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General relies on faith, prayer, to meet country’s challenges

"It is not easy to look at the one who was your enemy...or who killed your parents and say, 'You are my brother, I forgive you.'"

When rebel soldiers overthrew the government, army officer Philippe Mangou was imprisoned, tortured and threatened with death.

He turned to a lifelong source of strength to help him survive: His faith.

Mangou was arrested with other top officers after a mutiny in which rebel soldiers seized control of this West African country. It was December 1999.

“I already knew how to pray all night,” says the United Methodist. He encouraged the other officers in prayer, and he became the group’s choir leader.

The days and months that followed would be marked by extreme ordeal, the harassment of his family and the difficulty of facing an uncertain fate at the hands of the mutineers. He would need his faith more than ever.

Growing up

The prison cell was a far cry from the church setting of his youth. The son of a pastor, Mangou often led the choir, taught church groups and occasionally preached.

“I was accompanying my dad whenever he was going to baptize,” he says. “I started going to the church, and I had faith. Some people lose their faith when they grow up, but I continued keeping my faith.”

Some thought he might follow his father into ministry, but he chose to serve in the military. When the Rev. Francois Koutouan Mangou was asked how he could allow his son to join the army, he replied: “My son and I are doing the same job. I pray for the soul of the people, and my son defends the people.”

“You know, to become a pastor, you have to be called by God,” Philippe Mangou says. “If you are not called, it is impossible. I wanted to become a lay preacher, but this is about God’s calling. God calls everyone to the right place.

Mangou rose in leadership and started a family. He and his wife, Julienne, were expecting their sixth child when mutinous soldiers toppled the government.

Tortured

Shortly after his arrest, Mangou was told he was being taken to see the new president. Instead, his captors took him to an arsenal that had been converted into a place of torture. He still bears the scars from his ordeal, which included beatings, barbed wire wrapped around his body and pressed into his skin, and hot liquid poured over his shaved head.

“At a certain point, the pain was really intense,” he recalls. “While they were torturing us, they were singing or celebrating.”

Covered with blood, he and another officer were placed in vehicles, and he thought this was the end. “I started praying: ‘If it’s your time and your will, and my time to die today, then your will be done,’” he says.

Instead, his life was spared, and he was eventually reunited in a prison with other officers awaiting trial. “In the prison, we kept praying,” he says.

Meanwhile, soldiers with the new regime terrorized his family, ransacking his home, stealing possessions and forcing his wife, Julienne, to flee to a relative’s house.

When the regime fell several months later, Mangou regained his freedom and a high post in the military. Four years later, he became chief of the country’s defense and security forces, and is now widely known as simply “the general.”

Looking ahead

Today, Mangou, 57, is helping Côte d’Ivoire move toward stability, though the country is divided between the rebel-held north and the government-run south. He will be responsible for order at the polls when the country elects a president later this year.

The peace process is moving forward, he says. “We have realized that God has His hand on Côte d’Ivoire.”

Signs of his faith—a cross, a Bible, a picture of Mary—are evident around Mangou’s office. The general also belongs to Jubilee United Methodist Church in Abidjan, where he is honorary choir president, and his village church in Yopougon-Kouté.

He believes God has a job for him. “I do believe that it is God who has appointed me to this position at this crucial moment of crisis our country. This is the work of God.

“That’s why, before I do anything, I always kneel down to ask God to go ahead of me. I ask for wisdom, protection (and) strength in all that I do.”

During a ceremony at army headquarters, he embraced some of his former captors. Forgiveness will be necessary for the country to move ahead, he says.

“When we forgive,” he says, “we become more and more strong.”     

The following people contributed to this Profile: 
Central Conference Communicator Isaac Broune; print story by Tim Tanton; photos by Mike DuBose; videography by Harry Leake; editing by Tony Cook and Amanda Bachus. 

UMC.org Profiles are produced by Pam Price, 615-742-5405.

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