A year later, the CAR achieved formal independence.
Five years later, the country was taken over by the army in a putsch; the first in a long line of coups that would leave this country tangled in violence, poverty and misgovernance.
Boganda is said to have understood the trap presented by statehood for smaller post-colonial African states.
He called for the “Latin United States of Africa” - in which nations inside French Equatorial Africa, the Belgian Congo and Portuguese colonies would amalgamate into one political and economic body.
It would provide stronger negotiating power and economic opportunity, he argued. But with his passing, this idea died, too.
Alas, the CAR remains one of the most undeveloped and poorest nations on earth.
Boganda is now a painful memory for Central Africans.
He is lionised as what might have been.
And yet, and in spite of their hardships, his spirit lives on in the extraordinary efforts made by Catholic priests and Muslim imams to keep the country and its people pushing for peace, justice and accountability.
Both Catholic priests and imams continue, under exceptional circumstances, to emphasise communal harmony above all else.
Since the conflict began in 2013, following a coup by the Muslim-led Seleka rebels, leaders from both communities have gone to lengths to emphasise religious cohabitation amid endless attempts to turn this conflict into a religious war.
Where government is absent, churches have been forever open to the displaced and injured.
Where the UN has claimed to be ill-equipped to respond to attacks, imams and priests have defended fearlessly.
Little wonder then that priests and imams are routinely targeted for daring to disrupt the status quo, or refusing to remain silent.
Last week, gunmen attacked the Our Lady of Fatima Church, close to Bangui’s Muslim PK5 neighbourhood. About 26 people were killed and dozens injured when former militia belonging to the Seleka rebel group entered the church.
They opened fire and flung grenades. Father Albert Toungoumale-Baba, known to be a tireless proponent of reconciliation and community dialogue died in the shootout.
Following the attack on the church, two Muslims were burnt alive, and PK5 went into shutdown.
Almost immediately, the revenge attacks on Muslims were condemned by Bangui’s Cardinal Dieudonné Nzapalainga.
“It’s at most difficult moments like this that true heroes arise and find the strength to propose an alternative, saying no to the evil of violence, barbarism and destruction, and choosing the good of love, forgiveness and reconciliation,” Nzapalainga said.
It is still not clear why the church was attacked, but the attack came days after a “security sweep” in the PK5 district left a number of Muslim militia dead.
It also followed weeks of tension in CAR. The failure to disarm militia has meant that 75% of the country is still controlled by non-state armed groups. It also means that violence erupts periodically.
Last October, about 25 Muslims including the imam were executed in a mosque in the town of Kembe.
Toungoumale-Baba is the second priest to be killed this year. And Our Lady of Fatima church has been attacked before.
In 2014, a similar attack left 18, including a priest dead.
As the minority community in the country, Muslims have faced grotesque acts of violence, including erasure from Christian and animist self-defence groups that formed to tackle the Seleka rebels.
Hundreds of thousands of Muslims were forced to escape to neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and the DRC.
At one point, Amnesty said peacekeepers had failed to prevent ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the western half of the country.
The schism has split communities down the middle, leaving thousands homeless or forcing them to move into enclaves.
But Muslims and Christians have lived alongside each other in the CAR for generations. If there have been struggles over land, it was between the cattle herders of the north and the river people of the south.
That the former happened to be Muslim and latter Christian was always only incidental. This is not a religious enmity dating back to the Middle Ages.
“We see the result in deaths, scenes of pillage and acts of destruction. But behind these events, I ask myself if there’s also manipulation and instrumentalisation, a wish to divide the country and a hidden agenda,” Cardinal Dieudonné says.
Like Boganda, Toungoumale-Baba who died last week, saw the bigger picture.
That in the fight for power and territory, ordinary people were being hurt, manipulated and driven to hate. The “religious conflict” was just a cover.
Like Boganda, he was inconvenient and had to pay the price.
* Azad Essa is a writer based in New York City. He is also author of Zuma’s Bastard (Two Dogs Books).
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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