Benin’s former president Mathieu Kerekou, nicknamed “the chameleon” who ruled the tiny west African nation for a total of 30 years after a coup then democratic elections, died on Wednesday. He was 82.

“I announce with regret and deep sadness the death on Wednesday October 14 of President-General Mathieu Kerekou at about 1:30 pm (1230 GMT),” President Thomas Boni Yayi said in a statement.

The government said there would be one week of national mourning from Friday, with Benin’s flags to be flown at half-mast across the country.

Kerekou, who earned his peculiar nickname when he first came to power in 1972, famously said in a statement that he was planning on moving slowly and surely — like a chameleon — in the running of Benin.

Contrary to first impressions, he was not called the chameleon because of his changing political affiliations.

But the name stuck and later was used to describe his ability to adapt to the changing times in order to stay in power.

Finally in 2006, he stepped down aged 72, having reached the constitutional age limit to serve as president.

Born on September 2, 1933 in the then-Dahomey, he was one of the country’s towering political figures and led as both as a Marxist-inspired military ruler and a democratically elected president.

After military school in Mali and Senegal, he joined the French military, undergoing officer training in Paris before becoming the aide-de-camp of the then-Dahomey’s first president, Hubert Maga.

Kerekou was a commander when he seized power in 1972 after a period of instability marked by a succession of coups since Dahomey gained independence from France in 1960 and changed its name to Benin.

He was fascinated by the “revolutionary struggle of oppressed people of the Third World”, installed a Marxist-Leninist regime and declared the People’s Republic of Benin in 1975.