Ca commence ! Le New York Times attaque le « Monument de la renaissance » et cite Abdou Latif Coulibaly (Article complet en Anglais)

New York Times
Il fallait s’y attendre ! Depuis que Gorgui a « ramassé » l’ambassadeur des Etats-Unis au Sénégal, nos radars et antennes surveillaient la presse américaine, convaincus que cela allait bouger d’un moment à l’autre. C’est le très respecté « New York Times », qui vient de commettre un article au vitriol contre Gorgui, en date du 4 juin, sous la plume d’Adam Nossiter. Article dans lequel intervient l’historien sénégalais Ibrahima Thioub.

New York Times (bis)

Même s’il n’évoque pas l’échange très salé entre Gorgui et le diplomate américain, l’article en question est un réquisitoire à charge contre le « Monument de la Renaissance » que le grand quotidien américain assimile à une statue « qui rappelle la Russie stalinienne plutôt que la culture distinctive afro-islamique du Sahel ». Sans blague alors ! L’article ne manque pas, dans sa chute, de citer amplement le journaliste-écrivain Abdou Latif Coulibaly, non sans parler des tracasseries dont sont victimes les livres qu’il met en librairie.
LASQUOTIDIEN.INFO

African States Weigh 50 Bittersweet Years of Independence

DAKAR, Senegal — In a fancy resort on the French Riviera this week, limousines bearing African leaders gathered at the doorstep of France’s president for the France-Africa Summit, a time-honored ritual involving pledges of mutual love and, not surprisingly, some backbiting.

Conspicuously absent from the gathering in Nice, however, was a collective reckoning of a major milestone on the calendar: It has been 50 years since many of the countries gained independence.

Unlike the glittering extravaganza on the Riviera, where extensive retinues accompanied the leaders, the anniversary — and its potential for taking stock — is passing largely unnoticed. Few official celebrations have been organized to mark the passing of five decades since France tentatively let go, albeit with many continuing ties, of 14 of its colonies; in all, 17 African countries, including Nigeria, gained independence in 1960.

Perhaps the most substantial collective commemoration is, paradoxically enough, not being held in Africa at all. Leaders from Senegal, Mali, Niger, Ivory Coast, Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mauritania, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Chad and Madagascar have all been invited to Paris to parade their troops along the Champs-Elysées on Bastille Day, the national holiday of their ex-colonial ruler.

Here on the continent, the few remembrances so far have at times been freighted with just as much ambiguity. In one of the rare, large-scale commemorative events, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal inaugurated a giant bronze statue meant to symbolize “African Renaissance” on a desolate hill near the airport here. Built by a North Korean company in pure Soviet-realism style, it is 13 feet higher than the Statue of Liberty and its three gigantic figures — man, woman and child — tower over their surroundings.

But nearly everything about it has provoked controversy, rather than the outpouring of pan-African pride that Mr. Wade had hoped to generate: from the cost, in a country that ranks 166th on the United Nations’ Human Development Index of 182 nations; to the scantily clothed figures, in an overwhelmingly Muslim country (local imams raised a vigorous protest); to the questionable aesthetics of a monument that recalls Stalinist Russia rather than the distinctive Afro-Islamic culture of the Sahel. Some Senegalese debate whether the figures even look African.

Mr. Wade has said he simply traded state land, in exchange for building the statue, to the North Koreans, who then sold it at a profit; local and international media estimates have put the total cost at between $27 million and $70 million.

For some analysts here, the statue’s mixed signals symbolize this anniversary year’s uncertain meanings, calling it a monumental construction project conceded to foreigners and inaugurated in an April ceremony attended by heads of state like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast, both of whom have been the object of international scorn for their human rights records.

“The monumentality is somewhat misplaced,” said Ibrahima Thioub, a Senegalese historian who teaches at Cheikh Anta Diop University here. “Does Senegal have the resources to invest this kind of money?” Besides, he added, “Why concede the African Renaissance to Koreans? We’ve got some very good African sculptors right here.”

Elsewhere, commemorations have been sparse or marked primarily by back-and-forth visiting by dignitaries from neighboring countries, as was recently the case in Cameroon, rather than by public outpourings.

“It’s tough to mobilize people for celebrations, because the flowers of independence have faded,” Mr. Thioub said. “The last 50 years have not at all met the people’s hopes and expectations.”

Jean-François Bayart, a senior research fellow at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, noted that there had been major achievements since independence. West African cities, for example, have both grown tremendously and continued to feed themselves, a balancing act he suggested was unparalleled.

Still, there is a “malaise” in this anniversary year, he added. “The balance sheet of independence is not brilliant, and people speak of lost decades. It’s not as catastrophic as some say, but there are problems,” Mr. Bayart said.

The notion of independence itself — in a context of bad governance, economic inequality, poverty and dependence on foreign aid — has been called into question by some African intellectuals. “Our parents are still asking us when this independence is going to be over,” the narrator says mockingly in a recent satiric novel, “The Catapillas, Those Ungrateful Ones,” by the Ivory Coast writer Venance Konan, a bitter commentary from a country racked by civil war and government misdeeds.

Voices are regularly raised against the continued use of the African Franc, which is seen as a humiliating adjunct of European money. It carries a guarantee of a fixed rate against the Euro, but requires that the ex-colonies keep a substantial portion of their currency assets in the Paris treasury.

Then there is the reliance on heavy inflows of foreign aid, which equaled a quarter to nearly a third of government spending in countries like Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Mali in 2008, according to figures compiled by a World Bank economist, Mamadou Ndione. In Niger, a leading member of Parliament said that aid routinely accounted for over half of the budgets passed by himself and his colleagues.

Against the weakness of institutions like parliaments stand the voices of African intellectuals and other civil-society activists, who have mobilized throughout the region for reform. In Niger, there were mass protests last year against the rollback of democracy by the former president, Mamadou Tandja. In Guinea, demonstrators — and the violent suppression of them — ultimately led to the military junta’s transfer of power to civilian leadership this year.

Even here in Senegal, often considered exemplary because there has never been a coup, widely followed writers like Abdou Latif Coulibaly criticize Parliament as being nothing more than “an instrument in the service of the executive.” Democracy is held hostage by elites, he argues, and his books have been routinely banned from the major bookstores as a result.

Mr. Coulibaly lays some of the blame with his fellow citizens, and said in an interview several years ago with the French political science review Politique Africaine that they mistakenly “consider that power is a matter of essences, a heritage, something in the blood, that what is normal for a state is unlimited monarchy.”
A version of this article appeared in print on June 5, 2010, on page A4 of the New York edition.

New Yort Times