What I understood …
After reading the work of historian Séverine Awenengo Dalberto, it is to recognize the certain quality of production, articulated around rich and varied documentation. result of two decades of research. This gives this history book the stamp “Scientific work”. The work, beyond its title which “scares” to certain “brilliant minds”, followers of censorship, traces important sections of the history of colonial Senegal, especially the Casamançaise region, the birth of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) and its relations with Léopold Sédar Senghor and the first years of independent Senegal.
“The idea of autonomous Casamance”
I understood that the idea of ”autonomous casamy”, in fact, is above all developed by European administrators and traders in the dynamics of the effectiveness of the French occupation. At the reception of William Ponty in 1914 in Ziguinchor, members of the Chamber of Commerce clearly expressed, for the first time, their desire to see autonomous Casamance for “the development of trade and the success of the colonial design” (p.99-100).
In addition to traders, for more than twenty years, clerk of the colonial administration have many times pleaded for the erection of Casamance in an autonomous constituency with the extension of their authority on this part of colonial Senegal, because of its “particularity”; A peculiarity that the colonists had themselves had an interest in highlighting to justify their military difficulties. From the desire for administrative reform of the Governor general, William Ponty, issued in 1912, until the removal of the district status and the position of higher administrator in 1939, several proposals were made. From C. MacLaud to Jean Chartier, passing through G. Double and H. Maubert. Without forgetting the 1939 study by Jules Malbranque entitled: “The development of Casamance linked to its autonomy”. Their arguments were essentially administrative, financial, logistics and economic. However, there was never any question of “political autonomy” for the constituency of Casamance (p.81-121): it was indeed a project of a new colony and not of an independent territory. And above all, this opportunistic project has never been accepted.
SFIO, BDS and MFDC
What I also understood is that the “disappointment and anger” of the young elites of the circle, observed in the aftermath of the elections of the General Council of December 1946 against the centralism of the SFIO of Lamine Guèye, are among the accelerating elements of the birth of the Movement of the Democratic Forces of Casamance. The first act posed is the “small meeting” held by Emile Badiane and Ibou Diallo in Saint-Louis with young teachers from Casamance “to make and defend the interests of the region” (p.146-147). We were in 1947. Following more concrete initiatives, such as “the call for nationals of Casamance” (p.148) in March 1949, the main objective of which is “the provocation of a rally so that Casamance takes control, itself, all its political affairs and in particular that it is ceasing to be imposed on delegates, which it intends to choose and elect democratic ”. A month later, the MFDC statutes are available. And in article 2 of said statutes, the objective is reaffirmed: “Quintessence is to straighten our local policy and to campaign in an intellectual community to pose, study and solve the various local problems in a general framework, without however hindering or creating obstacles to questions concerning Senegal as a whole or another region of the colony in its own sphere.” (p.149)
The Senegalese Democratic Bloc (BDS) of Senghor and the Badiane MFDC and Diallo found points of convergence to “tumble”, during the legislative and territorial elections (1951-1952), which Emile Badiane calls “the common enemy”: the SFIO of Lamine Guèye (p.164). The rest is known. In the 1951 legislative elections, Lamine Guèye was rolled up in Kaolack, in Tamba, but especially in Casamance with a Soviet score, the highest in all of Senegal. Ditto for the 1952 election. It is the beginning of a multifaceted political alliance between LS Senghor and E. Badiane, BDS and MFDC. It is also the beginning of a strong feeling among the elites of the region: for them, Senghor contracted a “moral debt” vis-à-vis the voters of Casamance who mobilized for its success. BDS and MFDC went from association to appearance, then fusion (p.137-204). The voices contesting this integration, in particular the autonomous movement of Casamance (Mac), were gradually “killed” thanks to their own fusion, with other political parties of the time, in the UPS before the September 1958 referendum (p.207).
The 1958 referendum
What I understood is that neither the “yes” nor the minority of “no” Casamais in 1958 were for a separation of the Casamance of Senegal. The “no” of the African Rally (PRA) party in Cotonou, voted by the Senegalese Progressive Union (UPS) of Senghor and Dia, was the big concern of France. Strategies for “drowning” the “no” of the PRA congress were launched. An offer was made, unofficially, to elected officials of Casamance “linking the promise of a autonomy of Casamance to a positive vote in the constituency” (p.220) “in the case where the” no “obtains the majority of the votes expressed in the rest of the territory of Senegal” (p.224). “The prospect of a possible break with France thus gives the front of the Senegalese scene another separation project, this time aroused directly by the notables of the Léboue community.” (p.232) The Léboue community undertakes to have “yes” and publicly requests “the government of the French Republic to give it, in the event that the result of the referendum is negative in Senegal, not to be linked by this vote and to preserve the possibility of being able to freely define the new relationships which could link it with France”. The “fear of dismantling of the Senegalese territory” has the cards reflected within the UPS Executive Committee. During a meeting in Rufisque in mid-September 1958, a new majority emerged for the “yes” (p.234). On the evening of the vote on September 28, 1958, the “yes” won everywhere in Senegal, with an overwhelming majority: 97, 2% of the votes cast.
What I understood is that the general “yes” in the September 1958 referendum thus made the “French promise” of a separation of the Casamance of Senegal obsolete, a few Casamançais elected officials. Subsequently, these “possible”, these “ideas” were reinvested in a marginal way. In the 1960s, faced with a Gambia not yet independent and a stammering war of liberation in Portuguese Guinea, “the autonomist idea was therefore reformulated in moments of crises and political opportunities by a small minority of actors who then felt in a situation of subalternity or blocking” (p.279).
“Censorship, an attack on thought”
By browsing the work, “the idea of autonomous casamy” of historian Séverine Awenengo Dalberto, we note that there is no trace of document referring to the existence of a legal contract on the autonomy of the Casamance between the colonial administration and elected officials of Casamance or between Léopold Sédar Senghor and the MFDC Deemile Badiane, or The “non-sénégality” of Casamance. The “famous documents” of the theorists of independence of Casamance have never been visible. The book finally shows that these possibilities never made and this feeling of moral debt of Senghor were, over time, retrospectively – and wrongly interpreted as a legal contract by the MFDC of 1982, an erroneous reading which deeply structured its political demands. In December 1993, the testimony of French Jacques Charpy, a testimony “solicited” by the MFDC of 1982 and accepted by the Senegalese State, was unequivocal, as it recalls: “Casamance does not exist as an autonomous territory before colonization” and “the territories located between Gambia and Guinea-Bissau have always been, at the time of French colonization, administered by the governor of the governor Senegal ”(p.15). Despite this testimony, the crisis continued with its share of dead, wounded, refugees and abandoned villages. And it is the origin of the blocking towards knowledge of the past that the historian wanted to understand. However, since 2012, power relations have changed and “Casamance is indeed today closer to what resembles peace than to war. Groups of combatants still hold a few enclaves along the borders with Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, but the armed conflict seems to complete its slow extinction ”(p.291).
What I did not understand, on the other hand, is the cancellation of the presentation ceremony and dedication of the book “The idea of autonomous Casamance”, scheduled for October 26, 2024. A totally aberrant, absurd and retrograde idea. “Censorship, whatever it is, seems to me a monstrosity, a worse thing than homicide; The attack on thought is a crime of the soul, ”said Gustave Flaubert in 1852. How can we understand that we can prohibit, in 2024, the sale of a work without having any idea of the content? Those who made the decision to ban this work in Senegal, have they really taken the time to browse the work and understand its meaning and interest?
What I did not understand is that some considered the work as a way of turning the knife into the wound, but it is not. What they consider to be a “wound” has almost completely healed. However, it is highly important to forcefully demonstrate the healing process. This is what this work of history does in a remarkable way with its highly educational character. The brilliant anthropologist Abdou Ndukur Kacc Ndao (peace to his soul), who had invited the historian to intervene during the 2nd edition of the Diola cultures festival, has continued to call for the non-fertile of the Casamançaise crisis. He was just right. This question is part of the history of Senegal and we must talk about it without taboo, because lifting any ambiguity is the only way to allow the wing beats of the dove, for a long time well at work, to suffocate forever the last echo of boots.
Pope Mocar selan
Journalist
