Under the Cinquantenaire
of African independence ...
Decolonization:
"Right of peoples
to self-determination"
theoretical and real democratic denial
Decolonization:
"Right of peoples
to self-determination"
theoretical and real democratic denial
by
Alexander Gerbi
.
A Gilbert Earl and Samuel Mbajum
ppréhender A history of French decolonization without preconceived idea is to discover the path of a country that disintegrated by refusal of miscegenation and greed. Or, if you will, who died of refusal of the city to grant real political equality to the people overseas, and preferred to get rid of it.
Such situation should offend any republican spirit committed to democratic expression, in particular any spirit left. But it is not. Why?
is that it is difficult or impossible for many of our contemporaries, to see things that way. The origin of the difficulty, or rather the blockade, are many. We try to consider them one by one, despite their interleavings.
* * *
Among the range of decoys that confuse the ruling on decolonization, there is one crucial: the "right of peoples to self-determination."
This allowed both to justify and make-up victory in democratic and humanist listed in the "sense of history," which was actually a release responding to racial, civilizational and financial.
the popular, democratic, or spontaneous, the "march of peoples towards independence" was the big reason always cited for justification, sometimes in good faith, a process that is fundamentally about the shelving and neutralization of democratic African people, their subjugation and subservience of their states, and finally the systematic bleeding their territories. But
beyond statements and slogans, that he was actually the "right of peoples to self-determination"?
Across the ultramarine area of France, only two territories were subjected to a referendum of self-determination on the issue of secession: the small counter Chandernagore India in 1949 and Algeria in 1962 . In both cases, referendums were held in territories already invested several months, troops 'enemy', with the consent of the French authorities. The results are the stigma: 99% YES Chandernagore for the release of the French Union in 1949, 99.72% of YES in Algeria in 1962 for independence. Elsewhere, Indo-China to Africa via the other four counters of French India, no referendum was held. All territories became independent only if the people are consulted. In other words, the Constitution, which demanded that people speak out, each time was bypassed, breached or violated.
A look at the facts more closely again, that is to say by going to sneak backstage power, where we speak without concern for microphones and their annoying echoes, which allows in particular was too unknown de Gaulle Alain Peyrefitte (Fayard, 1994), we find that the independence was imposed by the metropolitan government in undemocratic conditions at the option of civilizational considerations (including religious, Islam is perceived as an extreme hazard), racial, and finally financial.
For much more than independence, demanded that the Ultramarines was equal. That was the big problem. In Paris, we all knew and pretended not to notice. Of course, facing the journalists sitting quietly in a press conference, the "right of peoples to self-determination", although perpetually violated, served as justification of that screen ...
* * *
It is not so commonplace in the history of the world that a country voluntarily abandon the territories and populations. A fortiori, when those are more than nine-tenths of its total area, and when they account for three quarters of its total population - and eventually even more.
This amazing process - and major, since it concerns one of the major powers of Europe and half a continent, Africa - could take place provided that combine powerful factors. We know, in particular the role played in this case the United States and the Soviet Union. Their relay gold in France were many in the political, labor and intellectual circles. Despite their antagonism on other subjects, all these forces played an important role, and converged to the "release" of the French Overseas Territories.
Justified by honorable motives, including in particular the "right of peoples to self-determination, decolonization advocated by the United States and the Soviet Union responded to any other course objectives. Big winners of the Second World War, imperialist states and willingly oppressors of their own minorities, "democracies" pluralistic little (dangerous to be communist in the USA, hard-drive to be capitalist ... CCCP), both sought to Back rivals shared globally, on behalf, respectively, ideologies called "liberal" or "socialist." France was obviously part of their main rivals eventually in all areas, economic, political, cultural, ideological ... But the clash of two consecutive world wars, the last recently left France very momentarily weakened. The time seemed ripe to weigh as much as possible, taking advantage of the opportunity to shoot him. Better yet, its dismemberment would mark the opening of new areas of possible expansion ...
In this context where the pressure exerted formally, outside and inside of the hexagon under generous and noble causes, in effect for harsh and little concern for human life and well-being, the French Overseas played its part in demanding political equality.
The program displayed by the Ultramarines, especially by Africans, sounded like a cry for equality! to build a large metropolis with the egalitarian and fraternal Republic, where cultures, rather than compete, to denigrate or deny himself absurdly, to fertilize and enrich each other.
Such was the political vision championed by avant-garde for most Africans the Liberation and in the immediate postwar period. Now this project aroused among politicians metropolitan most extreme reluctance. Some openly fearing that France became the "settlement colonies" (Edouard Herriot).
Between 1945 and 1958 among African politicians, faced with the unbearable stench Metropolitan excessive prudence, pragmatism by as much as by self-esteem, patterns of Jacobinism evolved globally to federalism or to confederalism. A development that benefited, of course, the benevolent approval of the metropolitan political
...
Moreover, during the period in sub-Saharan Africa, despite an escalation of separatist attitude caused by metropolitan and encouraged by it, the independence movement was not raised that as a threat (as in Senghor example, in that it was always a default choice, even out of spite). Provided excepting, of course, the fringe African Communist, since it was submitted by the PCF and the CGT, the influence of Moscow in the best interests. Moreover, communist influence remained in sub-Saharan Africa, a minority almost everywhere, and never enough form themselves into armed maquis. With the exception of Cameroon, Mandated Territory, with the UPC; still Ruben Um Nyobe he justified his initial appointment by the refusal of France to grant the same rights to Cameroon and the French ...
*
* *
Without it must obviously be surprised, it is striking to observe that between 1945 and 1958, never the question of the establishment of political equality was not put to the people, nor metropolitan populations than those of overseas.
Under the Fourth Republic, the virtual absence referendums on self-determination of peoples overseas said the absence of a referendum on granting political equality to people overseas asked (or rather not ask!) to Metropolitan. It was obviously difficult for the metropolitan political class, to ask their opinion of it wanted to abandon overseas populations against their will ... Just as it was difficult to see Metropolitan people she disapproved, this point, neither belief nor the choice ...
Indeed, opinion polls of the time suggest that if the question was asked of Metropolitan, they have largely approved the granting of full political equality to Ultramarine, in accordance also with the spirit of the Constitution of 1946 and the French Revolution. In fact, in 1958, dedicating the birth of the Fifth Republic, the French approved of the project to 80% of the new regime, whose main feature and "founder" was the granting of full equality for Algerians finally granted after some 130 years of colonization and more than three years of a horrific war. 47 members and Arab-Berber took place at the Palais Bourbon, is now long forgotten ... For the first time in the history of France, a group of people overseas was represented in the National Assembly in proportion to its population. It was neither more nor less than a revolution ...
Presumably, if the overseas populations have been freely consulted, they would most approved, as the overwhelming majority of their leader, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Leopold Sedar Senghor Leon Mba, Diori Hamani, Lamine Gueye, Ahmed Sekou Toure, Modibo Keita, Barthelemy Boganda, etc.. The creation of a Franco-African Republican assembly, equal and fraternal. We know that African people were not also not consulted, since the eve of African independence, the little-known Law 60-525 (May-June 1960) allowed for the price of a four constitutional violation that caused serious repercussions at the time, to dispossess all the black African populations of self-determination on the issue of independence. We also know that as soon October 1958, the French government refused the departmentalization in Gabon, in violation of Article 76 of the Constitution. The episode long remained a state secret, and was finally revealed that twenty years later by one of its main protagonists, former Governor Louis Sanmarco, and subsequently confirmed by the Memorial of Gabon and by Alain Peyrefitte. If the small
Gabon (barely 400,000 inhabitants at the time) had come to hope to obtain that only four old (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane and Reunion) had managed to snatch a hard struggle in 1946 is that in May-June 1958, a revolution had taken place he should say incredible, and now forgotten ...
* * *
This revolution, the "Republic of 58 "was carried by General de Gaulle. It was also consistent with the history of France and its official ideology, as an echo of the French Revolution it was a form of late performance. France, its large African population, finally taking the promises it had always done, suddenly assumed the model and launched at the same time to face the world as itself an unprecedented challenge. A sort of "anti-Nazism" in the decades ahead on all his rivals, particularly the U.S., even for their age segregation. Ten years later, in Mexico, the black American athletes would rise still a gloved fist.
The new French revolution did not happen by chance: France had long been beyond the promises made a place for Negroes in their assemblies and governments. Sometimes at the highest level, as with Monnerville Gaston, President of the Senate, or Felix Eboue, Governor of the AEF. But
granting political equality - a touchstone of the passage of the colonial state to state Republican - induced transition to multiracial state, and ultimately the mixing scale of France and his political staff, with the key to an African head of the Executive. In addition, the operation, placing the power of the ballot, without limitation, in the hands of citizens ultramarine, directly threatened colonialism, its operations and its crimes.
we guess, such prospects uneasy in some French circles, and indeed in all political headquarters, both right and left. For no more than elsewhere, racism and greed in France are not the monopoly of the right ...
Sinks party source that the United States and the Soviet Union could make such seizures. We know how their networks, the UN high masses of the "nonaligned" through their French singers and supporters, served as the final outcome: the liquidation of all Franco-Africa under the pretext very official and Noble's "right of peoples to self-determination."
We did not space here to study all the twists and turns under the spotlight and the shadow of the Parisian authorities, led to the dismantling of all Franco-African. However, it should be stressed, recalling that the revolution had thoroughly egalitarian place in France in May-June 1958, and we touch the heart of this second problem.
* * *
1958-1962 is the chronicle of a revolution that responded to the wishes of Ultramarine and the French people, which duly occurred was democratically approved, and was then murdered.
For in place and the place of the 1958 revolution triumphed true cons-revolution, marked by terrifying regression. With the collusion of a large part of the political class, and the will of a man "extraordinary": Charles de Gaulle.
The extreme gravity, the exceptional magnitude of the scandal still requires the omerta. Two or three hocus-pocus, the use of misleading the "right of peoples to self-determination is one of the shining examples, serve as a smokescreen. In this spirit, we avoid repeating what really happened at the time. In the chapter, some pictures and thousands of amnesia in lieu of collective memory. Sign of the times, the fiftieth anniversary of the Fifth Republic in 2008, was commemorated on tiptoe. For in force, even if you do not want to know, you know. Moreover, in 2010, backstage equipment, the Elysee to Colonel Fabien or rue de Solferino, have over such phrases as: "It is true that independence was imposed on Africans, but can not say. "Word of goldsmith when silence is golden ...
In May-June 1958, and in the months that followed, the egalitarian revolution took place. Buoyed by the General De Gaulle's army pressed on, the price of a quasi-military coup. Invested by force, de Gaulle was elected triumphantly on the Integration Program, announced by him, not without emphasis, in Algiers and Mostaganem in front of cheering audiences. Is that to justify his return to power and the means used to achieve it - the coup - that de Gaulle could not avail himself of a highly democratic and republican, which he did.
The program claimed that De Gaulle will apply joined, three years apart, the conclusions drawn by Claude Levi-Strauss in Tristes Tropiques (1955) and defended by his friend Jacques Soustelle. The latter, a former militant anti-fascist and anti-racist in the 1930s, formerly of Free France, anthropologist of international reputation, a great left-wing Gaullist, was appointed governor general of Algeria in the Department Mendes France, 1955. So a friend of Levi-Strauss and Germaine Tillion laid the groundwork in Algeria Integration, future program of General in 1958. Soustelle, today, is like a fascist, just as Georges Bidault, former Jean Moulin successor as head of the CNR for the Resistance. It is true that all Both were among the few French politicians who opposed de Gaulle ...
This first program of the Fifth Republic that Soustelle Bidault and defended until the exile was worth, however, that de Gaulle finally applied
...
Would not it because this first program had the merit of meeting the main demand of the peoples of Africa, including Algeria, namely equality in the brotherhood, whose rejection by the French government had pushed some of them, especially Algeria, to engage in armed struggle. Moreover, among independence supporters, many would have gladly traded the independence against equality, yet in 1958. Thus, the Casbah of Algiers, 16 May 1958, had joined the movement launched by 13 Blackfoot under the watchful eye of the army. Subsequently, it denounced the manipulation of soldiers (who had actually played the guys in the Casbah), while on the movement of brotherhood, real, not only swayed the destiny of Algeria, but also that of all the Franco-African whole. As the expression of a sudden murmur deep and ancient. What the Republic had always promised and never managed to hold here that France, de Gaulle, solemnly undertook to accomplish, thanks to the fraternization of people and the uprising of the army!
But the miracle was not one: the officer of parentage "nationalist and monarchist or conservative, an admirer of Maurras and Barres great player, had done the exact opposite of the egalitarian revolution interracial and multi-civilizational that 'he announced. "Arabs" and "Negroes" in his eyes could not be "French", incompatible as oil and vinegar. He promised wonders fraternal to put them in the pocket, along with the army and the rest of the country. To better do exactly as its head, since he thought better placed than anyone to judge the interest and identity, France.
Elected triumphantly on the program of integration, that is to say, the full political equality with the Algerians in respect of the Muslim personality, De Gaulle therefore patiently wove its web.
Hiding his game, shuffling the tracks, handling the environmental lies and double talk, he gradually volte-face, insinuating doubt and fear among the Algerian population. To do so, he methodically destroyed the entire Franco-African, Black Africa finally used as a lever to remove the Algerian case. In ongoing liaison with the United States (the contact was never broken between de Gaulle and the Americans since the war until 1958, returned to power, they realized regularly on the progress of his "work") then with the support of the Soviets and their relay in France under the watchful eye of the UN, he muzzled people, terrorized them as needed, in line with the Fourth Republic, with the complicity active or passive metropolitan political class who was way out. Last but not least for what is convincing the right circles and crowds, much of the French intelligentsia, liberal, communist or Catholic, much less suddenly looking in the field of human rights and "right of peoples to self-determination "(without stop claiming it), lent him a hand. All with a lot of propaganda and manipulation sometimes bloody, and winds of history blowing from Washington and Moscow, via Cairo and Beijing.
would probably have had to remove it President of the Republic, since destroying all that he promised to keep it completely betrayed the mandate received from the people, trampling to achieve democracy and the Constitution, the most fundamental principles of the Republic, after a military coup.
We know he did not. De Gaulle was not removed. Instead, he founded a new system, which is still ours today.
Obviously, for fifty years the system has, at least officially, had his road to Damascus on Chapter racist. No merit to this, even the United States, who went to very far yet, have been a black president, or supposedly. But beyond his or her metamorphoses facelifts, the system founded fifty years ago has survived to us, and shares with his own little secrets and taboos.
At the heart of the unspoken, the assassination of the Fifth Republic by its egalitarian double inverted blanciste the Fifth Republic, which despite having all the characteristics of a French fascism - a fascism "soft" - accused his opponents to be collectively fascists ... The strength and diversity of its supporters and allies that went objectives effective rhetoric in France and abroad. In such a vise, the Franco-African unity egalitarian, the great argument of Africans and the vanguard of the French anthropological school, was definitely opposed. The power of anathema and Manichaeism, serving ultimately to the reversal of roles, in addition to the skill, duplicity, cynicism, determination but also the prestige of the "Man of June 18, "the" most illustrious of the French, led to his final victory of his project, that is to say at the height of political transgression.
* * *
Here we touch the heart of the unspeakable, the inassumable. We touch on the impossibility of say that we mentioned above.
Is it any wonder that such motives and collusion is ended in a broad democratic regression, social, economic, south of the Mediterranean, organized by apartheid to an intercontinental scale, the entire Franco-African continues to be , largely uninhabited since the Elysee?
Content in the idea even the alleged "decolonization" Gaullist, neocolonialism was born, at the expense of Africa turned into a ring of confrontation of all appetites, including, not surprisingly, the Americans and the Soviets or their friends or allies.
But if the international context weighed its weight, its importance should not be exaggerated.
Above all, the dropping of Africa was only made possible through the combined efforts of the metropolitan political class, particularly because of a misguided left blinded and manipulated (and often deeply ignoring Africa) in defiance of silenced populations, which was finally agreed that they were eager to assert independence, or they should. Everything was implemented in this direction, particularly in terms of propaganda.
Thereafter, once the release done, he had to avert any return to a claim of Franco-African unity. More than ever, we hammered that independence was the fruit of the ardent desire of the peoples in the name of "the right of peoples to self-determination", although they were not consulted as it ever . The colonial period, we brushed a more apocalyptic, to justify the desire for independence. But if the French colonial history had its share of abomination and a crime against humanity, had it carted contempt of the Negro and we have seen, denial Democratic more often than not, it could also boast of having simultaneously proclaimed the dignity of the black man, going to give him access to the highest political office - what is now France, which considers the old France so mercilessly, was incapable of do. And for good reason ...
The whole system of the Fifth Republic has blanciste built around this fundamental lie to dizzying effect. How to restore
hell of misery, suffering, tragedy, terror sometimes, that knew, then as now, millions of men across dozens of countries formerly colonized by France?
How to describe the devastation of the fictional story is told for decades to youth to drown the fish? French youth of African descent can it easily love a country where he repeated that his great-grandparents hated him and wanted to part with any force, after he had the patience and crushed relegated to fool? When human zoos, war and torture in Algeria permanently erase Lyautey, the Four Towns and Gaston Monnerville.
is the magnitude of the disaster as far as guilt and the evil lies that embarrass officials (and we have shown to the entire French political family, the extreme left to extreme right- through the center, including intellectuals), made of complicity or blindness, and make confession unspeakable.
Because basically it's the highest principles that we all attached, and which were long the preserve of France: liberty, equality, fraternity, democracy and republican spirit, rejection of racism, secularism, short, a valuable idea of humanism and the Enlightenment, who were all killed by the "decolonization "Gaullist. In total disregard for the "right of peoples to self-determination", yet perpetually presented supreme hypocrisy, as the guiding principle.
For our generation, such deceptions and transgressions are of course difficult to approve, and therefore difficult to assume for their authors. And to confess.
blanciste The Fifth Republic, the Gaullist government has deprived France of its African vocation, his calling is returned to her. Before our eyes, France s'africanise high speed, and s'africanisera increasingly as the years. We are allowed to continue to refuse, and go to the disaster. We can also assume, by accepting that France is already, in part, an African country, and have been for decades and even centuries. But to embrace this great future, that bright future that looks so hoped for a reunion, we must First, once and for all settle a past heinous betrayed us all. In saying this actually happened, to finally build, between equals, on a sound footing. And according to the "right of peoples to self-determination", to live together and mingle if they wish.
May the year 2010 be the moment of confession. The ball is in the camp of the Left, but also in that of Nicolas Sarkozy. And Africa, and Africans.
Alexander Gerbi
