By Caleb McClain
The single-engine plane sputtered as it fired up. Although it had been sitting for quite some time, everything looked in working order. There would be no radioing the tower and certainly no announcing their departure from Bangui. The man in the cockpit, Alfred von Ausberg, wore many hats: white hunter, tennis instructor, womanizer, socialite, and Austrian prince. Today he was wearing the hat of pilot in a daring escape for his life. Alfred floored it down the runway, then pointed his nose to the sky. As the two men felt the wheels raise from terra firma, they knew that they were all but home.
“We’ve got company!” alerted passenger Jens Hessel.
As Alfred looked back, he could see that they were being tailed by the entire Airforce of the Central African Empire. Fortunately, that only consisted of a single DC-3.
“Let’s shake him!” Alfred cried out before climbing into the clouds and losing their pursuers.
With their only threat out of the way, the pair headed to a remote bush camp to refuel, then on to civilization. The story of how they found themselves in this predicament, first shared by Brian Herne in “White Hunters,” had all the makings of a Hollywood classic.
The Canibal King
When Jomo Kenyatta and the Kenyan government closed the well-regulated conservation-based hunting in 1977 to line their own pockets with the proceeds from illicit ivory, East African hunters had to look to new horizons. Many turned south to countries like Rhodesia and South Africa. Alfred von Ausberg saw this as an opportunity to move into the untapped destination of the newly formed Central African Empire. There, his clients would be able to pursue species not available in traditional East African safaris, such as the bongo and forest elephant. After making a deal with self-proclaimed Emperor Bokassa, he moved his entire operation to the country.
Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa is a character who history should have never forgotten. Originally a colonel in the Central African Republic’s army, he staged a coup d’état and became the ruler in 1965. By 1972, Bokassa declared himself president for life, then emperor in 1976. You could say that Bokassa was a proponent of human rights violations, and among others, he kept Nile crocodiles to feed prisoners to and reportedly practiced cannibalism.
T.I.A. (This Is Africa), Possibly Schobedonia
Bokassa’s ostentatious coronation ran $110 million in today’s money and featured 40,000 bottles of wine, 24,000 bottles of Moët & Chandon, 60 special order Mercedes-Banz cars, 240 tons of food, enough diamonds for Rick Ross to think it was too gaudy (including an 80-carat diamond for his crown), and an 11-foot-tall throne in the shape of an eagle. Bokassa himself said, “Everything here was financed by the French government. We ask the French for money, get it, and waste it.” Shockingly, this pissed off the French government, and they overthrew him in 1979 during Operation Caban. It wasn’t 1979 yet though, and he was still very much in charge.
When Alfred’s safari operation arrived in Bangui, he was instantly stopped by the military, and everything he owned was seized; he had been played. Both he and Jens were placed under house arrest in a hotel where they awaited the certain fate of becoming a scrumptious meal for a crocodile. He knew that time was running out and escape was his top priority.
By the kind of luck that only happens in a perfectly scripted movie plot, an old friend was in Bangui. The man let Alfred know that his remote bush camp was loaded with airplane fuel, and they were free to use all they needed. Then, in an opportune moment, the duo slipped out of their hotel prison in a mad dash for the airport and up into the clouds, eventually continuing his life as a safari operator in different lands.
