Zimpapers Logo

Mr Koyagbele

Tichaona Zindoga THE INTERVIEW
A prominent politician and businessman in the Central African Republic Bida Koyagbele says he draws inspiration from President Mugabe and is going to lead a peasant-driven agricultural revolution in his country. Mr Koyagbele was in Zimbabwe this week and visited the National Heroes Acre, among other engagements, and took time to explain to The Herald’s Political Editor Tichaona Zindoga (TZ) the situation in his strife-torn country, which is suffering from the meddling of former colonial power France, and says he hopes the President Mugabe-inspired revolution will change the face of his country forever. He also calls on President Mugabe to lead the search for an African solution to the crisis in CAR.

TZ: Mr Koyagbele, you are hardly hiding your joy at being in the country. First of all, we would like to know who you are and what brings you to Zimbabwe?

BK: To tell you, it is like I am realising a dream. Zimbabwe is a great country of Africa which is led by a great leader President Mugabe. President Mugabe is the first revolutionary leader of the peasants. He is one of the first to initiate and to realise a revolution for the peasants, by the peasants and for the peasants. He is a farmer, I am also a leader of the farmers in my country and it’s based on the inspiration of the struggle of President Mugabe that we initiated the struggle for the peasants and the farmers in CAR. The farmers represent 80 percent of the population.

I am also here because of the political situation. We are under a neo-colonialism system controlled by France. We are still in a system of colonisation but a different type of colonisation. The French used to control all the things that its colonies had. They used to divide the population, they used to exploit all the minerals and they used to initiate crazy problems and issues in the country just for their interests. So we are in a similar situation to Zimbabwe like it was 30 years ago and in our country peasants are many, but they don’t have schools to send their kids to and they don’t have hospitals.

In our village in CAR, we used to hear many things about the revolution of (President) Mugabe, about the jobs that he made in this country. The former colonial masters tried to destroy his work and his image but they didn’t convince us and we know and we knew that he is a great leader. When I came here it was like a dream to be in this homeland, the land of the great man and when I arrived here I was so surprised by the work that the great man realised in this country. You cannot know how you are so lucky to have these nice schools, it’s a dream for us, we are still dreaming, every day we are dreaming to send our kids to some of the schools that you have here. Our dream is just to have some schools like this. To every peasant of CAR, our dreams are to send our kids to some schools like this. When I arrived here I saw all these great jobs that the great man has made and that’s a great inspiration for me.

TZ: What is your personal background and how do you envisage a President Mugabe-inspired revolution in your country?

BK: I am a peasant in my country, a farmer. I have a plantation of palm oil, I have a tomato plantation as well. But I was also the first agro-industrialist in my country to realise the need for transformation and dream to have our own factories to transform crude production such as tomatoes to tomato paste. We used to think that was only for white people to do that and we could just produce and sell to the people of the West to add value but I said no we can do it also.

Based on this we’d like to initiate the transformation vision and based on this we know that we can do that. If we succeed we have to satisfy the needs of the people of Africa first before we export. So that is the approach and the vision. In 2010 I created a labour organisation to defend the interests of the peasants and the farmers to tell the government that please build schools, please build hospitals, please offer us clean water. And after we created this organisation APC, the Association of the Peasants of CAR in 2010 we built some schools for our kids. We didn’t have a lot of money so I used part of my benefits with my other brothers and sisters to build some schools. We also drilled some wells to offer clean water for the population.

In 2012 we saw some jihadists who came from Chad and Sudan. These guys came and destroyed our country, they raped our women and girls and destroyed our villages and warehouses. It was like the Devil had arrived in the country and they did it in the name of Islam. Behind them we saw some other people, the French. They destroyed the country they removed the President and they killed many people, they continued to kill people and we said, ‘no what did we do?’ If there is a political issue with the President we will remove him. Why do you want and continue to kill people? At this time we decided to organise the peasants and the farmers politically, to defend the interests of the farmers and the country and to apply our vision and dream.

We have a specific dream as farmers and peasants for this country because the majority of the people are coming from here. In fact all these people came from here, all these presidents and all these ministers came from these rural areas. Based on this we developed a vision and the inspiration for this vision is the vision of President Mugabe. We want to initiate a revolution, tibomengo, a revolution of happiness. So we are fighting for the happiness of these people.

TZ: You mentioned the issue of France. What kind of influence has France had over your politics past and present?

BK: We are suffering because of France’s colonial systems for the past 127 years. They used to kill people, they used to rape and do everything (bad). In 1960 because we fought a lot to get our independence and they knew that if they didn’t give us this independence we were going to get it by force. They used to kill many leaders and strong leaders and they used to put in power leaders they can manipulate to serve their own interests.

The first leader President David Dacko signed an agreement with France to say that every mining resource is going to be for France. Under 10 metres, everything is for France. The education programme was defined by France. Our money until right now is French money. They used to define all strategy, economic strategy and economic programmes. So now, for example me, if someone from this country wants to build a factory, the banks are not going to give you a loan. They are not allowed to give African people a loan to build a factory. To buy a car it is not a problem, to buy a house it is not a problem but to buy a factory, no, because they control the system.

They control the economic system. So now when the leader wanted to change his mind and to do something for the people they would remove him. They used the army because they used to train the army. So they used a general in the army to destabilise and remove the different leaders and put another person so that many military people became presidents in CAR because they used to use the army to remove the different leaders.

And now President (François) Bozizé was used to remove (President Ange-Félix) Patassé because Patassé didn’t want to deal with them and so they removed him. Now because Bozizé knew that they were going to use another soldier to remove him he decided to change the structure of the army and he decided to train all the soldiers not in France because they used to be trained in France and by French soldiers in CAR, but he asked South Africa and China to train our army.

Now that the French could not use the army to destabilise the country, or fan tribalism, they used the jihadists to divide us on religious consideration. Recently, they paid some mercenaries and put them in the Muslim area and kill the Moslems to trigger clashes. They are looking for a leader who can play the game. They have got two or three people, majority of them they want to deal with France and work for France but they are not strong because they were close to the jihadists. And also because now the population wants to move on.

This is why we are here. The population wants a revolution. Majority of the population is young, 78 percent of the population is under 30 years old. That means the population is very young and these young people because of many things they have suffered a lot they just want happiness.

TZ: You have been in the country for a couple of days and you say your biggest wish is to meet the President one day?

BK: I hope so, for many reasons. I am running in the presidential elections and I am going to initiate a revolution in CAR based on its children. I went a few days ago to the (Zimbabwe’s) National Heroes Acre and it was a very nice place in terms of inspiration. I want his blessing, it would be a great thing for me to get his advice, his blessing and his support to change the situation of Africa. You are not aware how much impact Mugabe has on the world outside. In deep villages people know and they can talk to you about the speeches of Mugabe. Young people on the internet, when Mugabe talks about something all people talk about it because they can get it on their phone. You cannot know how just with his speech, he can comfort and give hope to people like the peasants of CAR and in Africa.

I was in South America and you will be shocked at how President Mugabe is popular. It is not only in Africa. For the peasants who knew that I would be here they were so happy. They said please go and see the old man and tell him thank you very much for the hope and if you can get his blessing and his advice because that is going to be a great thing for us.

TZ: President Mugabe also happens to be the Chairperson of the AU what do you think he should do in regards to the situation in CAR because there has been a lot of destabilisation?

BK: I think first it’s a great thing that he is the current chairman. I think it’s God who decided that the Chairperson of the AU is very well respected all over Africa and people all over the world are listening to him. So for us there can be a solution in CAR, an African solution. Like he says all the time we have to find African solutions for African problems. In CAR we have to find African solutions. We have many problems, one of the big problems has to do with security.

The United Nations used to play for France and French interests. We need African troops from the AU to come into CAR and to secure the country. We already talked with some other countries. Africa has got a capacity like they did in DRC with M23. Imagine during many years the UN failed to remove the M23. They said officially that it was difficult for them to remove them. So African solutions removed M23 in one week. It took one week to remove the M23 and the UN tried and failed to remove them in three years.

In CAR we can secure the country in three months and I am sure if we can prepare it properly this African solution, military African solution, we can remove these people and secure the country in one month but the professionals said in three months we can secure the country. After that they can train our army to secure the country. CAR has got a key position. In destabilising CAR you destabilise the door of Sadc, DRC, the biggest country in Sadc. Instability in CAR affects the stability of Congo DRC.

TZ: Coming from a background of business, what areas do you think Zimbabwe and your country cooperate?

BK: You know in our tradition, or African tradition, you have got to share all the things you have with your brother. You have to share with you brother when he is helping you. We have got many things in CAR. It is one of the richest countries and it is because of this that we have got these problems. The Chinese discovered in 2008 the biggest potential in oil in Africa. We have got more oil in Africa than in Nigeria. It is estimated to be around 50 billion barrels in potential. It is amazing. So one of the advantages in CAR is oil. You don’t need to dig deep to find this oil and the quality is very good that means the cost of production of this oil in CAR is $11 per barrel. For me my vision is this oil is for Africa. We have to produce this oil and we have to transform this crude oil in refined oil to satisfy first the people of Africa. You know now we produce oil and we sell it to the outside to be refined and these people are going to sell it for 10 times more than the crude oil that we sold to them. So this is just to say that we have change this. We’ve got land and many mineral resources. Our people are also very nice like the people of Zimbabwe. But you have an advantage of education. You have got skills. We need the skills and we need you to come to CAR to help us to develop CAR. We need to share all these thing with our brothers and sisters of Africa, Sadc and Zimbabwe.

TZ: When are the next elections in CAR and do you expect to win?

BK: I represent 80 percent of the population, the peasants, and more. This means I can win the elections. They are supposed to be in February but we don’t have an official date yet because of the situation in the country. Perhaps they may be held around March or April. I am now a threat to France because they know that all their candidates cannot beat me because of this revolutionary vision for happiness and for hope, for education for free and good education like here, as well as water and electricity for the people. We want to transform our country like Zimbabwe, Cuba or Libya before it was destroyed and we are going to realise this dream. We are fighting for a dream and we are fighting for a revolution and we are fighting for happiness. Not only for CAR but the happiness of Africa. We are not going to develop CAR only for the people of CAR but we are going to develop and transform CAR for the interests of Africa. So all brothers and sisters of Africa are invited to CAR to develop and build CAR. It’s a Pan-African vision.