How is it that it was enough to say the name of France in the Burkinabe crisis which carried away the power of Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba for a certain youth to take to the streets and attack the French interests? In Mali, many people also took to the streets to cheer the interim Prime Minister because he had, from the rostrum of the United Nations General Assembly, properly insulted France and the African States which are perceived by some opinion as his vassals. Today, in many French-speaking African countries, it suffices to shout “down with France” and to accuse it of all the misfortunes that strike the continent to attract the sympathy of part of the youth. Why ? Either the enemies or adversaries of France have beaten it flat on the field of communication, or the emotional dispute between it and its former colonies is deeper than we think.
It must be recognized that the attitude of French President Emmanuel Macron and some of his ministers towards certain African leaders and their way of managing some of our crises has been enough to irritate the people best disposed to regard to France. But is that enough to explain everything? Is this enough to explain that Africans, well established in France, the country whose nationality they have taken and for whom the greatest misfortune would be to be returned to their countries of origin, manage to push Africans living in Africa to to attack French interests and even the citizens of this country?
In Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso, the crowd attacked the French Institutes, practically the only cultural centers in these cities. Certainly, culture is the least of the concerns of these young people who for the most part have never set foot in school or opened a book, and whose misery one can imagine; but that they immediately bare their fangs when the word “France” is pronounced like Pavlov’s dogs, should give food for thought. Why is France perceived as the source of all the misfortunes of certain African countries? Perhaps because France has not seen Africans grow, evolve, and a certain French elite still sees them as big children that they still have to carry on their backs. The great burden that she must carry out of humanism. Since our independence, France has prided itself on helping us, at all costs, even when we don't need help. I heard a Frenchman very seriously declare on a television channel: “How do you want to stop helping Africa when they need to be fed like baby birds? ”
In 2018 I was presented to a circle of "Africanists" in Paris my book Si le Noir n’est pas capable de se tenir debout, laissez-le tomber (If the Black is not able to stand up, let him fall). All I ask of you is not to prevent him from standing. For them, it was heresy to say stop helping Africa and let it fend for itself like an adult. The very colonial vision of the African “ya bon banania” always laughing and unable to think has not completely disappeared from many French minds. When you think you are the only one capable of resolving all of Africa's problems, when, for example, in the name of efficiency in the fight against terrorism, France forbids the Malian army from accessing certain parts of its own territory, the minimum for this France is to succeed in driving out the terrorists. But when, on the contrary, this terrorism only increases, we cannot totally blame the Malians when they lose control and accuse the French of supporting the jihadists. Especially since no one has forgotten that it was France, which, by bombing Gaddafi's Libya for obscure reasons, completely dismantled this country which was a veritable powder keg and contributed to supplying weapons to all the terrorists in the Sahel.
Today the Malian authorities who have failed to secure their country have come to devote a tenacious hatred to France and its allies in the region, mainly to Côte d'Ivoire. You always have to find the scapegoat or the village sorcerer. Mali has found an ally who is also seeking to find a place for itself in the region, to the detriment of France. This ally is no stranger. It is Russia, which is in the process of destroying Ukraine and threatening to use the nuclear bomb in this country where it seems to be losing ground.
Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, the new muse of the "pan-Africanist" democrats, who has been in power for twenty-two years after having stifled all opposition at home. Ivorians must know that if Malians unduly detain 46 of their soldiers and insult everyone, starting with their immediate neighbors on whom they depend, it is not because they have lost their minds. It is because their allies the Russian mercenaries of Wagner who are the puppeteers seek to gain a foothold in all of West Africa by destabilizing all the countries of the region. They have just succeeded in Burkina Faso. Guess who is the next target.
By Venance Konan
*This article has been translated from French into English by Marcus Boni Teiga
