By Chinasaokwu Helen Okoro
Like Equatorial Guinea’s Baltasar Ebang Engonga, many of Africa’s leading political figures have been caught up in sex scandals.
From Zimbabwe to DRC, via Senegal and Gabon to Zimbabwe, Morocco and South Africa, we take a look back at some of these high-profile scandals.
The name Baltasar Ebang Engonga probably meant nothing to anyone outside Equatorial Guinea‘s close-knit political and economic circles before it hit the headlines in November.
Now, there are few who don’t know the nickname of this grand-nephew of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, a reference to what is said to be his appealing physique: Bello. The ‘Bello affair’ has undoubtedly become one of the continent’s most sensational sex scandals ever.
The release via social media of hundreds of intimate videos of this son of Baltasar Engonga Edjo’o, president of the Commission of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC), sent shockwaves well beyond Malabo.
The family man, who at the time the compromising images were made public was being held on bail in Malabo’s Black Beach prison charged with embezzlement of public funds, is seen on camera engaging in sexual activities with the wives or daughters of ministers, dignitaries and generals.
But long before him, other African political leaders have also found themselves wrapped up in sex scandals.
In some cases, the media coverage of their indiscretions eventually led to their downfall.
In others, the scandals did not prevent them from holding onto power.Jacob Zuma and the shower In 2006, when Jacob Zuma was South Africa’s deputy president and, more importantly, a candidate to succeed then-president Thabo Mbeki, he was accused of raping the daughter of one of his best friends – a 31-year-old HIV-positive woman – at his home.
Although he acknowledged having had sexual relations with her, he denied assaulting her and said it was a consensual relationship.
Zuma, who was chairman of the National AIDS Council at the time, also explained that he had taken a shower after the sex act to minimise the risk of infection.
This statement provoked outrage in a country ravaged by the epidemic. Acquitted after a high-profile trial, he eventually became president in 2009.
He was ousted in 2018 at the age of 78, swept up in another scandal: this one involving alleged corruption.Ramaphosa, aka ‘Cupcake’On 3 September 2017, the South African newspaper Sunday Independent claimed to have documents proving that Cyril Ramaphosa ‘The Player’, then the country’s deputy president, had no fewer than eight mistresses, some of whom were still students.
According to the newspaper, Ramaphosa shared erotic photos and videos with his partners, who called him ‘Cupcake’. Ramaphosa denied the rumours, denouncing what he said was a smear campaign in the run-up to elections for the leadership of the ruling African National Congress (ANC).
He eventually admitted to having had a past extramarital affair.Although the nickname Cupcake stuck, the scandal had no impact on Ramaphosa’s political career
A year later, he was elected president of South Africa.During his time in office, he has launched a vast campaign to combat violence against women, proposing a number of measures against sexual assault, including tougher penalties.
He has called on South Africans to fight together against rape and sexual assault, which he has described as a “national crisis”.Ousmane Sonko and the Adji Sarr affairIn February 2021, Adji Sarr, an employee of a Dakar beauty salon, accused Ousmane Sonko, then a member of parliament, of raping her on several occasions and making death threats against her.
This complaint was to be the starting point for a long political and legal drama, and one of the most serious political crises the country has ever seen.
The riots that broke out after his first summons to appear in court left 14 people dead.Throughout the proceedings, Sonko, who came third in the 2019 presidential election, continued to maintain that a political plot had been hatched against him at top levels of the government, without ever offering proof.He was finally found guilty of “corrupting a young person” at the first hearing on 1 June 2023, and sentenced in absentia to two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 600,000 CFA francs ($960) by the criminal division of the Dakar court.
His candidacy for the 2024 presidential election, compromised following a libel conviction, was definitively rejected in January 2024 by the Constitutional Council.
He chose to support the candidacy of his right-hand man, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who won the presidential election in the first round. Sonko is now Faye’s prime minister. Adji Sarr has left Senegal.DRC’s Ruberangabo Sebineza and a compromising position.
The video lasts just over four minutes. The images leaked onto social media show Enock Ruberangabo Sebineza, who was the Congolese vice-minister for post and telecommunications at at the time of the event in 2016 in a very awkward position masturbating in front of the camera, no doubt in response to an exchange via his webcam.
The surrounding imagery suggested he was in his office, with the Democratic Republic of Congo flag to his right and the official portrait of then-president Joseph Kabila above his head.The political death blow came quickly. Disgraced, he claimed that the images had been edited in an attempt to blackmail him with a sex tape. The announcement of his dismissal was broadcast on Congolese national broadcaster RTNC.
The order signed by the president stated that the vice-minister had “seriously failed in the deontological and ethical duties to which members of the government are subject”.
South Africa’s Gigaba and a sextape In April 2017, Malusi Gigaba became South Africa’s youngest finance minister at the age of 45, in a surprise reshuffle. It was a crowning achievement for the man who had previously been interior minister.
But a year later, this son of a Protestant pastor was forced to resign after he was targeted by an extortion attempt after the theft of a sex video featuring Gigaba, obtained by hacking into his phone just after his appointment as finance minister.Gigaba refused to give in to the blackmail attempt, and the sextape was eventually posted on a well-known pornographic content-sharing website.
He justified his departure from government saying there was a need to ensure that the “national interest” and that of his party, the ANC, prevailed, before apologising to his family.
Omar Bongo, Smalto and the escort girlsFrom 1970 to 1990, Italian fashion designer Francesco Smalto was at the height of his career. He dressed fashionable celebrities, from Jean-Paul Belmondo to Roger Moore, as well as statesmen such as France’s François Mitterrand and Morocco’s King Hassan II. However, the career of the man everyone called “the man who dresses men” came to an abrupt halt in 1995.
That year, Smalto was sentenced by the Paris Criminal Court to a 15-month suspended prison sentence and fined 600,000 francs (equivalent to $150,087 today) for aggravated pimping.He was accused of having offered the services of call girls to Gabon’s president Omar Bongo
The women, who were preferably blond and paid generously, travelled first class alongside 70 suitcases packed with items from Smalto’s collections.In 2001, the couturier eventually sold his company.
He died in 2015, aged 87, at the Mamounia hotel in Marrakech. His trial was a source of great displeasure in Libreville – to the point of bordering on a diplomatic incident – as the Bongos had little taste for the public display of presidential antics.
Mohadi, a very insistent deputy president“I hereby resign my office as deputy-president of the Republic of Zimbabwe with immediate effect,” said Kembo Mohadi, 71, in a letter published in 2021 on Twitter (now X), announcing his departure from the post he had held since 2017.
The politician was stepping down in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal that shocked the country. Several local media outlets had just published accounts of conversations in which a man, identified as Kembo Mohadi, was very insistent with several women, one of whom was allegedly his colleague.
One of the women appeared to be in a hurry to join him in his office at the presidency to have sex. When he tendered his resignation, Mohadi claimed he was the victim of “manipulation of information, distortion of recordings, espionage and political sabotage” and expressed the “need to take a step back to deal with [his] difficulties outside [his] duties”.
He has not appeared on the Zimbabwean political scene since.Moroccan Islamists caught red-handedIn 2016, a couple was discovered having sex in a car parked near a beach in Mohammedia, around 30km from Casablanca. Who were these two careless lovers? Fatima Nejjar, 62, and Moulay Omar Benhammad, 63, two Islamist vice-presidents of the Movement for Unity and Reform (MUR), the religious wing of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), which had led the coalition government since late 2011.
He was a married academic who had always presented himself as a guardian of virtue. She was a widow, known for her ultraconservative discourse “against temptation and vice”.
The revelation of their affair, which led to their abrupt departure from the MUR, caused quite a stir in the kingdom, where extramarital relations are punishable by a month to a year in prison.
Eventually prosecuted for adultery, indecent assault and attempted bribery, Benhammad and Nejjar were sentenced in absentia to a two-month suspended prison term and a fine.
The judgement was described as “unfair” by the couple, who had tried unsuccessfully to get married before the hearing.
