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Cultural Heritage in Mali in the Neoliberal Era
By Rosa de Jorio UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Rosa De Jorio
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-09853-6
CHAPTER 1
1. Commemorating the Nation's Heroes in Mali's Neoliberal Democracy
THIS CHAPTER CENTERS on the conversations and controversies surrounding the heritagization (the process by which a cultural heritage or cultural patrimony is formed) of Mali's national heroes (via the construction of monuments and a memorial, and the development of new state commemorations) during the first two decades of Mali's multiparty democracy, from 1992 to 2012. In politicians' speeches, interviews with politicians and representatives of the heritage sector, and media reports, I distinguish two dominant narratives: the modernist discourse promoted by government officials, which emphasizes rationality and distance vis-à-vis the past (to facilitate collective healing from the violence of the one-party state and cultivate democratic values); and the "survivor" narrative of the political opposition, which emphasizes more emotional and visceral perspectives vis-à-vis the past (often grounded in direct participation in the historical events being represented). Although they indicate general structural continuities, such narratives are far from fixed: "Written texts are finite, while narrative memory, in principle, is not. Breaks, endings, decisive moments of closure depend upon the other institutions in which the stories are inserted" (Lambek and Antze 1996: xix; see also Wertsch 2008; Wertsch and Billingsley 2011). The memory narratives considered here rely on the political and institutional contexts of the heritagization of the postcolonial past during Mali's democratic and neoliberal era.
The democratic turn of 1991 was accompanied by a radical rethinking of Mali's cultural heritage, a key accompaniment to major political and social changes. This process entailed, among others, a search for more satisfactory ways to represent and commemorate the past. As Paul Connerton has remarked, "All beginnings contain an element of recollection. This is particularly the case when a social group makes a concerted effort to begin with a wholly new start" (1989: 6). The process of recollection is not entirely new and, indeed, is grounded on a certain "system of expectations" that comes to frame the so-called new beginnings (1989: 6).
Mali's democratic government sought to promote a program of renewal and expansion of its cultural heritage, hoping also to spearhead some radical changes to the population's shared system of expectations (e.g., by rejecting the subjection of culture to the interests of the powerful and their glorification). Countering the long-standing neglect of Mali's modern history and its main protagonists — as well as a tendency to glorify the precolonial past — the democratic state, particularly under Alpha Oumar Konaré, endeavored to come to terms with Mali's postcolonial period (among other aspects of Mali's history) and especially the First Republic of Modibo Keita (1960-68) by encouraging a critical reading of the past but also extracting aspects of it that were deemed compatible with a neoliberal democracy. Accordingly, the democratic government either toned town or removed from state narratives many of the socialist tones of Mali's first republic, in keeping with the ongoing dismantling of the welfare state and the intensification of neoliberal changes.
Mali's transformation from a one-party state to a multiparty democracy had major ramifications for the renewal of the national heritage. In particular, the state was no longer the sole player in orchestrating heritage initiatives and now had to confront the emergence of new publics and their memories, as well as counterheritage projects. What to remember or commemorate — and how — became the subject of endless confrontations between rapidly changing political parties and their allies. The construction of monuments and related public commemorations became hotly disputed sites for the expression of competing political ambitions and partly diverging political projects, often couched in survivor narratives (see Comaroff and Comaroff 2004). Kratz and Karp point out that "museums and heritage sites ... [are] also perceived as a means of claiming or appropriating a role in broader public spheres and of legitimating identity, history, and presence, a perception that shaped this change and growth" (2006: 11). The increased diversification of the political field and the presence of greater expressive freedom have made the commemoration of the past a more open and disputed process. As in postapartheid South Africa, in Mali "almost every space of heritage production has seen complexity, controversy, and contestation" (Rassool 2000: 1).
This chapter is organized in three major sections. The first section provides a historical background against which to locate the democratic government's work in the field of cultural heritage and public culture. The second section presents an overview of some of the heritage work carried out under Konaré's administration (1992-2002). It documents state efforts to build a democratic culture as well as to cultivate rational-critical perspectives vis-à-vis the national past. The chapter follows continuities and changes in the commemoration of Mali's First Republic (and its controversial president, Modibo Keita), using those themes to orient the reader through the complexities and transformations of Mali's heritage. This section shows the centrality of party politics for the development of heritage and public culture during Konaré's administration. The third and last section describes heritage work under Amadou Toumani Touré (2002-12), analyzing some continuities but also noticeable shifts, particularly in Touré's adoption of the transnational trope of reconciliation and the proliferation of public rituals of appeasement and consensus building. This section also examines aspects of the shrinking opposition's countermemory project and the rekindling of struggles around Keita's legacy — as well as the emergence of new ones around the legacy of Abdoul "Cabral" Karim Camara, one of heroes of the opposition to Moussa Traoré's dictatorship. As a whole, this chapter presents a historical and cultural framework useful for contextualizing the case studies developed in following chapters.
A Violent Past
The hero narrative and related heritage initiatives (e.g., the construction of statues and a mausoleum to commemorate the nation's heroes) articulated by the post-1991 state are intimately tied up with processes of national renewal. The politics of comprehensive remembering spearheaded by the state sought to come to terms with a divided national past, to initiate a process of collective healing, and to unite a fragmented citizenry around a renewed political project.
Mali's postcolonial past was much more violent than is often recognized. The first thirty years of Malian history were characterized by the hegemony of the one-party systems. During that period, all initiatives in the political field had to emanate from the party hierarchy, and any open opposition to the central government was actively discouraged and violently repressed (Simonis 1995). Between 1958 and 1960, toward the end of French colonization, the US-RDA party violently quelled the Ségou-based opposition party L'Union démocratique ségouvienne (Democratic Union of Seguvians) (UDS), which had a strong ethnic Bamana constituency. The affair culminated with the leveling of the village of Sakoi-Fulala and part of the village of Sakoiba (two places where UDS supporters resided) and the detention or public execution of some UDS party members (Simonis 1995; De Jorio 1997; Philippe 2013). This episode of Ségou's history remains very vivid in the memories of those who witnessed it, although it is rarely openly discussed.
Also around the time of independence, the representatives of independent women's groups were forced to dismantle their organizations. Some of these leaders became active within the Social Commission of the US-RDA party — the only legitimate institutional outlet for the expression of women's interests under the one-party regime. "Unruly" women leaders were temporarily relocated to Mali's north to avoid any potential interference from them in party decisions. This was the case, for instance, of Sira Diop, the president of the umbrella organization L'Union des femmes du Soudan (Women's Union of French Soudan), who became the second president of the national women's association, L'Union nationale des femmes du Mali (National Union of Malian Women) (UNFM), under Moussa Traoré (1977-80) (Ba Konaré 1993: 375).
Under President Keita's First Republic (1960-68), a demonstration by a group of politicians and merchants against the issuance of the Malian franc and Mali's exit from the French monetary zone resulted in the 1962 arrest of the opposition movement's leadership: Fily Dabo Sissoko, Hamadoun Dicko, and Kassoum Touré (Imperato 1996: xxvii), as well as several other demonstrators. The three were quickly tried and sentenced to life in prison. Two years later they died under circumstances that were never explained. In northern Mali the Tuareg revolts of the early 1960s, triggered by the extractive practices of the Malian state as well as the lack of any sustained state investment in the region, were also brutally repressed by the Malian army (Klute 1995: 58). The last year or so of Keita's presidency (a period known as the Active Revolution) was characterized by the popular militia's oppression of and brutality toward all strata of the population in a last desperate attempt by the country's leaders to save the First Republic and its socialist project. The US-RDA leadership claimed that the activities of the popular militia would preserve the republic by eliminating the corruption and growing instability resulting from the infiltration of conservative capitalist forces that supposedly were trying to take over the country politically.
In 1968 General Traoré came to power via what was then a widely supported coup detat that ended the eight years of Keita's socialist regime and led to the imprisonment and death of several of Keita's political allies (Sanankoua 1990). From 1968 to 1979, the country was ruled by Le Comité militaire de libération nationale (Military Committee for National Liberation) (CMLN), with Traoré soon emerging as its leader. Despite the population's initial hopes for greater freedom, Traoré's military regime was marred by political instability, corruption, and violence. Open expression of political dissent was harshly repressed, and extensive censorship of the media was put in place (interview with Rose Bastide Bamako, July 1994). For instance, in September 1970 "seven intellectuals [were] given 18 months in jail for offending the head of state" (Imperato 1996: xxix). Coup attempts organized either by military personnel close to former president Keita or by Traoré's rivals abounded as well. In a 1994 interview for the magazine Jeune Afrique, Amadou Toumani Touré (popularly known as ATT) reminded the Western press that "Moussa Traoré had escaped a dozen coup attempts" (1994: 12). Between 1968 and 1978, Traoré one by one eliminated all the men with whom he had originally organized the military coup, and "in February 1978, the most notorious members of the military government [Kissima Doukara, Karim Dembelé, and Tiécoro Bagayoko] were arrested and charged with corruption" (François 1982: 23). Under Traoré's orders they were killed while in detention a few years later.
During his time in power, Traoré attempted to counter the growing unpopularity of his regime and allegedly tried to prepare the country for a return to civilian rule (but at a much slower pace than his public declarations would indicate). In 1974 Malians were asked to vote on a new constitution; when they returned to the polls five years later to vote for a new president, Traoré was the only candidate on the list. In 1979 Traoré officially created L'Union démocratique du peuple malien (Democratic Union of the Malian People) (UDPM), the one party that was to rule the country between 1979 and 1991, and he dismantled the CMLN. In a short-lived attempt to clean up his regime's reputation and secure the support of the educated urban elites (les intellectuels), Traoré even appointed Konaré as the Minister of Youth, Culture, and Arts in 1978. Konaré held this position for two years before resigning over his dissatisfaction with the modest changes that had characterized the return to civilian rule.
Student demonstrations also began shortly after Traoré's military coup and continued at intervals throughout the entire dictatorship despite state repression (see Imperato 1996: xxviii). Student demonstrations intensified in the late 1970s in the wake of implementation of school reforms that "toughened the qualifications for entry into higher education and reformed the primary school syllabus" (François 1982: 22). Traoré's military regime made some concessions, such as an increase in scholarships for students and the "easing of examination requirements for degrees and certificates" (Imperato 1996: xxxiii), but overall state repression increased. In 1980, a particularly violent year, student protests organized under Camara, leader of L'Union nationale des élèves et étudiants du Mali (National Union of Pupils and Students of Mali) (UNEEM), resulted in increases in "arrests, imprisonments, forced recruitment into the army, the taking of hostages, rapes ... torture and murder" (François 1982: 24). Camara was arrested, tortured, and killed while in detention. Schools were closed, and students lost two entire years of schooling.
Increasingly, opposition forces rallied around the figure of Keita, whose liberation student demonstrators increasingly demanded. Keita's unexplained death in 1977 further energized student opposition and, more broadly, marked the beginning of his rehabilitation in the national imagination. Keita's funeral and the accompanying state repression marked a particularly traumatic collective experience and further undermined Traoré's legitimacy. The funeral was widely attended by students as well as broader audiences. Traoré's forces arrested several of the funeral participants and conducted additional purges among the ranks of his allies. A number of recently published memoirs that detail the horrors of political detention under Traoré "center on the traumatic encounter with the military regime and are structured around similar episodes of political activism, arbitrary arrest, interrogation, and incarceration, articulating in dramatic fashion the experience of Malian political opponents of Traoré's government" (A. Sow 2010: 72). Despite demonstrations and attempted coups, Traoré's rule endured because of the effectiveness of the state brutality, the weakness of the opposition, and international support for his regime.
In the last months of the dictatorship, a new Tuareg revolt ensued because of the continuing political and economic marginality experienced by most Tuaregs. At first it was, like earlier revolts, brutally repressed by the army. Under considerable international pressure, however, Traoré signed the Tamanrasset Accords in 1991, which granted greater autonomy to the northern regions. In a desperate and useless attempt to preserve his power, he then relocated the army to the south and concentrated troops in the capital of Bamako, where the pro-democracy movement was gaining momentum (Klute 1995: 58). In March 1991 Traoré's dictatorship was ended by popular demonstrations that cost the lives of at least two hundred participants. Villalon and Idrissa note that "of all the West African countries that undertook democratic elections in the 1990s, Mali had the bloodiest beginning of that process" (2005: 53). Faced with the prospect of a civil war, segments of the military led by Touré brought Traoré's dictatorship to an end.
Eighteen months after the coup d'état, Touré led an interim government of military officials and civilians that paved the way to Mali's first multiparty elections. In April 1992 Konaré was elected as Mali's first democratically chosen president. This election opened a relatively stable period in Malian politics, during which Mali was praised by the international community as a model of democracy in Africa and became a recipient of significant international aid. Following Mali's turn to democracy, Mali's political leadership sought to symbolically redress the violence and political repression of the twenty-three years of Mali's military regime. The process of national renewal intended to help the country "escape the grim spiral of poverty, despair, exclusion, and fatality" (Konaré 1992) and replace it with a memory of empowerment and hope. In the process, some of Mali's postcolonial heroes were revisited and publicly commemorated.
Mali's Neoliberal Democracy
The Konaré government's project of political and social reform marked a significant break from the policies of the one-party states that preceded it. Scholars and development experts generally agree that "Mali's decade under President Alpha Oumar Konaré (1992-2002) provided a model of political stability in the region" (Villalon and Idrissa 2005:49). Konaré's declared goals for the democratic state included "the re-enforcement of the fundamental democratic values, national cohesion, restoration of the credibility of the state, encouragement of a citizenry founded on the active participation of the population in the management of the country, and renewed trust in the institutions" (qtd. in Diarrah 2000: 370). Some of the major realizations of those goals included the consolidation of political and civil freedoms, as well as the decentralization of state institutions (Amselle 2006), in an effort to stimulate economic growth and increase political participation.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Cultural Heritage in Mali in the Neoliberal Era by Rosa de Jorio. Copyright © 2016 Rosa De Jorio. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS.
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