Jean-Hilaire Aubame

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Jean-Hilaire Aubame (10 November 1912 - 16 August 1989) was a Gabonese politician active during both the colonial and independence periods, including service as a French deputy 1946-1958.

Born into a Fang family near Libreville but orphaned while still young, Abbé Jean Obame looked after him and arranged for schooling. When he graduated, Obame's brother Léon M'ba helped get him a job in customs. Aubame was transferred to Brazzaville in 1936, where he cofounded the Mutuelle Gabonaise with a brother of Louis Bigmann.

In 1940, Aubame sided with the Free French, and in November was sent by the leadership to Libreville to secure Fang support for the cause. From February 1942 he was a protégé of Félix Éboué, and particularly kept Éboué informed on African affairs. Aubame's reward was to be one of several Africans promoted in February 1943 into the European section of the civil service, and in 1944 Éboué made him president of the municipal commission for the Poto Poto section of Brazzaville.

After Éboué's sudden death in March 1944, Aubame worked as an adviser to Governor-General André Bayardelle and his secretary André Soucadoux. They encouraged Aubame to run for office, and he returned to Gabon to campaign; with the support of both the administration and the missionaries, in November 1946 he won a seat in the French National Assembly. He was reelected in 1951 and 1956, lasting until the end of the Fourth French Republic. Initially affiliating with the Socialists, he later worked most closely with the Indépendants d'Outre-Mer. During this period he lived in Paris and toured Gabon regularly.

While a deputy, he continued to develop local Gabonese politics, in particular revitalizing the Fang clans. He organized the Union Démocratique et Sociale Gabonaise (UDSG), whose leadership came mostly from the interior, particularly Woleu-N'Tem province; in 1952 he was elected as Woleu-N'Tem's representative in the Territorial Assembly. Reelected in 1957, UDSG was slightly outnumbered in the Assembly by the BDG, and although 4 of 12 ministerial posts went to UDSG people, Aubame was not among them.

After Gabonese independence, Aubame worked with M'ba, accepting nomination on M'ba's slate of candidates for the National Assembly. Aubame was then elected as a representative of Moyen-Ogooué, and joined the government as Minister of Foreign Affairs. This only lasted until May 1962; after conflicting with M'ba, Aubame was demoted to Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, and then dropped from the cabinet entirely in 1963, when he refused to join M'ba's party. M'ba appointed him to the Supreme Court, as a way of forcing Aubame to give up his legislative seat and exposing him to prosecution, but Aubame instead resigned from the court (10 January 1964).

Aubame and his party announced their intention to abstain from new elections called by M'ba. In the coup of February 17-20, 1964, the provisional government requested Aubame to be its head; although most observers considered that Aubame was not involved in the coup, he was arrested anyway, and put on trial in August 1964, where he was sentenced to ten years of hard labor and ten years of banishment.

President Omar Bongo released Aubame in 1972, after which Aubame lived in Paris and stayed out of politics. He did visit Libreville in 1981, on which occasion Bongo appointed him "special adviser" (a mostly honorary post). Although not a supporter of MORENA, his home was bombed on 12 December 1984 by anti-MORENA extremists, Aubame and his family barely escaping harm. Aubame died in 1989.