Jean-Bédel Bokassa

Jean-Bédel Bokassa. Jean-Bedel Bokassa, the former president and then self-proclaimed Emperior of the poverty-stricken Central African Republic, was born Bokassa Mgboundoulou in Bobangui, a village in what was then French Equatorial Africa, on February 22, 1921, one of 12 children of a village chief. When he was a child his father was beaten to death by officials of a French company that had business interests in the area because he...