"At work my friends, we have conquered fate!" Thus he had concluded, on February 28, 1990, the conférence nationale des forces vives du Bénin (National conference of the living forces of Benin Republic), of which he was the General spokesman. More than 29 years later, and when he was to celebrate his 90th candle on November 10, Albert Tévoédjrè died in the early hours of this morning of November 6, 2019. Just four days before.
However, we promised a great party and a great tribute to this lucid nonagenarian, who will have remained on the bridges all the time. The Iroko association had thus initiated, for November 9, a whole day of conference on peace in Africa, during which the person concerned was to intervene. On the menu of this conference, two papers, respectively entitled "Cross views on peace in Africa" and "Is Benin Republic, a secular country, a haven of peace?". Even that the organizers of this meeting of giving and receiving had planned to present the projects "African House of Peace" and "Festival of Peace", before the ecumenical and thanksgiving day of Sunday, November 10, 2019 Alas, the Grim Reaper passed by, taking away the one who called himself “Brother Melchior”.
OUTSTANDING FIGURE
Nicknamed the "Fox of Djrègbé", a town located halfway between Cotonou and Porto-Novo, the economic and political capitals of Benin republic, Albert Tévoédjrè will have marked the socio-political life of his country for five decades. A political adventure that began with the independence of Dahomey, since this former leader of the Federation of Black African Students in France (FEANF) and co-founder, with his compatriot Jean Pliya and the Burkinabè Joseph Ki-Zerbo, of the Mouvement de libération nationale (MLN) (Liberation Movement Nationale (MLN) was also, from August 1960, Secretary of State at the Presidency of the Republic, Minister of Information in the first postcolonial government.
We then find him at the African and Malagasy Union (UAM), of which he was Secretary general until 1963. Then Albert Tévoédjrè joined the International Labor Office in 1965 as a workforce planning expert. He will also become its Deputy general manager and lead a remarkable international career. He also publishes numerous books, including in particular «La pauvreté, richesse des peuples» ("Poverty, Wealth of Peoples"), released in 1978 and very popular in Third World circles in Africa.
A renowned intellectual with proven eloquence, Albert Tévoédjrè, a fine tactician, mediator in his spare time and wise fox of the national and international political landscape, however, never succeeded in sublimating this potential in his fights for the presidential chair. The creation of his political party, «Notre cause commune» (NCC), (“Our Common Cause” (NCC), on the eve of the National conference in February 1990, was not enough to bring him to the Marina Palace.
It should be noted, however, that this man of great culture, pioneer of strong initiatives and always at the crossroads of ideas, was at the heart of several dynamics, both in Benin Republic and in Africa. We owe him the organization in 1989, under the aegis of the Centre panafricain de prospective sociale (CPPS) (pan-African Center for Social Prospects (CPPS) which he founded two years earlier, of the Africa-Europe meeting and of the first Porto-Novo Forum on the rights of the man. The CPPS is also behind the African Humanitarian Initiative to provide medical and nutritional assistance to refugees, particularly those in the Great Lakes region. Humanitarian fiber pegged to the body, Albert Tévoédjrè was also interested in the pupils and students of Haiti when Port-au-Prince, the capital of this country, was shaken, on January 12, 2010, by a violent earthquake of magnitude 7, which destroyed everything and caused thousands of victims.
“THE HAPPINESS OF SERVING”
And to testify well to his incorrigible love of service, this pilgrim from Africa published, in 2010, «Le bonheur de servir» ("The happiness of serving"), a work of more than 300 pages, which is at the same time "a literary, political and testimony of service and commitment" on his family, professional and intellectual life. Filled with nearly 200 quotes, all of which invite — even encourage! — to reflection, to questioning oneself and to this kind of projection in one's society and in the world, this book by Albert Tévoédjrè, published when he was 80 years old, is a veritable almanac of life lessons. An almanac in which shines through the sometimes misunderstood humanist, with his omnipresent religious faith. Overall, this book draws a number of lessons from the author's many encounters with certain great names in the history of the African continent: Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Kwame N'Krumah, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Joseph Ki- Zerbo, Aimé Césaire… as well as the former Presidents of Benin Republic, Justin Ahomadégbé, Sourou Migan Apithy and Hubert Maga.
“I am a son of Africa, who loves his mother, that is to say Africa. Consequently, everything I say, with others, must allow the youngest to climb on our shoulders to see further than us, to organize themselves better than us", he confided to me in 2011, at the detour of an interview that I had the privilege of collecting for the magazine Notre Afrik (Notre Afrik N°8, February 2011). Son of Africa, but also a formidable political animal, who used his know-how in this area to put the late General Mathieu Kérékou back in the saddle, who returned to power through the ballot box in 1996, five years after his departure from the presidency of the Republic of Benin.
Alternately Member of the National Assembly, Minister of Planning, Economic Restructuring and Employment Promotion, Mediator of the Republic in Benin, Coordinator of the "Millennium for Africa" Project, Albert Tévoédjrè was also a representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations in Côte d'Ivoire from 2003 to 2005. And, far from it, he does not consider that he has succeeded in everything in his twirling life. “We tried, we stammered, we will leave our continent with our heritage, our past and our efforts. Our failures too,” he admits. Yes, adds Albert Tévoédjrè, We must confess them very sincerely, these failures, and “ask that we have the audacity to take charge of this heritage, to break with deviant behavior”…
Born on November 10, 1929 in Porto-Novo, the one who is rightly considered a sacred monster of Beninese political life therefore left on the eve of his 90th birthday. End of an era and symbol of a fatality, that of death, which awaits us all, humans, and which he, nor anyone else, could have conquered... So all that remains is for us to convince ourselves — if is that we have forgotten - of the relevance of this fine phrase from Charles Maurice, Prince of Talleyrand-Périgord who affirms that: "We spend our lives saying goodbye to those who are leaving, until the day we say farewell to those who remain”.
Farewell Albert Tévoédjrè and may the land of your native Benin Republic be light to you!
© Serge Mathias Tomondji
Ouagadougou, November 6, 2019
*This article has been translated from French into English by Marcus Boni Teiga
