Big men in love: African presidents are also human

The majority of African leaders, however, tied their nuptials before they ascended to office and many have decades of marriage under their belt.
Notable long-married leaders in African politics include Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaore, Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Anerood Jugnauth of Mauritius and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame.

In power since 1980, President Mugabe married Grace in 1990 while still wed to his first wife Sally, a Ghanaian. He justified this by saying that tradition allowed him to take a junior wife but was to later get special dispensation to solemnise it in church in 1996. Sally had died four years earlier from a kidney ailment.

First Shopper
Grace, 40 years Mugabe’s junior, is better known as the “First Shopper” for her lavish shopping sprees abroad, despite the flagging fortunes of fellow Zimbabweans after her husband’s much-criticised take-over of white-owned farms.
Angola’s Jose Eduardo dos Santos has ruled the oil-rich southern African country since 1979, but married his wife Ana in 1991. She is 21 years his junior.

Not to be left out is Cameroon’s long-serving strongman, Paul Biya, who has since 1982 held power in the country well known for its footballing stature, home of Roger Milla and Samuel Et’oo.

After his wife Jeanne-Irène Biya died in 1992, President Biya two years later married Ms Chantal Vigoroux, who is 38 years his junior. The late El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba of Gabon was until his death in 2009 Africa’s longest-reigning non-monarch, having taken over the oil-rich Central African nation in 1967.

He divorced his second wife, Marie Josephine Kama, in 1986 and married Edith Lucie Sassou-Nguesso, the daughter of Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso in 1990. She was almost 30 years his junior.

In keeping with the all-important theme of electability, other Big Men have not shied away from marrying with one eye firmly cast on upcoming elections or on their continued hold on power.

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s President Joseph Kabila in a June 2006 lavish ceremony married his long-term girlfriend, Marie Olive Lembe di Sita ahead of elections in the same year.

President Kabila was at the time aged 35, while his beautiful bride clocked in at 27. The young man had in 2001 been unexpectedly thrust into the presidency of the vast mineral-rich country following the assassination of his father Laurent Desire-Kabila.

Second wife
The Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh has been in power since 1994. He married his second wife Zeinab, the daughter of a Guinean diplomat in the same year after his first marriage to Tuti Faal failed.

Zeinab, 13 years younger than Yahya, is like Grace Mugabe, also renowned for her international shopping skills. Chadian strongman Idriss Deby Itna has been in power since 1990, and has married officially four times, or 13 depending on whom you listen to.

But his vows to Hinda Mahamat Acyl in 2005 were seen by many as a way of earning tribal support with rebels in the East hell bent on toppling his regime. Hinda comes from one of Chad’s foremost Arab tribes on whom he draws political support.
Renowned for her breathtaking beauty, she is 29 years his junior but wields immense power in decision making and even once gave a speech to the African Union in his place.

Africa Insight is an initiative of the Nation Media Group’s Africa Media Network Project.