Nicholas Sarkozy’s Unacceptable Speech By Boubacar Boris Diop (Trans. from French by Wandia Njoya)

It is probably written somewhere that between Paris and its former colonies in Black Africa, nothing should follow the norms accepted by the rest of the world. Nicolas Sarkozy’s brief visit to Senegal could have gone unnoticed; instead, it served as a pretext for him to make for an unacceptable speech, one which he would not have dared give outside France’s “pré-carré” (backyard) and in front of the most insignificant of his peers. In Tunisia and Algeria, he understood that it would be improper for him to behave as if he was in a conquered territory. In North Africa he could not even gain automatic access to the popular, folkloric and degrading reception that was reserved for him in Dakar. Within the context of Dakar that reminds one of the “commandants de cercle” of colonial times, he gave a sort of State of the Union address, that is, the State of the Union française, without anyone being able to reproach him for having mistaken the historical era.

However, one must not be swayed; for even though he claimed to address the whole African continent, he was not naïve enough to believe that his country’s position would cause ripples as far as Johannesburg, Mombasa or Maputo. If intellectuals from these regions have now paid attention to the remarks of the French president, it is because they have been given a brief summary of the president’s speech beforehand. Over the last few days, they have discovered, with bewilderment, the realities of Françafrique.

Their anger is understandable. Even in francophone countries where it has been thought that things had hit the rock bottom, everyone agrees that this time the limit has been breached. Being a relatively young and inexperienced head of State does not give anyone the right to be so irresponsible. When one leads a country as important as France, he or she cannot protract the lame game of “I-am-not-like-the-others.” This arrogance, displayed by a man who could be judged as still surprised by having so easily achieved his goal, led him to entertain the most distressing clichés of 19^th century ethnology in front of a particularly well-informed audience. Political science may one day take interest in this unique figure: a foreign president, from his height of 1.64 m, dares to condemn the inhabitants of an entire continent, calling upon them to distance themselves from nature in order to enter human history and invent their destiny. These statements, kept up to date by French authors anxious to comfort the prevalent Negrophobia, serve to comfort historical revisionism of colonialism, the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda and the slave trade.

The remarks “It is Africans who sold their compatriots to the slave traders” are grossly inappropriate and particularly disingenuous coming from the president of the Republic. They are an insult to the memory of the victims and a despicable moderation of the fundamental violence of the Transatlantic trade.

Never, in the history of humanity, has a nation oppressed another without the complicity, if not zeal, of the elite of the conquered nation. According to Robert Paxton, whose work on Vichy is a classic reference text, Adolf Hitler was not particularly interested in occupying the whole of France; he was primarily keen on neutralizing the country and turning it into an aerial base. It was the French state authorities of the time who actively pressured him to be more ambitious than the devil. Who else, but French writer Charles Maurras, saluted the entry of German tankers into Paris on June 14, 1940 as a “divine surprise”? The same principle applies to other parts of the world. Without the shameful hesitation of Moctezuma – a man of weak character at the head of the powerful Aztec empire – and the petty rivalries between the numerous Indian tribes, Hernan Cortès and his handful of conquistadors would not have succeeded in submitting almost the entire continent of what is today known as Latin America under their rule.

The French president has breached the limits of what is tolerable, beyond even the famous “pays de champ” (inner circle).  Many descendants of slaves are going to wonder how we have arrived at a situation in which a European leader can take such great leeway to publicly affirm such opinions about the Transatlantic Slave Trade at the very scene of the crime. His reference to Aimé Césaire is pointless. Comparison is indeed not always reason, and Sarkozy has run out of luck, for one could point out that at the moment when he evoked, with unconvincing emotion, “the cries of one who is thrown overboard,” a Black or an Arab was shackled and being rained on blows at the Roissy airport.

In Dakar, the French president refused to call the university by its name, undoubtedly because pronouncing the name of Cheikh Anta Diop would have been too costly. This attitude is unbecoming of him, to say the least. It exposes the limits of a man who, on that day, evidently decided to show that he was capable of speaking with in a different tone about something other than “racaille” (scum) and “karcher.” He was probably disoriented by his desire to endear himself to a public that he must have known was hostile to him. His formulaic clause “I am young and I am speaking to you, the youth of Africa” betrayed, nevertheless, a real lack of diplomacy with regard to his esteemed host.

No one will be cruel enough to remind Sarkozy that the use of “tu” [familiar form of “you”] evokes for us painful memories. This gesture is, however, less compelling than his presumptuous and constant recourse to “je” [I]. This presumption is necessary for him to imagine that young Africans have learned nothing from life, their parents or professors, or that there has always been a void between them and the Truth which only Nicolas Sarkozy could fill, once and for all, on 26 July 2007. But even the least informed student in the crowd has already and repeatedly scrutinized Discourse on Colonialism in which Césaire constantly refutes, with clarity and precision, each of the arguments employed by Sarkozy. The president probably does not know this, but his speech at Dakar is much older than himself. One can believe himself to be purposefully turned towards the future when he has, in reality, his eyes solidly fixed on the rear-view mirror of history.

On the other hand, Nicolas Sarkozy believed that he was obligated to encourage his audience to distinguish between the “good” and the “bad” colonizers. Would he accept that a German apply the same rubric in reading his own country’s history? France was occupied by Germany for only five years, in conditions infinitely less cruel than colonialism, but we are still waiting for the day when someone would have the audacity to sort through and distinguish between the well-intended Nazis and the rest, instead of reflecting on a system of foreign domination, which is by its very nature violent and illegitimate.

In his overview of the scourges of the continent, Sarkozy discretely mentioned “genocides” for which colonialism could not be held “responsible.” One must pause here, as they would every time they see the word “genocide” used in plural by a representative of the French government. The new president took over power against the background of great tension between Paris and Kigali. France’s implication in the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda is now well known, to the extent that one sometimes senses among some French authorities the temptation to openly confess it. This is, in fact, the most rational option left in this complicated matter. 

Unfortunately, in creating such a precedent, France would run the risk of opening the Pandora’s Box of the bloody political diversions of Françafrique. In an effort to extricate itself from this issue, there is an attempt to give credence to the idea that all things considered, Rwanda was simply one more African genocide to which one would be mistaken to pay too much attention. Before Sarkozy, François Mittérand and Dominique de Villepin, just to mention a few, had attempted to dismiss the death of a million Rwandans with an apathetic shrugging of their shoulders.

Yet, this strange theory about practically routine final solutions carried out in Africa does not withstand analysis. Instead, the fact emerges that genocide was considered the ultimate crime by the international community and defined as such by the Geneva Convention of 1948. From this perspective, the only genocide in the African continent during the 20^th century was that of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. The two other genocides – the Shoah and the Armenian genocide – took place in Europe, while the fourth took place in Cambodia. Sarkozy could be not be unaware of this. Consequently, he deliberately attempted to sow confusion in this painful matter which deserves better than contemptuous political rhetoric.

While curiously careful to evoke our past more distant from the present, the impassioned speaker avoided the slightest allusion to Françafrique, the phenomenon which the late François Xavier-Verschave called “the longest scandal of the Republic.” Yet Sarkozy was very much expected to address this subject, since he would have had much to say on France’s African policy since the 1960s. He knows quite well that after the facade of independence attained by African nations, Paris continued – between coup d’états, supporting dictatorial regimes and controlling economic institutions and their management personnel – to dictate the law in its former colonies. It has been this way since the time of General de Gaulle and his successors. Whether they were from the left or from the right, they all followed he same pattern of behavior that was ultimately quite profitable: lulling speeches at the presidential palaces while in the shadows, a language of force implemented through diverse networks and services, military interventions and assassinations of certain political personalities.

Indeed, Nicolas Sarkozy was not expected to publicly apologize for his country’s implication in the genocide of Tutsis of Rwanda, of which there no longer exists a shadow of a doubt. Neither was he going to have the heart to acknowledge the role of Elf and certain financial groups – to which he is quite close, some say – in the plunder of the continent’s resources. No one, even in their most foolish dreams, ever hoped for the slightest admission of this kind. In today’s world, such things do not happen.

Nevertheless, who was not surprised during the last few weeks, to notice a hint of a change in direction? The Franco-African relationship had reached its zenith, to such a degree of decay its decline was virtually expected. From Rwanda to Côte d’Ivoire, passing through the incidents in the Eyadema succession, the warning signs have been evident for the last almost 15 years. It would have been more tactful for Sarkozy to give himself the aura of a committed reformer by displaying the necessary virtue.

But even such a small step forward, dictated by a lucid view of world realities and changes in the so-called Francophone Africa, seemed too audacious for the godfathers of Françafrique. The presidential candidate Sarkozy believed that he could declare that “France does not need Africa,” but it must have not been difficult to point out to him the recklessness of these words once elected president. His notable silence on Françafrique clearly shows that he did not intend cause a rupture which would put him at odds with Idriss Deby, Sassou Nguesso and above all, with his old accomplice Omar Bongo. Not to mention his ties to the friends he will not delay in making among presidents already in office and the youthful but still immature heirs whom, it would seem, are already at the gates jostling for power …

These groups heard Sarkozy dismiss the possibility of repentance on the very night of his elections and will not dare annoy him by bringing up this delicate subject. For of all the European former colonial powers, France is the only one that has this practically obsessive relationship with its colonial past. With incredible candor, the French parliament passed historical negationist laws, and the French political class seems to have elevated the question of an apology to the level of ultimate national importance. One would want to invite all the people concerned to take a calmer perspective. Apologizing for the crimes of one’s ancestors is a gesture that is dictated only by one's conscience. For this very reason, it is an act which loses all its value if it is imposed from without. Indeed, it cannot resurrect the dead or completely heal the wounds of the past, but it can bestow greatness to those who are able to rise to such a level and it can facilitate the reconciliation of hearts and minds among the younger generations. But if one does not have the strength to apologize, one should at least have the decency to keep silent.

When Nicolas Sarkozy bellows “Youth of Africa, I did not come to talk to you about repentance,” he instigated a radical reversal of roles. It is the prerogative of the victim, not the executioner, to decide if one should or should not evoke such abominable crimes. The constant reaffirmation by the latter of his refusal to apologize is, fundamentally, a disease of the soul. A society in which leaders and so many of its citizens instinctively and grudgingly relate to its past only by negation, unknowingly reveals the malaise in which it is shackled. It is a society that deserves, in reality, more compassion than hate.

Upon hearing Nicolas Sarkozy casually talk about the African slave trade, one can lose sight of the fact that for many centuries, it claimed at least two hundred million victims. This statistic was provided by Senghor in the important work by the American academic Janet G. Vaillant. Disinclined to exaggerate the matter, the former Senegalese president very soberly explained, in a letter to his biographer, the extent to which the “trafficking of ebony” continues to weigh heavily on the present and future of Africa.

The poet from Joal was cited repeatedly in terms full of praise by Nicolas Sarkozy. Most ironical however, is the fact that regardless of what one may think about Senghor, one cannot be certain that he would have let Senegal’s invited guest speak such despicable absurdities on July 26 without formulating some sort of reply. Being a skillful politician would not have prevented Senghor from having pride and a sense of History.

Beyond the lord-and-servant relationships that Sakozy may maintain with those whom he owes favors in Françafrique, what took place in Dakar implicates a section of the Francophone African intelligentsia. The disillusions originating at independence, the single-party state, the Infallible-Leader-of-the-Nation as well as the epidemic of military coup d’états and corruption, led some writers to subject Africa to relentless criticism. Since the end of the 1980’s, our sociologists, historians and philosophers published numerous texts with the honorable intention of diagnosing Africa’s problems and of jolting social attitudes to change. In a less elaborate manner, often motivated by the same preference for shock therapy, novelists also participated in condemning post-colonial political systems with excesses that were only possible in fiction.

Unfortunately, both parties tended to confuse the African state with African society. They suspected that African society, by virtue of being itself, nurtured the seeds of its own destruction, an indeterminable outcome that was often reported during this era. Herein lies a perfect example of a purely essentialist view of African realities, turning around itself like a snake biting its tail with lethargic monotony. By neglecting real political forces and the decisive impact of the French state in struggles for power in each country of its former African empire, the intellectuals’ reflection polarized itself, with peculiar stubbornness, between the visible aspects of the disaster, to the detriment of the fundamental, but admittedly less spectacular causes. This literature, which ideally was targeted at an African audience, was in reality more widely read by Western readers who consumed the literature with relish and used it to extract a reassuring sense of innocence. The African authors had unwittingly cleared a path for Negrophobia that daily manifested itself with increasing calm and without reservations, but still with the capacity to be occasionally crude and destructive.  

Within a few years, afro-pessimism had been racialized, so to speak, and emptied of the liberating energy that it potentially carried. In France and the rest of the Western world, Western intellectuals proclaiming intimate knowledge of the African continent offered their services by providing a fresh lease of life to the most disingenuous prejudices about the African continent. And quite often, the intellectuals sought refuge behind these writings by Africans in order to convince a relatively uninformed public of the purity of their intentions. It is indeed difficult to accuse these Western writers of racism when they were simply citing the works of their colleagues in Dakar, Yaoundé or Abidjan.

The speech by Nicolas Sarkozy directly emanates from this ambiguously Africanized context that is promptly geared at lashing out at the challenge of memory and at the so-called tendency of Africans to present themselves as perpetual victims of others. His meeting at Agen on 25 June 2006 particularly unveiled this close connection. Sarkozy spoke strongly against “those who have deliberately chosen to live off the labor of others; those who think they are owed everything but they owe nothing; those who want everything in an instant without doing anything: those who, rather than suffer a few inconveniences in order to earn a living, prefer to search through the recesses of history for some imaginary debt which France incurred and which, in their view, France has not settled; those who, rather than seek to be integrated through concerted effort and hard work, prefer to exploit the auction block of history in order to demand a compensation that no one owes them; those who do not love France; those who expect everything from her without wanting to give anything in return; to them I say that they are not compelled to stay in our national territory.”

Four days earlier, as a guest of Franz-Olivier Giesbert on the television program “Culture et dependences,” he intimated verbatim: “I received the Malian father and brother [of one of the two young men electrocuted by a transformer and whose deaths precipitated the riots in November 2005]. The father, who has been in France for the last 30 years, could not speak French. The son, who was born in France and only goes to Mali on holiday, was dressed in a boubou.” That a political leader could fault Malian immigrants, still mourning their child, for wearing a boubou or for not speaking French indicates the extent of his contempt for Africans and their culture. One should, however, keep in mind that this mode of thinking is relatively widespread in France today.

Sarkozy’s departure from Dakar held people’s attention because he is a head of State who did not say anything that had they had not read or heard over the past decade from a good number of European intellectuals and, we must admit, from African thinkers themselves.

As for afro-pessimism, a widely disseminated but elusive philosophical current, the time has come for its radical revision. From one African region to another, if not from one country to the next, distinct and complex historical forces are in motion. It is sensible to conduct a meticulous analysis of these phenomena detached from simplistic assumptions. In other words, we are not limited to a choice between a nostalgic glorification of the African continent and mercilessly maligning it. These are simply two identical ways of locking oneself in an insidious and intimate dialogue with the Western world too often invited as a witness – on what grounds, who knows? – of our “glorious past” or our “inescapable misfortune.” Making an informed self-critique of African societies is legitimate but it is also essential to know to whom one is talking. And if one cannot guarantee priority to addressing Africans, things will continue as they are to the great disadvantage of our people.

One would like to know how the French president, within his soul and his conscience, assessed his visit to Dakar. Is it possible that he did not understand to what extent we felt insulted? From a strictly political perspective, his speech was a grave mistake. And it will not take long for him to realize this: Africans and the African Diaspora shall never forgive him. The good old delaying tactics could have been put to better use in the service of his country’s interests. They would have at least curtailed the rhetorical style so self-absorbed that it was sometimes a little pathetic. Upon his arrival, one would almost want to thank Nicolas Sarkozy for coming to announce to us the good news, despite himself: in Françafrique since May 16 2007, the King is nothing.