Charismatic activist and unwavering advocate of Togo’s independence, Sylvanus Olympio became the symbol of the Togolese people in their struggle against French colonial rule.
Origins and early life
Sylvanus Epiphanio Kwami Olympio was born on September 6, 1902, in Kpando, in Ewe country (a town then located in German Togoland, which would later become part of the British Mandate of Togoland, then the Gold Coast, and which today belongs to the Republic of Ghana). He was the eldest son among the thirty children of Epiphanio Elpidio Olympio, himself the son of Constança Talabi Pereira Santos, an Afro-Brazilian woman from the Yoruba city of Abeokuta (present-day Nigeria), and Francisco Sylva Olympio, born in Brazil to a Portuguese father and an Afro-Amerindian mother.
Sylvanus’ mother was Fidelia Afe, believed to have been a Mamproussi woman. Born in northern Togo, she was reportedly kidnapped near her village in what is now northern Togo, then sold to a member of the Olympio family, known for its involvement in the slave trade. She was later allegedly freed by Epiphanio Elpidio Olympio, who had fallen under her charm. The man was therefore intrinsically Pan-African, carrying origins that transcended ethnicities and colonial borders.
Young Sylvanus Olympio began his education at the German Catholic Mission in Lomé before joining an English school in 1914 when Great Britain occupied the western part of the country. When eastern Togo became a member of the League of Nations, he enrolled in a French school. This education within the school systems of three different countries made this diligent and brilliant student multilingual, and he achieved the highest score in the territory on the primary school certificate examination (the diploma marking the end of elementary education).
In 1920, he was sent to London to continue his studies, initially against his father’s wishes. Between that date and 1926, he obtained the equivalent of the baccalauréat and became one of the first Africans to graduate from the London School of Economics. He was then employed by a London trading company. From 1927 onward, he studied international law in Dijon, France, then in Vienna, Austria. In 1928, Sylvanus joined the Anglo-Dutch company Unilever in Lagos, Nigeria, before becoming head of its branch in Ho upon his return to Togo in 1930. That same year, he married Dina Grunitzky, daughter of a German trader and an Ewe mother. In the meantime, he had traveled across Europe, eager to understand the mechanisms behind European economic success. A tireless and disciplined worker, he managed to secure a transfer to Lomé in an Unilever subsidiary in 1932.
Beginning of his political career
Between 1936 and 1941, Sylvanus Olympio became involved in three political associations whose unspoken purpose was to favor the colonial regime at the expense of the indigenous people. At the end of the following year, after the Vichy occupation of France, Sylvanus was arrested by police for listening to the BBC on a radio set. He was imprisoned in northern Togo and then northern Benin, before being released at the end of 1943 following the liberation of France. In 1945, during the Local Conference of Lomé, organized at the initiative of French President De Gaulle to ease the conditions of colonial subjugation and curb the growing spirit of independence among the colonized peoples, Olympio stood out by declaring his disinterest in France as well as the intrinsic Togolese citizenship of his compatriots. The following year, under the leadership of Sylvanus Olympio, the Comité de l’Unité Togolaise (CUT), the last association he had joined in 1941 and of which he was now vice-president, evolved from a colonialist movement into a popular emancipation movement with nearly 18,600 members by the end of 1947. In 1946, Sylvanus Olympio was elected President of the Representative Assembly of Togo at the Council of the French Union during elections in which his party, the CUT, won a large majority.
Toward independence
Although his paternal family was an Afro-Brazilian family whose stronghold was located in Agoué, in Gen (Mina) country in present-day Benin, and although Sylvanus had no ethnically Ewe ancestors, his birth in Ewe country in Kpando made him de facto an Ewe. This people, closely related to the Gens (Minas) of Togo-Benin and the Fon of Benin, was then divided by the colonial borders of the Gold Coast and British and French Togoland. Olympio became the spokesperson of the Pan-Ewe Movement, which sought the reunification of the Ewe people under a single banner, that of British Togoland before the United Nations Trusteeship Council. This position should probably not be interpreted as tribalism, ethnic preference, or regionalism on Olympio’s part, especially toward northern populations. He was in fact likely connected to that region through his mother. Nevertheless, it was this image of ethnic preference in the decolonization process that Olympio projected among northern populations, an image the colonizers eagerly amplified to the extreme. The issue of creating an Ewe state was originally nothing more than a trap organized by the British to rid the territories populated by Ewes of French and German influence.
Quickly, from 1951 onward, the Ewe issue evolved into a more Pan-African demand: the unification of British and French Togoland. Meanwhile, beginning in 1950, France sent hardline governors who carried out severe political repression and a divide-and-rule policy that weakened the CUT and all independence activists. The French now supported the Parti Togolais du Progrès, a moderate party in the struggle for independence, as well as the Union des Chefs et des Populations du Nord (UCPN), a regionalist party created under the influence of colonial powers. The PTP, led by Nicolas Grunitzky, half-brother of Olympio’s wife, won the 1951 legislative elections and other institutions of the French Union. That same year, France succeeded in transferring Olympio to Unilever’s Paris branch while forbidding him from participating in the United Nations Trusteeship Council sessions held there. He nevertheless managed to evade their surveillance and attend a session of the United Nations General Assembly. French repression intensified, and in 1954, Sylvanus Olympio was unjustly sentenced to a 5 million FCFA fine and five years’ suspension of his civil rights for the illegal transfer of funds.
At the head of Togo
In 1956, the dream of unifying western and French Togoland collapsed following a United Nations decision. Western Togoland was attached to the Gold Coast in 1957. This event sparked tensions between Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana and Olympio’s Togo, as Nkrumah sought to bring Olympio’s Togo under the banner of his own country. The French administration then organized a referendum through which it managed, against the will of the people, to approve the transformation of French Togoland into an “Autonomous Republic,” meaning a state with internal autonomy but still dependent on the broader framework of the French Union. Nicolas Grunitzky stood at the head of this republic.
In 1958, the United Nations organized legislative elections that were overwhelmingly won by the independence movement. Despite French attempts to appoint a more moderate Prime Minister, all their candidates were rejected by those concerned. The independence leaders consulted by the French demanded that Sylvanus Olympio be chosen as Prime Minister and restored to his civil rights. During a trip to Paris, Togo’s new Prime Minister managed to obtain French President De Gaulle’s agreement for Togo’s independence. This came on April 27, 1960, after a brief two-year transition period. Hostile both to Marxism-Leninism and to France, Togo’s new president skillfully combined liberalism and austerity with the aim of making his country economically independent. He planned to withdraw Togo from the CFA franc zone and create a national currency. More than internal opposition within Togo or his refusal to reintegrate Togolese soldiers returning from Vietnam into a national army, it was this decision that led to the assassination of Sylvanus Olympio by three bullets fired in front of the United States embassy in Togo. Although the murder weapon was held by the very hand of future Togolese president Etienne Gnassingbé Eyadéma, accompanied by other soldiers, it was most likely Charles de Gaulle’s France that bought the weapon, loaded it with bullets, and decided to use it against Olympio. Thus ended the life of the hero of Togolese independence, whose dream of an independent, united, and sovereign Africa would die with him.
[https://www.nofi.media/2014/11/felix-moumie/5049](https://www.nofi.media/2014/11/felix-moumie/5049)
