him and his girlfriend, the King and Queen of Basoche, to attend the coronation as official heads of state.
Didier quickly realized his joke had spiraled into a diplomatic incident. He wrote back at once, explaining he was just an ordinary university student and not a monarch. Yet the embassy refused to accept his retraction. After pages of clarification, their response remained firm: “Mr. Didier, do not jest. We know exactly whom we are addressing. King of Basoche, please arrive for the ceremony on time.”
In December 1976, 23‑year‑old Didier and his girlfriend boarded a special aircraft, travelling as royalty to meet Jean‑Bédel Bokassa, one of Africa’s most brutal and absurd tyrants.
Jean‑Bédel Bokassa, whose given name translates roughly to “small forest”, ruled the Central African Empire, the last empire ever proclaimed in modern human history. The Central African Republic owes much of its global notoriety to this tyrant, a terrible stroke of misfortune for its people.
The Central African Republic is a landlocked nation in the heart of Africa, with its capital at Bangui. It covers 623,000 square kilometres. Its population stood at roughly 4.7 million in 2018. Though geographically substantial, it ranks among the poorest nations on Earth. Its 2019 GDP totalled only 2.2 billion US dollars, with a per capita GDP of barely over 400 US dollars. Much of this crushing poverty traces directly back to Bokassa’s reign.
Bokassa was born in 1921 in a village downstream from Bangui. His family held chieftain status, but the village was famed for its many fighting men, so many had died in combat that locals nicknamed it “the village of the shot”.
Though born into privilege, Bokassa suffered devastating early loss. The Central African lands were a French colony at the time. In 1927, when Bokassa was six, his father clashed with a French colonial administrator and was summarily executed. A week later, his mother poisoned herself from grief, leaving twelve children, including young Bokassa.
One might expect this bitter trauma to turn Bokassa against French colonial rule. Yet when World War II broke out, he followed his grandfather’s advice and enlisted in the Free French Forces without hesitation.
Bokassa fought across many campaigns, earned distinction, and once personally captured an enemy general. By war’s end, his bravery had made him a well‑regarded sergeant‑major awarded the French Légion d’honneur. He was then posted to Asia to fight in the First Indochina War.
The First Indochina War is often overshadowed by the later Vietnam War between the United States and North Vietnam. The American conflict grew directly from France’s defeat in this earlier colonial war. After WWII, France sought to reclaim its colonial hold over Vietnam and met fierce armed resistance. Backed by China and the Soviet Union, the Vietnamese fought an eight‑year war against French troops.
Vietnam’s military capabilities were still maturing then, relying heavily on Chinese arms and strategic guidance. China sent senior military advisors, with General Chen Geng as the most senior among them.
The Indochina campaign left a deep impression on Chen Geng. He described the conflict as a clumsy contest that frustrated him deeply. Chen judged Vietnamese troops slow and unenthusiastic in manoeuvre, far below his expectations. His opinion of French soldiers was even lower: he wrote their combat ability was inferior to Kuomintang troops, always poised to take a beating. This assessment held truth; remnants of Kuomintang forces fleeing mainland China had become formidable armed groups in Burma and Vietnam.
Once, Chen Geng planned an ambush with Vietnamese troops. Torrential rain hit before deployment, and Vietnamese commanders unilaterally delayed their advance by an hour. Chen Geng raged at this disregard for timing. Yet reports soon arrived: the ambush was a smashing success. The French column had also delayed for an hour because of the rain. Neither side lost their window of opportunity. Chen later wrote in his diary: “The French and Vietnamese make a perfect pair of opponents. Watching them fight could shave ten years off my life.”
As the war dragged on, Vietnamese forces gained the upper hand. In March 1954, they launched the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ, wiping out more than ten thousand French troops. The French suffered catastrophic defeat. Two French major generals killed themselves, and Divisional General Charles Piroth committed suicide with a hand grenade, one of France’s great wartime tragedies. Within months of the battle, France withdrew from Vietnam.
Few foresaw that a Black French soldier serving in Điện Biên Phủ would later found humanity’s last empire. Bokassa fought through the battle unscathed and won the Croix de Guerre for his service. Precisely what feat earned him the medal remains unclear, but it proves he was no ordinary man. If he had fallen there, the Central African people would have been spared enormous suffering.
After Indochina, Bokassa was recalled to Paris. His French commanders told him a new mission awaited. To his astonishment, he met Charles de Gaulle. Faced with the leader he revered, Bokassa called de Gaulle “papa”. His admiration bordered on worship, even though French colonial authorities had executed his biological father. He happily embraced de Gaulle as his adoptive father, whether de Gaulle wanted the title or not.
De Gaulle summoned Bokassa with a clear assignment: return to the Central African territories and build the national army.
After World War II, African independence movements surged. De Gaulle recognised colonial rule could not last, yet French withdrawal differed sharply from Britain’s. Britain largely pulled out and transferred power, even messily. France fought to preserve deep influence over its former colonies, retaining sway over domestic politics, finance, military and justice systems. Many states gained nominal independence, and this pattern persists to this day. Bokassa was France’s chosen proxy for the Central African Republic.
The country was scheduled for independence in 1960. At the end of 1959, de Gaulle dispatched Bokassa to build the national army. His family connections made him ideal for the task: he was the nephew of Barthélemy Boganda, the CAR’s founding father and nationalist leader, and cousin to David Dacko, the nation’s first president. He possessed elite kinship networks in the newly emerging state.
With French and family backing, Bokassa built the army quickly. In 1963, he became army chief of staff and seized military control. As his power grew, he clashed with President David Dacko. Dacko planned a trap to eliminate him, but Bokassa struck first, arresting Dacko and toppling his government. He broadcast his seizure of power at 03:50 in the morning, an hour when almost no one listened. His rambling speech promised an era of equality, yet he had no prepared policy agenda. Mid‑broadcast, music played to fill the awkward silence.
From 1966 onward, the Central African Republic entered Bokassa’s era.
Bokassa immediately declared his party, the Movement for the Social Evolution of Black Africa (MESAN), the sole legal political party. He held the presidency while also serving as minister for fourteen portfolios including defence and agriculture. He demanded constant oversight of all officials. Phones were scarce nationwide, so Bokassa ordered civil servants to keep radios on around the clock. The national radio station became his personal broadcast channel; he could call any official live on air whenever he wished.
Even that did not calm his paranoia. He reshuffled his cabinet constantly, replacing the government six times in a single year at his peak.
He also sought to embed his image into every citizen’s mind. His portrait appeared everywhere: banknotes, stamps, posters, newspapers, even school exercise books.
After consolidating power, Bokassa uttered lines reminiscent of A Tale of Two Cities and 1984: “I am everywhere, yet nowhere to be seen. I see nothing, yet witness all. I hear nothing, yet listen to everything.” In short, Bokassa became the CAR’s Big Brother.
Once firmly in control, he turned to enriching himself. His nation held only two million people, an impoverished economy, and resources limited mainly to diamonds and uranium. That did not curb his greed.
After seizing power, the country’s finest hotel, national airline, largest diamond mine, cotton and coffee enterprises all became his personal property. Bokassa famously declared: “The state treasury belongs to me. Paying taxes to the government means paying taxes to Bokassa.”
Tax rates were crippling; businesses unable to pay faced immediate seizure. Even Japan’s yakuza collected protection fees in monthly instalments, but Bokassa squeezed every penny until nothing remained.
His plunder spared no one. As he put it: “I will take money from the devil, from the rich, and leave nothing for the poor.” He imposed a monthly poll tax of 85 francs on every working Central African. Those unable to pay could serve six months of hard labour to settle the debt.
Foreign firms operating in his country also faced extortion. All foreign companies had to hand over a 10 percent commission and grant Bokassa 20 to 40 percent equity. In exchange, those firms received monopoly rights inside the CAR.
Yet Bokassa spent lavishly. He built more than a dozen palaces and royal residences modelled after French royal estates. He acknowledged sixteen wives and fifty‑five girlfriends, with countless other unrecorded partners. In one of the world’s poorest nations, his children lived in opulence, flying between palaces on private aircraft. A photography enthusiast, he owned over three hundred high‑end cameras alongside countless luxury collectibles. Beyond Africa, he owned at least twenty‑five mansions across Europe and South America, ranking among Africa’s wealthiest men.
Greedy looting alone might have been endured, but Bokassa’s terror stemmed from his sadistic brutality. Diplomatic reports from Bangui described him as severely psychologically disturbed. He kept lions, crocodiles and other wild beasts in his palace. One of his favourite pastimes was feeding political rivals to lions, watching men fight wild animals barehanded.
He reinstated medieval punishments including beheading and dismemberment. In July 1972, he stormed into a prison and personally hacked fifty inmates to death with a machete. He delighted in ordering guards to torture prisoners for amusement. His acts exceeded ordinary tyranny; they were clear symptoms of severe mental illness.
Many wondered why resistance never toppled him. Domestic opposition persisted, yet Bokassa survived every challenge. Brutal exploitation of his own people was manageable, as long as he kept his most important patron — France — satisfied.
Bokassa remained a French citizen throughout his rule. He followed French politics far more closely than domestic affairs. In 1973, he gifted two enormous diamonds. The investment paid off: Valéry Giscard d’Estaing became French president one year later. Bokassa repeatedly invited Giscard d’Estaing to hunt in Central African game reserves. Giscard reportedly killed dozens of elephants there, forming a close bond with Bokassa and calling him a friend and family.
Yet bribing French politicians never ended well. Muammar Gaddafi also gave large sums to Nicolas Sarkozy, only to see his regime collapse. French elites accepted favours but would abandon allies whenever convenient.
Bokassa’s loyalty to France was total. He revered de Gaulle as his father and idolised Napoleon. Though he had no noble achievements of his own, Bokassa claimed only two men deserved the title of Napoleon: Bonaparte and himself. His army numbered less than a single division, yet he promoted himself to field marshal in 1972, appointed hundreds of generals, and styled himself “the Napoleon of Africa”. Napoleon, if he knew, would likely protest from his tomb in Les Invalides, urging that his fan’s actions not reflect on him.
After ten years of tyranny, Bokassa reached the height of his grotesque spectacle in 1976. On 4 December 1976, he announced by radio that the republic would become an empire, with himself crowned Emperor Bokassa I. The announcement shocked the world. Bokassa felt secure, because France and he enjoyed a honeymoon period. He handed over all the CAR’s uranium deposits to France to fuel its nuclear weapons and nuclear power programme. France therefore tolerated, even supported, his imperial project.
By the time Bokassa declared the empire, the Central African economy was collapsing. Years of ruthless extraction had collapsed resource output, and civil servants had gone four months without pay. Still, Bokassa insisted on staging a coronation. If Napoleon held a coronation, his “African Napoleon” copycat could not be outdone. This was the origin of the student prank that opened our story.
Bokassa scheduled the ceremony for 4 December 1977. He sent invitations to over one hundred heads of state and more than four thousand global dignitaries. But Bokassa was already internationally reviled; no foreign head of state agreed to attend. Every nation sent low‑ranking diplomats instead. The French student Didier became the only guest present in the capacity of a head of state. The Central African authorities knew he was not a real monarch, yet they insisted on bringing him to fill seats. They dressed him in regal garments and accorded him full head‑of‑state treatment. Ordinary Central Africans, unfamiliar with global diplomacy, might well believe he was a genuine foreign ruler, a useful ceremonial extra.
Bokassa could not compare to Napoleon, yet his coronation was an over‑the‑top amplified version of Napoleon’s ceremony. Whatever Napoleon had, Bokassa acquired; he added luxuries Napoleon never dreamed of.
To stage the event, Bokassa built Bokassa Avenue, erected giant bronze statues of himself, constructed an arch of triumph, and renovated Bangui Cathedral. Twenty‑two aircraft were chartered to ferry guests and supplies. Planes flew in 40,000 bottles of wine and 22 tonnes of champagne from France; 25,000 bouquets and over 100 kilograms of flower petals arrived from the Netherlands and Australia. He imported eighty Mercedes cars, two hundred BMW motorcycles, hundreds of thoroughbred horses, and two kilometres of premium carpet from Normandy. The French Navy provided the ceremonial band, and chefs were flown in from Paris’s finest restaurants.
Bokassa personally travelled to Paris to commission his royal wardrobe. The imperial regalia used 13,000 diamonds, the largest weighing 138 carats, crafted by Paris’s top jewellers. His gilded throne weighed two tonnes. A nine‑metre velvet robe was embroidered with 780,000 pearls and millions of crystals.
On 4 December 1977, the day of the ceremony, shabby buildings lining Bangui’s streets were hidden behind wooden panels, and beggars were expelled from the city. Two hundred cavalrymen dressed in uniforms modelled on Napoleon’s troops led the procession. A motorcade of two hundred BMW motorcycles escorted the imperial carriage, gilded and more opulent than the British royal coach. Hundreds of luxury cars followed, carrying Central African and foreign dignitaries, emblazoned with the imperial eagle emblem of the Central African Empire. The procession rolled slowly through the capital of one of the world’s poorest nations, past gaunt, hungry Central African civilians. In a country with per capita income of merely 80 US dollars, Bokassa held one of the most extravagant ceremonies of the twentieth century.
At nine in the morning, the coronation hall filled with onlookers gazing at his 2.5‑metre golden eagle throne. Beside it stood the empress’s throne framed by four golden pillars, and a small blue velvet stool reserved for his two‑year‑old youngest son, who already held the rank of Admiral of the Central African Imperial Navy.
The ceremony began at ten o’clock. Twelve officers bore the long velvet train through the Central African heat. One hundred cannon blasts rang out. Generals carried the diamond‑set crown and a two‑metre sceptre. Bokassa took the crown, swore an oath before God, and thanked divine providence for granting him power.
After the solemn rite came the grand banquet. Parisian chefs created a 1.5‑metre tall cake. The hall glittered, scented by imported flowers, and fireworks lit the night. Guests retired to lavish hotels while Bokassa celebrated his first imperial day in drunken satisfaction.
Someone present questioned the excess. The French Minister of Cooperation replied: “Why criticise this coronation while ignoring the British monarch’s coronation?”
Bokassa claimed founding the empire and staging the ceremony would earn global respect and lift the Central African people. The immediate effect was quite the opposite: his people sank deeper into destitution.
The coronation cost more than 30 million US dollars. After the ceremony, the state treasury collapsed, drowning the nation in debt, leaving only 50,000 US dollars in reserve. Civil servant salaries halted, university scholarships vanished, and state functions ground to a stop.
To salvage finances, Bokassa imposed taxes pre‑collected for three years. Shortly after, he ordered every citizen to join MESAN. Membership was compulsory, and each person had to pay a large party fee. Separately, the empress opened a clothing factory and mandated all students buy school uniforms priced at 20 US dollars each — roughly equal to a teacher’s monthly salary. Students who refused purchase faced expulsion.
Bokassa failed to realise his people were already exhausted by a decade of exploitation. They survived on wild fruit and ragged clothing, stripped of anything more to take. Further taxation was scraping oil from stone.
In January 1979, mass strikes erupted. Bokassa ordered security forces to arrest and slaughter more than one hundred students, many of them children. International aid and development projects were suspended worldwide. 1979 was the International Year of the Child, and global condemnation surged. Under this public pressure, France could no longer protect Bokassa.
On the night of 19 September 1979, under orders from President Giscard d’Estaing, French forces launched Operation Barracuda. With French backing, deposed former president David Dacko overthrew the Central African Empire and abolished the monarchy. Citizens celebrated in the streets, pulling down Bokassa’s statues. His imperial carriage became a toy for local children. The last empire of modern human history crumbled overnight.
Bokassa was visiting Libya when the coup unfolded. When he sought refuge, Muammar Gaddafi turned him away abruptly. No country worldwide offered asylum.
With nowhere left to go, Bokassa turned once more to France. Under French pressure, the president of Côte d’Ivoire reluctantly accepted him, on condition that he never re‑enter politics.
Yet Bokassa clung to delusions of restoration. He believed his fall came only because Giscard d’Estaing withdrew French support. In exile, he wrote a memoir titled My Truth, devoting eighteen pages solely to denouncing Giscard d’Estaing.
In 1982, Ivorian authorities expelled Bokassa, forcing him to relocate to Paris. In 1986, David Dacko was overthrown by General André Kolingba, a former loyalist of Bokassa. Bokassa deluded himself that returning to Bangui would win popular support and restore his throne. His mental state had deteriorated severely.
On 23 October 1986, Bokassa flew back to Bangui from Rome with his family. Passengers recognised him mid‑flight in alarm, shouting “Bokassa has returned!” No welcoming crowd awaited him after landing. He was arrested immediately upon stepping off the plane.
On 6 June 1987, former subordinates including President Kolingba testified in court. Bokassa was convicted of murder and embezzlement, sentenced to death, stripped of all property and deprived of citizenship for life. Given his advanced age and lingering loyalty from Kolingba, the sentence was commuted to life hard labour in 1988.
Kolingba left office in 1993, and the 72‑year‑old Bokassa was released. He lived under French surveillance. Once an immensely wealthy emperor, he lost all assets and survived on a French army colonel’s pension paid quarterly. On 3 November 1996, he died of heart disease, ending his absurd and shameful life.
The three great tyrants of Central Africa: Mobutu of Zaire, Bokassa of the Central African Republic, and Idi Amin of Uganda. Remarkably, all three died natural deaths.
Bokassa’s death did not bring stability or prosperity to the Central African Republic. As recently as 2021, election disputes sparked civil war; rebel forces encircled Bangui, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency. The nation remained mired in crisis.
The Central African Republic stands as a microcosm of Africa’s long turmoil: civil conflict and tyranny. Yet these disasters cannot be blamed on African people. Africans are capable of electing principled leaders, but imperial powers would not let them govern. Figures such as Patrice Lumumba of the Congo and Barthélemy Boganda, the CAR’s founding father, were men of integrity who defended national sovereignty. Both were assassinated by imperial powers.
Colonial powers preferred pliable local proxies willing to serve their interests. Such men received foreign backing. The line “The mean thrive, the noble die” captures this reality. Twentieth‑century African history records how imperial powers eliminated principled leaders and installed corrupt puppets.
Worse still, many African nations lacked a shared national identity. Colonial powers drew borders arbitrarily across Africa and the Middle East, using straight lines along latitude and longitude without regard for geography, ethnicity or culture. Diverse communities were forced into single states, sowing permanent conflict. These nations struggled to build stable governance, trapped in cycles of poverty and unrest.
Fragmentation forced local factions to seek foreign patronage, surrendering more natural resources in return. Bokassa exemplified this pattern: utterly unfit to govern, he was installed by France and ruled for over a decade under French oversight. France profited enormously from Central African resources through him. A destabilised Africa served French interests, opening opportunities for exploitation.
Bokassa was a clownish tyrant, yet the European elites who condemned him were far from innocent. History remembers them. Every crime Bokassa committed in the Central African Republic remains an indelible stain on those European statesmen.
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