Lansana Conté was the authoritarian ruler of the Republic of Guinea for more than two decades after seizing power in a military coup in April 1984. He succeeded Ahmed Sékou Touré, who had led Guinea since it won independence from France in 1958.

Conté paid lip service to demands for democratic change in the early 1990s but was never seriously prepared to share power. Guinea’s repressive human rights record and its failed economic policies meant that Conté’s rule was increasingly unpopular. His survival for so long owed much to the aid and military training supplied by the Western powers who saw in him a stable leader in a West African region beset by civil war. A diabetic and chain smoker, Conté was in poor health for several years before his death and appeared in public only occasionally.

Conté was born in 1934 (the exact date is not known) into a Muslim family, a member of the Sousou tribe that dominates the coastal region of Guinea. He was born in and educated at a Koranic school in Moussayah Loumbaya, 40 miles from the capital, Conakry, before going on to military preparatory schools in the Ivory Coast and Senegal. In 1955 he enlisted in the French Army and was posted to Algeria during the war of independence there. On Guinea’s own independence three years later, Conté rose rapidly through the ranks of the new state’s army as a loyal supporter of Ahmed Sékou Touré. Sékou Touré presided over a ruthless, centralised socialist state that, to a large extent, cut itself off from the rest of the world.

Conté became Sékou Touré’s chief of staff in 1975 and military commander of the Boké region in the west of the country. His growing influence was shown in 1977 when he headed a Guinean delegation during negotiations that resolved a border dispute with Guinea-Bissau.

In 1980 he was elected to parliament. When Sékou Touré died in March 1984, power initially passed to the Prime Minister, Louis Lansana Beavogui, but on April 3rd, Lieutenant-Colonel Lansana Conté seized control in a bloodless coup, carried out in the name of a Military Committee of National Recovery or CMRN. Conté declared himself President, with his co-conspirator, Diarra Traoré, installed as Prime Minister.

Conté signalled a clear break with the past, abolishing the constitution and sole political party and proclaiming the Second Republic. At the same time, he released the political prisoners jailed by Sékou Touré and called on political exiles to come home. The ruling junta announced its intention to liberalise the economy and to promote foreign investment to exploit the country’s considerable natural resources.

It soon became clear that Conté was as jealous of political power as his predecessor. He fell out with Traoré, demoting him to Education Minister. A coup attempt, organised by Traoré, followed and was put down in 1985. But even Conté was powerless to stop the spread of democratic sentiment that swept the region after the collapse of one-party states in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s.

In 1990 a new constitution was introduced, providing for a transition from Conté’s dictatorial regime to a twoparty civilian system over a period of five years. Successive elections were, however, postponed until a presidential poll was held in December, 1993. Conté was declared the winner, but his opponents complained that the ballot had been rigged. Similar allegations were made after legislative and municipal elections in 1995 when Conté’s ruling Party for Unity and Progress (PUP) emerged as an easy winner.

A greater threat to Conté’s rule came from within the armed forces. In February 1996 several thousand troops in Conakry mutinied over low pay and other poor conditions. The rebels destroyed the presidential offices, killing several dozen civilians. Mid-level officers tried, unsuccessfully, to turn the rebellion into a coup d’état. But the revolt was crushed by forces loyal to Conté. Nevertheless, in response to the coup attempt and a faltering economy, Conté appointed a new Government staffed with technocrats and announced a flurry of economic reforms.

In 1998 Conté won a second five-year mandate as President, this time by an even larger majority than in 1993. The opposition complained of irregularities, which international observers confirmed, although conceding that the conduct of the poll had been better than the first one.

After his re-election and some improvement in economic conditions, Conté again changed direction. He replaced many of the technocrats in his Government with people close to him, often from his own Sousou tribe. The changes led only to cronyism, corruption and a reversal of economic and political reforms.

Conté maintained his tight grip at home into the new millennium. In September 2000 the main opposition figure, Alpha Condé, was sentenced to five years in prison for endangering state security and recruiting foreign mercenaries. But the maelstrom of instability in the region threatened to engulf Guinea too. In the same month Sierra Leonean rebels, in the shape of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), backed by the Liberian President, Charles Taylor, began large-scale attacks into Guinea from Sierra Leone and Liberia. Towns and villages were destroyed, and tens of thousands of Guineans were displaced from their homes. Conté responded by accusing Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees residing in Guinea of fomenting war against his Government. Guinean soldiers, police and civilian militia rounded up thousands of the refugees, some of whom were raped and beaten and others detained. The UN moved many of the refugees out of Guinea as a result.