Senegal will rarely have given birth to such a tortuous son, follower of ridicule and master of cowardice as in the person of the leader of the former party Pastef. There has rarely been seen a man who shouted his courage in front of all the microphones and podiums, who made mistrust, insolence and outrage his business, then deflated in this way. The fact that Sonko is stubborn in his conspiracy does not bother, but the stubbornness of a pack to follow him, moreover serious intellectuals, is painful to see. If all that remains is for the all-powerful Ousmane to take refuge in the skirts of his wives to plead clemency and try to draw an empathetic fibre, or if his last card is the publication of a tribune by a conglomerate of intellectuals to the arguments of the most self-serving that they disguise under grandiloquent notions of respect for human rights and submission to the democratic game, the game is lost in advance for the Gandhi of the Special Pavilion of the Main Hospital.

Read the column: Our Propensity to Create Monsters

Speaking of these intellectuals, the zeal that some of them, originally from Burkina Faso, have in writing forums on Senegal, while looking away from what « Sankara babies » are experiencing in their country of origin, is something to laugh about. Signing a column on respect for human rights and democracy in Senegal while the media is being shut down in Ouagadougou, you must be daring!

First of all, the state of health of detainee Ousmane Sonko, whose agenda aims to make a subject at the centre of everything, at all costs, is to be deconstructed. The deterioration in the state of health of Ousmane Sonko, if proven, stems from the choice of this individual to voluntarily deprive himself of food as a form of struggle to improve his lot. Why would we want the personal choice of an individual, taken in a situation, to be considered alarming in the eyes of the public when no one imposes such a path on this person? I will not be told that the prison administration, in any way, prevents Ousmane Sonko from eating or tries in any way to attack his physical integrity. 

Read the column: Doumbouya Cuts the Waves of Agreement from the Source

Senegalese detention centres are filled with thousands of people who do not benefit from the attention, monitoring or precaution that Ousmane Sonko enjoys. They have health that may be fragile, they have relatives worried about the deterioration in their health and have the same rights with regard to health monitoring and assistance. Why should we agree to fall into the trap of Ousmane Sonko and those who advise him, by making his medical prognosis a matrix of public debate? What justifies that the health of detainee Ousmane Sonko is more important than the health of any other Senegalese prisoner? Why accept differential treatment for an individual who, if we rely on the facts with which he is accused, has ticked all the boxes of a domestic enemy who should be fought rather than sought to be spared?

With his Cowardly Hand, He Slapped Her*

The game in progress does not deceive anyone, everything is in place to provide Sonko with one of the most alarmist medical records. From the outings of the Pastef party to leaks in the press, passing through the declarations of the activists of Civil Society, everything is done to move public opinion and find, by a subterfuge, a way to twist the arms once again of Justice. The reinforcements that are used through the international media to expose information on his medical condition beyond the borders are so crude that any observer sees from afar the implementation of a clumsy communication strategy. The visit of some leaders of Yewwi askan wi to the Kaliph General of the Mourides is another act, just like the play of Sonko’s wives on the Senegalese web to further move or develop a feeling of commiseration.

There is no better way to signal the end of a hunger strike than to pretend to receive a ndigël, with dates in support, from the Kaliph General of the Mourides, to pretend to stay in the way of the brave and the proud warriors of islam. The Kaliph whose ears we acquiesce in his “injunction” to eat, is the same one that Sonko and his henchmen scolded in parables more than once. We will quickly forget that it was an exhilarated Ousmane Sonko who said, in his live statements, that none of the Kaliphs asked him for a favour or invited him to any form of clemency in his “Mortal Kombat” with Macky Sall. Time can expose! From « gatsa gatsa » to « Mbacké save me », thirst and stomach gurgling got the better of Sonko’s insolent ardour. Who could believe that! We would have liked to see stubbornness pushed to the limit to borrow from the cynics their mode of reasoning.

A Circus, « Monkeys » and Chaos

The exit of the wives of Ousmane Sonko also contributes to this dramatization of a judicial file that we would like to empty of all its serious substance to make it a banal case of persecution of an opponent. The whole script responds to this requirement to make the tears triumph and prevent thinking or questioning the facts. Wives dressed in veils, mimicking the posture of Lingéér devoted to a valiant husband, came to beg, ball on the ground, to absolve their champion. They would have been credible if in all the mistakes, abuses, outrageous declarations and scandalous acts of their husband, they had at least once called him to order. I remember that in March 2021, after the adventures of their husband’s summons had caused a dozen deaths, they were proudly enthroned from the balcony of their residence under the cheers of a crowd of activists. People who dance on a pile of corpses to free a husband who instigated a whole mayhem cannot call for commiseration. 

The platform of our intellectuals who do not hesitate when the opportunity arises, to spit on Senegal, is also a play that wants to disguise the bases of the debate. The Pastef party was dissolved not to put a political force in check, but to put out of harm’s way a group which, in front of everyone, has never ceased to express its insurrectional tendencies.

Ousmane Sonko is in prison because he was the master, the instigator and the haranguer of a whole insurrectionary, warlike, criminal and terrorist dynamic that caused deaths and damage that will have to be clarified. Intellectuals, in the comfort of their interests and bathed in the sweet contradictions of their share of insecurities and compromises, can sign a platform seeking to absolve of all sin the bull on which they have bet to overthrow everything and give life to their utopias. They cannot take refuge in the arguments of flouted freedoms and the rise of dictatorship when their mad bull is taken by the horns and its criminal impulse is stopped.

The Limits of Our Economic Nationalism

It is one thing to promote humanism, but it is another to voluntarily close your eyes to the truth to save your foal at all costs. The Republic that some of our intellectuals are constantly heckling and caricaturing to make themselves seen by a man and his clan, does not deserve all the affronts they inflict on it. The terrorism of thought will have emasculated many Senegalese intellectuals. It is a pity that the reign of fear and the dominance of insult in the public sphere have made them brute beasts, refusing any critical use of their thought to tie it to the worst partisan logics including the advent of Ousmane Sonko and his Pastef party are the primary sources.

If I can concede one victory to Sonko, it is that of having terrorized brilliant thinkers, after having completely split Senegalese society, to create laudators who would barter their careers, their honour and their integrity to defend him body and soul in all the messy scenarios where he gets entangled. This part of the absurd that has converted free spirits into cowardly intellectuals is a regret that many Senegalese must share.

saliou.diagne@lequotidien.sn