What is very complex is to change the mentality of « I am Bambara, Bozo, Targui or Fulani to I am Malian »
What have you been up to? Is your new job going great? It would be nice if we could say that Mali is doing well too, I swear. That is not the case, is it? More than 5 years later, the situation is worse. Who could have imagined that! President IBK and his government remain a mystery to me. Neither the north nor the center interests them, if one sees this from a Bamakois point of view. In the north, everything seems to dissolve into community positions. And the populations, who do not recognize themselves in these movements, seek to survive as they can.
I persist in believing that no one of the movements, and even of the government, really wants « peace ». Too much money arrives to set it up! What would become of all these people if by a miracle peace was effective? The business of peace …. It is an expression that reminds me of what I had heard in Guinea in 2015, « the business Ebola ». I found it awful. It also reminds me of what Anne Guidicelli told me about Terroris’C. She said that as long as there is a terrorist risk in Africa, States receive money from international organizations. They eat a lot, why would they want to defeat terrorism, they will not be able to eat any longer ….
The mobilization of the Fulani seems more serious to me because the Fulani is almost the entire Africa …. We know the extent of the Fulani since always. There is also the economic prevalence of the Fulani. There was much talk about it at the time of the presidential election in Guinea. Pardon, for you are Fulani yourself, but you must be wary of what you call « the Fulani question », you copy-paste on the « Tuareg question », which everyone denounced, and still denounces, except the Tuareg. It is a dangerous terminological choice. I think that it ethnicizes a social situation common to all Malians, a real security situation but probably irrelevant to the ethnic group. It is very dangerous, people who are victims of bandits, if they are told that it is because they are Tuaregs or Fulani, it lights the fire. Kouffa, and the other, I forgot his name, the one who created the movement for the defense of the Fulani, I can’t remember, they stir up fire. It’s like a vicious circle. You say that there is a need for a State at the Center? You know, all Malians need a State. Even in Bamako, you know. In some neighborhoods, people do not have running water, and sometimes no electricity. The huge difference is violence, I agree. I read the study of Adam Thiam, who said that a new rebellion will take shape in the Center: the Fulani, in reaction to the exactions, racket of the army, will join jihadist groups. But I wonder about the suddenness of this new rebellion formation, therefore about its origin, or at least about who generates it. It’s very complex!
You know, eventually, there will be a Sarakole or Dafing, or Bobo etc. rebellion, under the pretext that the State is absent from the regions, whereas it is a national rebellion or uprising that would be necessary on the part of all the populations together because of generalized abandonment by the State. Period, nothing to do with ethnicity! It makes me crazy this ethnicization of people who do not understand manipulation. Otherwise, it will be like civil wars elsewhere. So the State has to react, but it does not, has never done so. Above all, intellectuals must not stir up fire. They must demonstrate by A + B that the situation of socio-economic abandonment is the same everywhere, so that people do not feel particularly targeted.
You know in 2011, I remember intervening at the People’s Forum in Niono. I had said « the State, therefore, also your government could be prosecuted for non-assistance to populations in danger » … It was in 2011, it seems like a century ago, and yet nothing has changed, nothing at all, nowhere. In Mali, the notion of belonging to one and the same country, despite the motto of Mali, is missing. What happens in Kayes is of interest only to the Kayes people, the same for all the other regions. The questions remain local. Look at Bamako, people know that things are bad in the north, in the center, but apart from that, they do not move because they do not know what to eat in the evening either.
This is not a history of decentralization, I believe. It takes a long time for people to feel ONE.
In France, before compulsory education for all, the people were regional, each had his dialect, etc. (3rd quarter of the 19th century). And then school for all was very rude for all: prohibition to speak dialects, French for all, otherwise, the whip for all! In total, it took 20 or 30 years to get everything throughout France. And then came World War I, where people fought against the common enemy, for France, they were no longer regionals, but French. It’s sad to say, but it’s just reality. Today, people form a nation, and they will just tell you that they live in a certain region, or come from that region, but that’s it. To tell you, in the 60s and 70s, regional names were still prohibited by law. All the children had to be named according to the official calendar which gave the list of acceptable first names ….
There was the famous example of a Breton family which had several children. They had given them Breton first names. The civil registry refused to register their children … they were on trial with the State for years so that their children “exist” in the eyes of the State under their Breton first names …. Fortunately, things have evolved, everyone can name a girl NOLWEN, Breton first name. Absolutely forbidden 50 years ago in France! Regional languages were forbidden, today, for a long time now, people pass the aggregation in these regional languages, they are taught at the university. But you will hardly hear anyone speak them in town, only a few old people, and a few intellectuals and scholars study them.
In Brittany, in the Basque country and in Provence (in the south of France), there are rare schools where small children can learn them in addition to the common school for all. No, no, it’s not like in Mali. In Mali, everyone speaks their language, since French is only the school language, the language of enterprise and politics. What is complex for you is that French is the white man’s language. While French, at the time of which I speak, it was the language of Paris and several nearby regions. Domination of a large part of the population over others, but not a foreign language in the strict sense of the term.
What is very complex is to change the mentalities of « I am Bambara, Bozo, Targui or Fulani to I am a Malian ». In France, before the nineteenth century, people identified themselves with their regionalism. There was an expression when people from the same region met, they said « we are country », « you are my country », that means we are from the same region. You see! But I believe that with the First World War, and then the Second World War, all this disappeared. But there are still associations of Bretons in Paris, for example, they dance and eat Breton, but no longer speak Breton. They say they are of Breton origin.
Goodnight, here we are passing to summer time, tonight, that is to say we advance our watches an hour, it is 1:15 but In fact it is 2:15 am, summer time. One hour less of sleep tomorrow morning.
Boubacar Sangaré