Francisco Macías Nguema was the 1st President of Equatorial Guinea from 1968 until his execution in 1979. His wooden public appearances, punctuated by rambling and spasmodic outbursts, often explained away as kookiness, were in fact suggestions of something else: that Macías was completely mad. 

Suffering from hallucinations and paranoia, Macías’ fear of assassination led him to murder perhaps as much as a third of the population of Equatorial Guinea. Some of the anecdotes my guest tells about Macías in the conversation you’re about to hear are totally unbelievable.

My guest today is the journalist and author Paul Kenyon. Paul is the author of several books including Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa. Dictatorland contains one chapter dedicated to the plight of Equatorial Guinea, but more widely tells the story of various African countries in the first generation after independence, and how so many fell into dictatorship and kleptocracy.