France Albert René
Seychelles president who after seizing power determined to turn his islands into a socialist paradise
FRANCE ALBERT RENÉ, who has died aged 83, was the President of the Seychelles who for many years was the longest serving head of state in the Commonwealth.
He seized power of the Indian Ocean archipelago in a coup d’état in 1977 and stayed in office until 2004, dominating the islands almost single-handedly during the one-party state era between 1977 and 1992. During that time he thwarted at least three serious counter-coup attempts, most notably the invasion by a band of South African mercenaries under the command of Colonel “Mad Mike” Hoare.
If the attempts to overthrow him at times resembled a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera, he kept such an iron grip on the islands that would-be counter-revolutionaries went in fear of their lives.
René steered a clever course between hard-line communist policies at home and “non-aligned” allegiances abroad. With a keen barrister’s mind and a passionate belief that Seychelles could carve out a place for itself in the wider world, he courted and received financial and development aid from the former British colonial authorities, as well as from the Eastern Bloc and the US.
A noted “ladies’ man” and a dangerous political enemy, he commanded loyalty from his followers in the Seychelles People’s Progressive Front and grudging respect from his opponents, most of whom were forced into exile abroad. Throughout his presidency his inner circle referred to him only as “The Boss”.
France Albert René was born on November 16 1935, the son of Louisa Morgan and Price René, the administrator and manager of the plantation on the island of Farquhar, more than 400 miles south of Mahé, the Seychelles’ largest island.
In later life René would often refer to his island boyhood, and habits like fishing and eating traditional creole food prepared on the islands remained with him throughout his life. Farquhar is still a remote and magical place, where sharks and turtles, seabirds and an endless blue horizon are the dominant sights and sounds.
The family returned to Mahé when France Albert was five and he was sent to St Joseph’s Convent, and then to St Louis College, run by the Marist Brothers. At 18 he took up the chance of a scholarship in Switzerland to study Theology.
His political enemies claim that the priesthood was a useful ruse for a relatively poor young man to escape from Seychelles’ limited opportunities for the chance of a better education in Europe. Whatever the truth of the matter, René left Switzerland and travelled to England, where he concluded his secondary education at St Mary’s College in Southampton.
By 1957 René had qualified as a lawyer, studying at King’s College London and joining Middle Temple. It was during this period that he married Karen Handley, with whom he had a daughter, and became interested in the workings of the British Labour Party. After the 1977 coup d’état, Karen Handley – by then estranged – told the
Daily Mirror: “René plotted his communist revolution from my semi in Luton.”
He spent a further two years in England from 1961, studying at the LSE. On returning home he became a founding member of the fledgling People’s United Party, a broadly pro-union movement set up in rivalry to the Democratic Party led by a fellow London-trained lawyer, James Mancham.
When independence from Britain came in 1976, Mancham’s DP was in the majority in the islands’ Legislative Assembly and he was made President. He formed a coalition administration with René as his Prime Minister.
However, Albert René (as he was always known) was already plotting a takeover, with backing from other proto-marxist groups in Africa. When Mancham told him he had been seen practising with rifles on an uninhabited island, René coolly told him he had been “shooting rabbits”, and had a brace delivered to the president’s office.
On June 5 1977, while Mancham was in London for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Commonwealth Conference, René and a band of about a dozen men seized control of the police station and announced that they were in charge. Three men were killed in the capital, Victoria, and the island was put under curfew.
René’s most unpopular move was to introduce a Cuban-style “political education” system in which islanders would have to enrol their children in a National Youth Service for two years. Riots ensued and René was forced to modify the scheme, but anyone with money enough to send their children abroad for schooling did so.
René quickly earned a reputation for autocracy, and at one time was not only President of the Republic, but also Minister for Defence, Planning, Finance, Foreign Affairs and Legal Affairs, and in 1988 he added Tourism. The last addition was ironic, as he grudgingly acknowledged in private that he would be happier if no foreigners ever visited.
One result of his increasing domination was that thousands of Seychellois went abroad, many to live in exile in Hounslow, where they plotted his overthrow.
Determined to make his islands into a socialist paradise, René promoted the use of the native Kreol language (the Seychellois spelling) at the expense of English and French, and made rousing speeches about making “Seychelles for the Seychellois”. He told the ordinary islanders that the days of being ordered around by the plantocracy – the grands blancs – were over. And, although he was white, he found greatest support among the islanders with a clear African ancestry.
If René was not paranoid, he ought to have been. Aside from the 1981 coup attempt by “Mad Mike” and his South African mercenaries disguised as “Ye Ancient Order of Frothblowers” Rugby Club, he also thwarted an army mutiny in 1986. Knowing he could only deal with the crisis himself, he borrowed Rajiv Gandhi’s private plane to fly home from a non-aligned summit in Harare.
One of René’s most prominent political opponents, Gérard Hoarau, was suspected of plotting the “Mad Mike” attack from Durban. The coup failed when a nervous mercenary panicked and shot local police in the airport arrivals hall, fearing they were going to search his luggage. Hoare and his men battled it out for several hours before hijacking an Air India plane to take them back to South Africa.
It emerged during South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation hearings that the apartheid regime had a hand in assisting the coup, which they backed because it was a blow against a “communist regime”. René suspected Hoarau’s involvement, and put pressure on the South African government to expel him. Hoarau fled to London and formed the Seychelles National Movement. In 1985 he was shot dead as he left his house in Burnt Oak, North London. His killers have never been identified.
Like many former African socialists (he always rejected the label “communist”), René was forced to abandon the single-party regime after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. In 1991 he announced that a new multiparty constitution would be adopted, and his arch-rival, James Mancham, returned to the islands. But after so many years in exile Mancham had no popular support, and in July 1992 René easily won the first democratic elections with almost 60 per cent of the votes.
He finally stepped down in favour of his Vice-president, James Michel, only in 2004. Michel (who served until 2016) was one of the original small group who had helped stage the coup in 1977.
René’s personal life was always a matter of hot gossip in Seychelles. After divorcing his English wife, with whom he had a daughter, he married Geva Savy, whose three sons he treated as his own, giving them positions of power in the one-party state.
As is common in the Seychelles, he had numerous mistresses, some of whom undoubtedly bore him children. One of his chief girlfriends joked: “I don’t mind him having all his mistresses: I just wish he didn’t give them all a corner shop.”
Locally, such rumours brought him more admiration than scandal. When confronted about the allegations by a BBC reporter he simply said: “I’ve always made a hobby out of fishing.”
In the same interview he was asked if he worried about being labelled “president of a coconut republic”. He replied: “It must be a step up from being leader of a banana republic.”
At 58, he divorced Geva after almost 20 years of marriage and married Sarah Zarqani, 25 years his junior, with whom he had three daughters. She survives him along with his children.