Pierre Toura Gaba
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Pierre Toura Gaba (1920–1998) was a Chadian politician and diplomat. He was born on December 28, 1920 at Maibyan, near Moissala, in the prefecture of Moyen-Chari in southern Chad. He diplomated at Brazzaville in the High School Edouard Renard, and long worked as a teacher in places like Ati, Abéché, Bongor, Fort-Archambault (now called Sarh).
At those times Chad was a French colony. In 1946 France had gave African citizens the possibility to form parties and vote for a Territorial Assembly; as a result Toura entered in politics and became from 1946 to 1956 a member of this assembly. In the meanwhile he founded in 1947 with Gabriel Lisette the Chadian Progressive Party (PPT), in which he became secretary-general and Lisette president. The 1956 reforms greatly boosted the suffrage strengthening the PPT, which triumphed in the first democratic elections; Toura was among the PPT representatives elected, and became Minister of Agriculture in the first black government guided by Lisette in 1958. But in February Lisette lost his post, and a month later Toura lost his in the party in favour of François Tombalbaye who later in the same month, when Lisette renounced, became the new head of the government, a position that was strengthened by the following elections on May, triumphantly won by the PPT, that formed a new government headed by Tombalbaye where Toura was Minister of Public Works.
With the independence of Chad on August 11, 1960, Tombalbaye became President, and Toura was made Foreign minister. As such he headed the Chadian delegation that on September 29 was present at the United Nations General Assembly, an act that sanctioned Chad's admission to the UN.
In 1961 was moved to the ministry of National Education. But Tombalbaye in the meanwhile was becoming increasingly suspicious and authoritarian: as a result Toura fell in disgrace and was arrested in 1962. He remained in jail for several years, after which the President decided he could use him as a diplomat, and sent him in 1966 to the Federal Republic of Germany as ambassador for Chad. In 1973 he resigned and went in exile in France. In Paris in 1974 he wrote Non a la Tobalbaye! - Fragments autobiographiques, a critique of the Tombalbaye Regime. The work started circulating secretly by August in Chad, among opposers of the President.
After the coup of 1975 that removed Tombalbaye, Toura returned to the diplomatic service, and was made ambassador in 1976 for the United States. He served till 1979, when he resigned after the dissolution in February of any central authority in Chad. He found asylum in the USA, and remained there till 1991, when he returned to Chad. He has died on September 29 1998 at N'Djamena.
