How to RULE A COUNTRY FOR 42 Years

In the 1970s, an Italian fashion designer in Paris was earning more than half a million dollars a year from a single client. That client was the President of Gabon. According to later investigations, the relationship went far beyond tailoring. Luxury gifts, lavish spending and extraordinary sums of money flowed through a political network financed by one thing. Oil.….. At the same time, governments across the continent were falling. Presidents were assassinated, overthrown in military coups or voted out of office. But in the small Central African nation of Gabon, one man survived them all. His name was Omar Bongo. For forty-two years, he remained president, becoming one of the longest-serving heads of state in modern history. So how did he do it? How did a former postal worker build a political machine that outlived the Cold War, survived democratisation and even survived its creator? This is the story of the political playbook that kept Omar Bongo in power for forty-two years.