The man who ran Francafrique.

• Author: Whiteman, Kaye
• Position: French politician Jacques Foccart's role in France's colonization of Africa under the leadership of Charles de Gaulle - Obituary

On the morning of March 19, 1997, an eighty-three year old Frenchman died in an apartment on the rue de Prony, in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, after suffering for several years from Parkinson's disease. Such was the legend of Jacques Foccart that, while his period of greatest influence had been thirty years earlier, the death sent tremors through all of French-speaking Africa. Indeed, the tremors were far stronger there than in France itself, even though the only biography of him, L'Homme de l'Ombre (Man of the Shadows) by Pierre Pean, was subtitled "The most mysterious and most powerful man of the Fifth Republic."(1) For those involved with what has come to be known nowadays as "Francafrique", denoting the special French sphere of influence in Africa, many, along with Albert Bourgi of Jeune Afrique, saw Foccart's death as "the end of an epoch."

It had already become impossible to distinguish between the myths and the realities of the Foccart legend, given the extreme secrecy with which he surrounded his activities. Was he really a great spider manipulating away at the center of a residual imperial sphere of influence, a genius of neocolonialism? Or did his legend owe more to exaggeration and misguided speculation than to reality?

I have long been fascinated by the Foccart mystery. As a young journalist in the 1960s, increasingly preoccupied with the France that had struggled hard to keep an extraordinarily high profile in its former African colonies, I gradually became aware of Foccart, there in the shadows. The first references to him sprang from the pages of Le Canard Enchaine, which was convinced that he was one of the controllers of the barbouzes (the bearded ones), the agents who used none too clean methods to fight the decidedly unclean OAS (Organisation Armee Secrete) in the Algerian War. Later his unusual and secretive role in helping to prop up African leaders or mount clandestine operations was occasionally highlighted, and in the early 1970s Foccart took Le Canard to court for suggesting that he had bugged an eighteenth-century commode in Charles de Gaulle's office, and was awarded a symbolic one franc for having done so.

Then there was the story of all the files being removed from the Elysee Palace after de Gaulle resigned in April 1969, another hint of the secret world to which he was wedded. The avuncular Daniel Pepy, an agronomist brought in to perform Foccart's functions in the post-de Gaulle interim reign of Senate President Main Poher, told me that every document had been removed, and there had been no question of a handover brief. So Pepy found himself trying to advise on difficult issues such as Chad and Biafra without a compass, or even a file of records.

Seven weeks later Foccart was back in the Elysee, and so presumably were the files. I once visited the office that Foccart notionally ran, the so-called Secretariat of the Community, de Gaulle's attempt to find a structure halfway between colonies and full independence, lodged in the Hotel de Noirmoutiers on the rue de Grenelle (the phone number was of that most delicious of Paris districts, before all-figure numbers came in, "Babylon"). The Community had no real function after it was overtaken by events during 1958-59, except perhaps to supervise payments to French army veterans in Africa, so it was an ideal front for whatever were Foccart's real activities. I called on the so-called press officer of this "virtual" organization, who was courteously uncommunicative, but I was struck by the complete absence of files, documents, papers of any kind. The high corridors and rooms were without shelves. Wherever the action was, it was not here.

I first actually saw Foccart during the ceremonies for the tenth anniversary of the independence of Cameroon in 1970 (it was in fact only the francophone part that was ten years old). Foccart, a bald poker-faced figure in a perpetual pair of dark glasses, was one of the guests, and though he was as usual self-effacing, it was possible to slip him into photos sitting there behind larger-than-life figures like Jean-Bedel Bokassa. One photographer did his best to try to get an amusing picture of him walking past a poster for a gangster movie at Yaounde's Abbia cinema.

The only time I saw Foccart close up was during President Pompidou's visit to Gabon in 1972. After the presidential press conference there was a reception for journalists, and a cheeky Gabonese reporter asked, "Is it true, Monsieur le President, that France is behind all these coups in Africa?" To which Pompidou replied, smiling broadly, referring to the figure who was, as always, standing behind him, "You'd better ask Monsieur Foccart." The man of the shadows, a little pink, remained impassive.

I saw him only once more, twenty-two years later, at the funeral of President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of Cote d'Ivoire, in Yamoussoukro in 1994. The French political class attended in such droves that one wondered who was running the government in Paris: President Mitterrand and the Socialists (as well as ex-President Giscard) flew in on the Concorde, and the Gaullist RPR leaders came on a separate flight and stayed overnight at Yamoussoukro's Hotel President. I happened to be loitering in the foyer when they all arrived - the then-Premier Edouard Balladur, stiff and uncomfortable, Jacques Chirac, jovial and informal, a gaggle of Gaullist barons like former Prime Minister Pierre Messmer. And along with them walked slowly a frail little old man with his mouth drooping open. Could this really be the same Foccart, sinister man of mystery? It was said he was too ill to go to the basilica the next day, but watched the funeral service from his hotel room. It made one...