Yet at the moment of wider movements for decolonization in Africa, Haitian Africanist claims drifted even farther from their cultural antecedents toward a baldly self-serving paradigm of control. In 1957, the year Ghana declared independence from Great Britain, becoming the first decolonized sub-Saharan African country to do so, Haiti was thrust headlong into a chaos of political violence and bruising ambition that would result in the ascension of François Duvalier, also known as 'Papa Doc', to the presidency. The founding of the repressive Duvalierist State was part of a metamorphosis of statist interpretations of Haitian black consciousness, which transformed into its ugliest variant, Duvalierism.  
It is no small coincidence that one of Haiti's most tangible ties to the continent was forged in these years. In the mid-1960s, after Duvalier declared himself President for Life, and after independence of the Congo in 1960, French-speaking Haitians were encouraged to migrate there. Thousands did. A new Haitian awareness of Africa could be said to have developed through contacts made during this experience.  
The Duvaliers' rule, for all its viciousness, claimed itself founded on African consciousness. François Duvalier seized each moment he could to prove this. Consider the lavish welcome of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I to Haiti in April 1966. According to Duvalier,
the history of the noble peoples of Africa is staked, like that of Haiti, on moments of uneasiness [...]. Haitians are aware of the solidarity of its destiny with all the people of the Third World, because Haiti is already engaged in a struggle for a decent life ('L'important discours du Président à vie, François Duvalier,' Le Nouvelliste, 25 April 1966, p. 1).  
The sentiment of union with Africa was genuine to the extent that it reinforced a philosophy long-nurtured in Duvalier's writings, if not in his governance.