Decolonization:
Should we despair of 2010?
by
Alexander Gerbi
.
A Simon Mougnol
2010, Fiftieth Anniversary of African independence, Africa's year in France, amid debate on "National Identity," let hope for the best ... At the beginning of the commemorations, should eventually expect the worst?
I lya fifty years, while African populations and metropolitan aspired or consent, the overwhelming majority, equal to unity, political leaders acculèrent metropolitan political leaders in Africa to the separation. Not only to preserve racial identity, civilizational and religious diversity of France. But also to a predatory territorial Africa and its inhabitants. This intercontinental apartheid (most former African territories remained, in fact, guided from the Elysee) was allowed by the muzzling democratic populations and their subsequent release.
In 1985, the artist Alpha Blondy reminded that independence was inflicted on African people as an unwanted divorce, unwanted, imposed by the colonizer for ulterior motives. The singer recalled that Africans acquired certain aspects of the Western model and simply universal modernity, suddenly found themselves engaged in tyranny and regression economic and social. Under cover, of course, the noble "right of peoples to self-determination" (when people were not consulted ...) and a supposed 'best' culture.
Now what about the soul of Africa, the negro civilization and its "authenticity" allegedly found, when, to quote a recent interrogation of Achille Mbembe, the "child soldier" and "without work "slums become" symbols "of African modernity? But listen Alpha Blondy:
"They came and told us:" We will colonize you. Forget the campaigns and leaves. Take Tergal, blue jeans, Ray Ban style. " And along the way, they change their minds: "Listen, it's too expensive, you are independent! "It would be too easy. We do not want independence then. We want this cooperation that has started so continues. You know you're sentenced to recognize me, you can call me a bastard I am the fruit of your culture. I am now a projection of you. Whites should not resign. He who conquered me and made me his word on the tongue, he has no interest in deceive. I can not allow it. "(Libération, 27 September 1985)
Twenty-five years later, these words resonate very badly, at where the Pygmies are endangered, the image of Africa too often scarred and devastated ...
* * *
In 2010, after such further mess, where are we, when we celebrate the fiftieth claims of African independence?
Much of Africa, tired of poverty, tyranny and blocked future, dreams only of the West in general and France in particular. The French people, meanwhile, cut stump people for decades, frustrated aspirations of all, its territories and populations in Africa, looking haggard identity.
Tragic French people, that's half a century, felt ready for marriage, the merger of its components metropolitan and overseas territories, and this purpose was denied by some of its leaders still routinely glorified. In the name of a "certain idea of France" and the "national identity", namely identity "white, Latin and Greek culture and Christian religion "(in the words of Charles de Gaulle, as reported by Alain Peyrefitte), the Metropolis dismissed nearly all of its citizens overseas. Or putting the Africans under the ban of the Republic, by refusing to mingle with them, the "homeland of human rights" betrays its highest ideals and its most solemn promises. She gave the same token, to be among the world's superpowers. Fifty years later, the French people, old people, Republican, obviously can not recognize themselves and realize their destiny in this narrow and he must say, infamous. Especially as more and more French people are ethnically non-European or white, Greek or Latin, or Christian.
Fifty years ago, when it was based on men and women from the four corners of a vast overseas along with the dense hexagon, "France", which became the de facto French-African Republic (or rather Euro-ultramarine), found its identity in both the conjugation of "interbreeding", but also in overcoming its components African, European, American, Asian ... Being "French" (or rather "Franco-African" or "Euro-Ultramarin "Because it is the future of both continents such a union commitment), it was no longer be a race or religion but in a distinctively Republican identify with the principles of liberty, equality , fraternity and secularism, for the benefit and development of all, and all cultures, in a healthy modernity rid of political or religious obscurantism. This design satisfies the desire for greatness political, geographical, but also philosophical, a people whose pride lay especially in the legacy of the Revolution of 1789 and humanism, which joined the European wonder of the human family, the deepest wisdom of Africa or Asia. For reasons
absurd or monstrous raptor, people who aspired to unite in brotherhood were gagged (including the little-known Act 60-525, May-June 1960), manipulated, and caused their divorce transvestite Supreme audacity, in triumph and expression of their will.
Today, if we cease to lie, if the floodgates finally opened the memory, probably the old language of the last witnesses of the time space becomes available. By breaking the law of silence, they would resuscitate the pieces of a dream, the Franco-African brotherhood and realities sublime so forgotten.
In so deep they would be useless remanences our time and our misguided unhappy youth? After so long amnesia, the memory unit and dreamed of his assassination by evil spirits, he not impose serious obligations to our chiefs and our thought leaders, while opening an extraordinary field of possibilities, in political, democratic, social and cultural rights?
In a world that is not crazy, but probably in 2010 if it provides an excellent opportunity for this kind of watershed, revolution or renaissance man, to take all these words in capital letters.
Alexander Gerbi
