Damn, now I see that when making a list of all current countries, I had forgotten Kamerun ! It's now updated. It's level 5 : your average African broken democracy, but in a German flavour.
For Want of A Sandwich - A Franz Ferdinand Lives Wikibox TL
- Thread starter MaskedPickle
- Start date
Please take all the time that you require!
Shame to see that Argentina still had a fascist military dictatorship. Rodolfo Almiron with nuclear weapons is a terrifying thought.
Speaking of the Dirty War, what ever became of Jorge Rafael Videla?
Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu
Chukwuemeka “Emeka” Odumegwu-Ojukwu (4 November 1933-26 November 2011) was the second President of Biafra, ruling from October, 1 1982 to his death on November, 26 2011.
Born into a rich Igbo family, which had made its fortune in the transportbusiness, Ojukwu graduated from Epsom College and Lincoln College in Oxford. Returning to then Colonial Nigeria, he joined the civil service at Udi, before joining the British Colonial Army in 1957 as a non-commissioned officer. As one of the few native officers in Nigeria, he led a brilliant career in the Nigerian Civil War (1964-1970), ending his service in the British Army as a Colonel and joining the Biafra Armed Forces when the future independent country was formally separated from Colonial Nigeria. At the country’s independence in 1979, he was the first appointed General of the new Biafran Army, quickly becoming Minister of Defence in 1980. Inheriting from his father, he was already one of the richest man in Biafra.
With British and German support, Ojukwu led a successful military coup on October, 1 1982, two months after the outbreak of the Sokoto-Biafra War (1982-1984), deposing President Akanu Ibiam that was deemed too weak to hold the country together. He led the nation to survival and victory on April, 17 1984, holding both the presidency and his past ministry ; if he reliquished the ministry of defence, he conserved the presidency, that he would hold until his demise as an effective President for Life and a military dictator.
As an oil-rich country, the young country of Biafra quickly ranked within the most developed countries of Africa ; as a pragmatist, Ojukwu made the choice of a staunch pro-Western policy in order to benefit from foreign investments, establishing himself as a foe of Pan-Africanism and sticking to British-inherited culture, such as the official use of English, deemed the only viable option to hold the ethnically diverse country together. Widespread corruption and civil rights abuse was the rule under Ojukwu, who took its toll on the oil revenues and was rumoured to be among the wealthiest heads of state in the world. He also fostered a personality cult, spreading statues of himself accross the country and most notably renaming Biafra’s largest city and center of its petroleum industry from Port Harcourt to Port Ojukwu.
After his marriage to Bianca Onoh in 1994, thirty-five years younger than him, the Field Marshal surprised his supporters and the whole world by appointing her as Vice President in 1998, at her thirtieth birthday, thus showing his choice of successor. The unexpected announcement turned a part of his camarilla against him, fostering a coup attempt in 1999 and an armed revolt in Port Ojukwu in 2003, that was defeated after instating martial law in 2004. The closure of Biafra’s oil industries during the crisis created a small economic panic in worldwide stock markets. Ojukwu would die after a brief illness in 2011, after almost thirty years of rule.
Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu
Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu (née Odinaka Olivia Onoh, 5 August 1968) is the third and current President of Biafra, having assumed office on November, 26 2011, succeeding her husband Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu as Vice President, an office she had assumed since 5 August 1998.
The siwth child of Biafran Foreign Minister Christian Onoh, an ethnic Wawa and a strong Ojukwu supporter, Bianca Onoh graduated in law from the Biafran Law School and in international relations and diplomacy from Madrid University, while pursuing beauty pageants, being crowned Miss Biafra 1988 and Miss Africa 1989 and competing for Miss Universe and Miss World the same year. During that time, she became known as the romantic interest of longtime President of Nigeria Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, thirty-five years her senior. She married the President in 1994, at the end of her studies, bearing him three children.
Worldwide known as the glamourous new face of the oil-rich country, she quickly became a very close advisor of her husband, manoeuvring among its cronies that were steadily expecting to succeed him one day. As such, the creation of the function of Vice President of Biafra and her subsequent appointment, announced for her 30th birthday, created a wide surprise as she cemented her place as Ojukwu’s heir apparent. Her appointment generated a backlash that culminated in a coup attempt in 1999 and a military revolt, coupled with a economic crisis in 2003-2004, but she succeeded her husband in 2011 and has since ruled over Biafra.
Ojukwu, as one of the few female heads of state of Africa (and informally, as one of the most handsome rulers in the world), made moves to alleviate her husband’s dictatorship, authorizing opposition parties, organazing supposedly-free elections, encouraging wealth redistribution and pushing for female representation in the civil sphere. Yet, she continued her husband’s policies of Western support, but also his personality cult (and hers), cronyism in favor of Igbos, reliance on the military and widespread corruption. The repression that followed a 2012 coup attempt and 2016 islamist terorrist attacks in Port Ojukwu contributed to contrast her official image.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born in Enugu, 15 September 1977) is a Biafran writer and democracy activist, who reside in exile in the United States since 2016. Born in an affluent family in Biafra into an Igbo family, she led her studies in the United States, graduating from Eastern Connecticut, Johns Hopkins and Yale, and is known as a rising star of African and feminist literature.
As she lived between the United States and her native country, she was at first supportive of Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s rise to the presidency, but quickly disappointed by the continuation of her predecessor’s policies, she turned to the opposition, unsuccessfully trying to get elected as a Member of Parliament for Abba. In the aftermath of the 2016 Port Ojukwu’s terrorist attacks and the repression that followed, she definitely left Biafra for the United States, fearing for her family’s lives. Her essay, Half of a Yellow Sun, was a sharp denunciation of the Ojukwus’ legacy in Biafra.
The problem is that Almiron is just the worst form of oppression that ever happened to Argentina. Lugones was a lot inspired by TTL Fascist (Pyrist) thoughts, and Peronism in this TL is much more stressing upon its fascist tendancies... As of Videla, and all the junta members of OTL, they enjoyed being given free hands by Rega and Almiron, and covered themselves in so-called "glory" in the Chile-Argentina War ; the Navy had the Malvinas to be happy with.
Pax Germanica is not that great.
Jonas Sawimbi
Jonas Malheiro Sawimbi (born 3 August 1934) has been the President of Angola since 22 February 1976 and as such, is one of the longest-ruling heads of state of Africa.
Born to an Ovimbundu family, Sawimbi was noted by Protestant missionnaries and later German administrators as a very intelligent child, quickly mastering Portuguese, German, French and English ; it allowed him to become among the first recipients of the Kaiser Louis Ferdinand Scholarship, created after the Dar-es-Salaam Agreements, aimed at improving Africa’s chances for independence. He studied medicine in Heildeberg University, completing his Ph.D. at 28, in 1962, becoming among the first dark-skinned individuals to achieve such a degree in Germany. Sawimbi practiced medicine in Frankfurt and Berlin while getting close to Angolan émigré circles, advocating for independence : even if he thought about settling definitively in Germany, he said that the 1968 riots in Berlin and the French Situationist Revolution convinced him that Europe was ripe for a new wave of Syndicalism and that it felt to him to improve Angola’s chances. An ally of independentist Holden Roberto, he joined him in Benguela on Angola’s independence, becoming the country’s first Minister of Health.
Even if he was a member of the government, Sawimbi enlisted in the Angolan military during the Kongo-Angola War (1974-1975) : even if the war resulted in Angolan defeat, Sawimbi proved a keen tactician and a brave soldier, allowing him to become even more famous ; a critic of Roberto’s policies, he founded the conservative/pro-German UNITA party and ran for President in the 1975 presidential election ; he lost to poet Viriato da Cruz, who appointed him as Minister of Defense. Cruz would only rule for less than a year before Sawimbi, acquainted with German intelligence and Angolan conservative circles, deposed him in a coup in 1976 and became President. He was re-elected in 1981, 1986, 1991, 1998, 2005, 2012 and 2019.
Sawimbi had an unsteady early presidency : a Pan-Africanist coup attempt in 1977, led by Colonel Nito Alves, led to the Angolan Civil War (1977-1987), that was won by Sawimbi with German support. Now firmly installed as the only ruler of Angola, Sawimbi established the country as a firm member of the Reichspakt and a close ally of Germany in the Dark Continent, allowing German firms to exploit the country iron ores, and vehemently fighting neo-ketimism in the 1990s. If in Europe and America, Sawimbi has been seen as a very intelligent ruler and the man who allowed his country to become among Africa’s fastest growing economies, he is seen in Africa as a power-hungry dictator : his attempt, with the 1991 Constitution, at fostering multipartism in Angola, led to an impeachment attempt in 1994, that would only result in an auto-coup and a suspension of the Constitution the following year. The Constitution was restablished in 2002 under German pressure. In 2010, Sawimbi was almost killed in an assassination attempt, that led him to prepare his succession. Angola is currently a key player in the Reichspakt’s fight against Azania.
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Now we celebrate the hundredth update to this timeline ! (The entry about Angola has been also updated)
Just to keep in track : I work on this timeline in three ways. Working chronologically from the year 1914, completing the entries for random countries and trying to keep up with your demands.
What do you think about the timeline so far ? Is there any point that I can use to make it better ?
Just to keep in track : I work on this timeline in three ways. Working chronologically from the year 1914, completing the entries for random countries and trying to keep up with your demands.
What do you think about the timeline so far ? Is there any point that I can use to make it better ?
I really like your Africa. One of the most unique I’ve ever seen in a timeline. Usually it’s just “Everything is the same except Katanga is independent”. Though I admit to being guilty of that trope myself
