In 1958 Sékou Touré launched his famous "no" to the proposal of French President Charles de Gaulle to create a community which would unite France with its former colonies, and which would be piloted by France. Sékou Touré said he wanted the independence of his country, Guinea, and launched this famous sentence: “I prefer freedom in poverty to wealth in servitude. The vengeance of France was terrible. All the French returned immediately, taking with them everything of value, all the documents and the archives. And for a long time, actions to sabotage the Guinean economy were organized by the French secret services, as well as maneuvers aimed at overthrowing Sékou Touré. The purpose of all these operations was to punish the presumptuousness of the Guinean leader who had dared to oppose the will of the great French leader, and above all to prevent his example from contaminating the other African countries of the French backyard. Cornered, Sékou Touré turned to the Soviets and asked for their help. The latter, who no doubt had had difficulty locating Guinea on a map, sent him snowploughs. Sékou Touré ended up becoming a paranoid and bloodthirsty dictator who hung his opponents, real or imaginary, under the bridges of Conakry, the capital of his country, or left them to die of hunger and thirst in the infamous Camp Boiro. It was a completely ruined Guinea that he left when he died in 1984.
Since then, we really cannot say that Guinea has found itself. It was a soldier, Lansana Conté, who was very far from being a light, who succeeded him by taking power by force. He was replaced at his death by another soldier even less brilliant than him, Moussa Dadis Camara, who also took power by force, after waiting for him to die, which is altogether more prudent, and he was replaced by a soldier who had even less brilliance than him, Sékouba Konaté, after he had taken a bullet in the head which fortunately did not kill him. Alpha Condé, who was democratically elected after what was believed to be a military parenthesis, was overthrown on September 5, 2021 by Mamadi Doumbouya, a former French army legionnaire married to a French female gendarme and who, ironically , was the one he appointed to ensure his safety and protect his power. For the moment no one can say where Guinea is going. But everything seems to indicate that a new dictatorship is slowly being put in place. For example, it is now forbidden to demonstrate in the streets, the houses of opposition leaders have been destroyed or seized, and several members of the overthrown government are in prison.
In 2022, it was Mali that got angry with France. Its authorities, resulting from a coup d'etat, decided to break with it definitively, by expelling its ambassador and its armed forces which had been called to fight terrorism, by prohibiting it from flying over its territory with its planes and its drones. and kicking out representatives of its media. In the process, they also got angry with Europe and ECOWAS and, some time ago, they announced the withdrawal of their country from the G5 Sahel and its anti-jihadist force. Unlike Guinea in 1958, the Malian soldiers first became friends with the Russians (the
new name for the Soviets), before breaking with France. The problem is that right now Russia is very busy with something they seem to have gotten into somewhat recklessly, and I'm not sure they can send them anything, even snow plows. For the moment, they are mercenaries that Mali has received from its new friends in exchange for a lot of money and gold mines, and apparently it is the people of the country who pay the bill with their blood. And there, as in Guinea, everything indicates that a dictatorship is being put in place.
Already it is impossible for the United Nations or any independent organization to go and investigate the allegations of crimes committed against civilian populations by the army with the support of Russian mercenaries, former Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubèye was left to die Maïga by simply refusing to let him go for treatment, and opponents of the regime find it increasingly difficult to express themselves, while freedom of the press is dwindling day by day. By breaking with everyone, aren't the soldiers in power in Mali operating a headlong rush, unless they are trying to get away from everyone to settle quietly their dictatorship? In the process, they announced that they had foiled an attempted putsch, quickly attributed to a Western country whose back everyone sees. Rest assured, this is only the first. There will be many others, true or false, but which will not necessarily come from outside. The characteristic of all dictatorial regimes is to find external enemies to blame for all their failures. We have already seen that in Guinea with Sékou Touré.
Admittedly, the civil powers that the Guinean and Malian putschists overthrew have somewhat deserved their fates, but I fear that the sun of freedom is once again setting on Guinea and Mali.
By Venance Konan
*This article has been translated from French into English by Marcus Boni Teiga
Source: https://www.fratmat.info
Fraternité Matin (CÔTE D’IVOIRE)
