sure to include communal healers in its management. Initially operating with a French subsidy, over time the co-operative became embroiled with allegations of financial improprieties and ran low on money. Boganda attempted to fund it with his parliamentary salary, but its deficits rapidly increased. On 28 September 1949, at Bangui, Boganda established the Movement for the Social Evolution of Black Africa (MESAN), a mass political party. He wrote its founding code, which stipulated that the organisation sought "to develop and liberate the black race by progressive and pacific evolution, achieved by the combined efforts of all negroes throughout the world". Politically, the party supported liberty and equality for Africans, while economically it endorsed the use of co-operative ventures. Framing his political programme as a matter of fundamental rights, Boganda coined the Sango phrase zo kwe zo, which translated to "every human being is a person". He praised "peasant virtues" and the rustic life before colonialism, and these messages resonated with rural farmers. Furthermore, Oubanguians appreciated his willingness to angrily confront colonial officials. Boganda deliberately strived to instill his rhetoric with a sense of religiosity and mysticism, and he frequently used Latin in his speeches. Rumours began to circulate of his supposed invulnerability and supernatural powers, and at one point later in his career a large crowd waited on the shore of the Ubangi River to see him walk over the water (he did not appear). MESAN's activities angered the French administration and the companies trading in cotton, coffee, diamonds, and other commodities. The Bangui Chamber of Commerce was controlled by these companies, and its members resented the end of forced labour and the resultant rise of black nationalism. They despised Boganda, viewing him as a dangerous revolutionary demagogue and a threat to their "free enterprise", and they resolved to get rid of him. French colonists and administrators established local Gaullist Rally of the French People (RPF) branches to counter MESAN. Drawing on the support of government workers, clerks, and Free French veterans of World War II, the party sought to take credit for colonial reforms, but failed to generate popular traction. The presence of the African Democratic Rally (RDA) in the other three territories of French Equatorial Africa posed some threat to MESAN, but they were eventually reduced to minor groups. Boganda was not particularly concerned with his religious mission once he entered politics, but he used the enormous popular