From Bedouin to President…a Reading of Kaka’s Biography (2)

By: Adil El-Baz

As I see
The previous episode began by telling the story of Boye and his corruption and how President Mohamed Kaka tolerated him, and today we delve into the second story, which is the story of his dispute with his father. Kaka told and said, “While he was working in the National Guard, his father, Idriss Déby, summoned him and accused him of planning to stage a coup against him.” Kaka narrated that his father listened to slander from his enemies who succeeded in setting him up with his father and accused him of conspiring against him. He said that he replied to his father that he was his son and could not plot anything against him, but his father, who had doubts about his movements, did not listen to him, and when he was unable to convince his father, he submitted his resignation to him from the National Guard, but his father replied to him, “You should know that you cannot resign because you are “fired.”
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The son remained wandering without any responsibilities, and his conditions worsened until his father brought him back to the corridors of power. He told the conclusion of the story, saying, “His father later discovered that those who came to him revealed themselves when they fought over his position, which made his father understand the plan, and he quickly realized that… All this is nothing but the work of a gang that was created against him and his authority, so his father summoned him again, reconciled with him, and returned him again to his position).
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The book reveals the truth about the conflicts between Kaka and his father. It brought back to the forefront of controversy on the accusations directed against Chadian President Kaka and Youssef Boye regarding the killing of former Chadian President Idriss Déby. The book proved the motives for the accusation, which was his admission of the tense relationship with his father, Idriss Déby.
Here, the well-known Chadian journalist Abdulkarim Ahmed Kari says:
(The arrival of Mohamed Hamsi Bordami or (Mohamed Kaka) was the last link in a long series of coups and assassinations that have marked contemporary Chadian history. The beginning was an attempt led by Hassan Djamous to overthrow Hussein Habre. When the attempt failed and Hassan Djamous was arrested and killed, Abbas Kodi was chosen as his successor. But the man chose to concede to Idriss Déby when he found that Déby was very ambitious for leadership. Compromise to Abbas did not help. After the fall of Habré, Déby got rid of Abbas Kodi, and as years passed, Idriss Déby adopted Mohamed Kaka, claiming that he was his son, and Kaka conspired to get rid of Idriss Déby, and it became clear. After that, Kaka is not the son of Idriss Déby, but rather his father, who belongs to another tribe, whose name became known.)
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The last story illustrates an aspect of the power struggles in Chad between President Deby’s old guard and his unrecognized son, Kaka. Kaka said in his aforementioned book, “Like Faki, Chairman of the African Union Commission, who spoke at the opening of the comprehensive and sovereign national dialogue (August 20, 2022) to explain everything that happened in Chad over the past thirty years, that Moussa Faki, like others, are responsible for thirty years of Repeated failures, and he said that Faki forgot to remind the public that he was my father’s chief of staff. He was prime minister during my father’s era, as well as foreign minister for nine years, and my father’s campaign was the one who led a huge campaign with the heads of other African countries to become president of the African Commission. This speech shocked me greatly and I admit that I did not understand why this betrayal and these lies. Perhaps he thought that he would exonerate himself in this way, or even deny his past!
Through these stories, you realize the backgrounds that pushed Kaka to the presidency, the most important of which is his victory in the conflicts between him and the old guard, his father supported him, and his corruption.
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The absence of his father and the continuation of the conflicts as they are in the Chadian arena are the reasons that prompted him to protect his regime by allying with the outside, with the enemies of Sudan, and despite the conflict of his positions with the Zaghawa tribe, which represents the back bone of his regime, and thus it became clear that neither the old guard is satisfied with him nor the new generation convinced of his worth for leadership. Instead of resolving his problems by mutual agreement with Chadian society, he fell into the clutches of the Emirates, and his positions were bought, and he turned into an enemy of Sudan. This hostility for which he tried throughout the book to find justifications, but he failed, as we will see in the coming episodes.
To be continued..