Isolated by language, culture and geography even from its own neighbours, there was a time when Equatorial Guinea, a tiny country in the tropical armpit of West Africa, was as anonymous and impoverished as its government was cruel and decadent.
A comedy coup plot and a deep reservoir of oil have put paid to the anonymity, but the oppression and the corruption remain. Human-rights groups report detention without trial, torture, the disappearance of opposition activists and the plunder of the country's vast oil resources.
Before gaining independence from Spain in 1968, Equatorial Guinea was the archetypal banana republic - except without the bananas. In the 1970s, a third of the population was killed or fled into exile under the stewardship of Francisco Macías Nguema, a semi-literate court translator selected by departing Spanish colonialists to preserve their interests. No one noticed. The self-styled "Unique Miracle" and president-for-life threw out the Spanish, shut the country's schools and churches and succeeded in returning the country as close to year zero as any self-respecting dictator could.
In the "Coup of Liberty" in 1979, his nephew, army commander and police chief Teodoro Obiang Nguema, used Moroccan troops to seize power. Macías's subsequent trial was held in camera, after the former leader directed all questions of human-rights abuses to Obiang: "I was not the police chief," he said.
Obiang has been in power ever since. His share of the popular vote in elections in 1989, 1996 and 2002 has ranged between 96 and 99 per cent. In some parts of the country in 1996, he scored well over 100 per cent. "You have to understand what he has done for this country," commented the then deputy prime minister.
Equatorial Guinea has 15 political parties, of which 12 support the ruling Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) and one is divided. Officials in the remaining party, the Convergence for Social Democracy (CPDS), are in and out of Black Beach, a notorious high-security prison on an island off the capital, Malabo. "You know what that prison is like?" said one member of the CPDS. "It's like being a chicken in the backyard. Any day someone can come along and kill you, and no one will say a thing."
"El Jefe", as he is widely known, heads a country that, with production at 375,000 barrels a day, is now Africa's third-largest oil producer. With a population of less than one million, oil revenues should be enough to transform a country riddled with illiteracy and disease, and with an average life expectancy of barely 40 years. As the oil boom gathered pace in the mid-1990s, a top official in the oil ministry boasted that "in ten years, we will be the Kuwait of Africa".
But while prosperity has failed to materialise for Guinea's ordinary citizens, as with many Gulf emirates, government has been a family business. After a reshuffle this month, the president's brother, Armengol, remains director of national security. Another brother holds the defence portfolio. Obiang's wife's brother is at foreign affairs. His softly spoken second son, Gabriel, holds the reins at oil, while his more wayward first born, Teodorin, fond of fast cars and nursing a knock-back this month from US hip-hop queen Eve, has forestry and agriculture.
Unfortunately, the opposition to Obiang is in similar disarray. The self-styled president in exile, Severo Moto, enjoys little respect among those inside the country opposed to the regime. They believe Moto allowed himself and a curious crew of white mercenaries and their rich friends - including, apparently, Mark Thatcher - to be set up by Obiang's spies and South African intelligence in the infamous 2004 conspiracy.
The government regularly uncovers plots - real or imagined - in order to justify another crackdown. The US ambassador was expelled in 1994 after being accused of using witchcraft to try to help the opposition win elections. "Necromancy, black magic, call it what you will. People here believe in its power, even in government," said a former Anglican archbishop.
But the repressive regime can no longer count on anonymity: with oil comes exposure. In its annual human-rights report, the State Department outlined 17 core abuses, covering torture, absence of free speech, human trafficking and violence against women. In 2004, the US Senate chronicled how some of the biggest oil companies in the world had helped pour hundreds of millions of dollars into accounts controlled directly by the president. On one occasion, his wife deposited a suitcase containing 30 kilograms of $100 bills at a Washington bank.
And yet with money also comes power. Obiang has spent handsomely on Washington lobbyists including Cassidy & Associates. Condoleezza Rice now calls Obiang "a good friend", and Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank, commented earlier this year that he was "very impressed" by Equatorial Guinea's leader.
Those around Obiang are less sure. The old man is ill and his style of government, free of any real institutional integrity, is increasingly unable to cope with the demands of an economy that has grown by more than 20 per cent a year since 1992. When he goes, the tiny clique of friends and family who have terrorised the country for four decades fear a terrible reckoning will be upon them.
Hector Rodrigues is an African affairs analyst
