The 1977 Coup That Ended Seychelles' First Year of Independence

Seychelles, an archipelago of 115 islands in the western Indian Ocean, became independent from Britain in June 1976, with businessman and lawyer James Mancham of the Seychelles Democratic Party as its first president and France-Albert René of the more left-leaning Seychelles People’s United Party as prime minister in a coalition government. The arrangement did not survive a full year. On the night of June 4 into June 5, 1977, while Mancham was in London attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, between 60 and 200 SPUP supporters who had trained in Tanzania and been supplied with Tanzanian weapons seized key positions across the islands, including the central police station, in a coup organized behind René’s leadership.

The takeover was largely bloodless by the standards of African coups: fighting at the Mont Fleuri police station killed a police officer and one of the insurgents, the only two deaths recorded in the operation. René was sworn in as president and formed a new government, reportedly accepting the office on the conditions that the safety of political figures be guaranteed, that Seychelles’ existing international agreements remain in force, and that new elections be held the following year. Mancham, stripped of power while out of the country, did not return; he settled into exile in London, where he lived for the next fifteen years, remarrying and building a career in international business before finally returning to Seychelles in April 1992.

René’s promised 1978 elections did not happen on schedule, slipping instead to 1979, by which point a new constitution had eliminated Seychelles’ multiparty parliament entirely and concentrated legislative power in the presidency. Running unopposed under the one-party system that followed, René won reelection in 1979, 1984, and 1989 with more than 90 percent of the vote each time, a margin the absence of any legal opposition made close to a formality. That arrangement held until international pressure and domestic unrest pushed René to reintroduce multiparty politics in 1993, the year Mancham’s old Seychelles Democratic Party and other opposition groups were finally allowed to contest an election again, sixteen years after the coup that had shut them out.