We met up very early on Thursdays in the parking lot of the remand centre and walked together, pink sesame in hand. The welcome at the gate was hardly cheerful, it was even rude. Men in uniform came and went shopping for breakfast; some of them heckled the regulars of this place who, by dint of coming to see relatives, had become familiar faces, prisoners who had been set free. We were both struck by the men and women we met in the morning, who we could see all came from distant neighbourhoods, where the little people live whose children are kept – often awaiting trial – behind these high walls of the citadel of silence. Moustapha made fun of my grey face every day in the morning; I hate getting up early. Inside, at the end of the large alley, stands a rather new building. Inside, we sat on the benches, in a room where everyone kept silent, as if we were all prisoners, waiting for the loudspeaker with its barely audible sound to announce our names. We went together to see our friend in the visiting room. Moustapha always had tender and reassuring words for this friend who had been judged and condemned, without ever falling into blissful optimism or maslaa. I also know that he provided a useful presence alongside the family of the person concerned.

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I was struck by his humanity, which I already knew, but especially by his disgust for the injustice that the most precarious people can experience, struck by the moral and physical violence that the logic of domination imposes. In this, I can say that I have never met a man as humanist as Moustapha. He reminds me of Sartre’s words: « To love men, one must violently hate what oppresses them. » 

When you gravitate around Senegalese politics, you necessarily know Moustapha Diakhaté. Loud words, deep-rooted convictions, constance in the political fight and distrust of dogmas, political apparatuses, the powerful, and distrust of blind and unreasonable adherences. I have been following him since the initiative « Wacco ak alternance », a small group of PDS activists, disappointed by the direction of the Sopi, who decided to take up the fight for the rectification of the line within their political party. Right away, I was seduced by the courage of this outstanding debater, by his mastery of words and by his ability to defend his positions with anger. Then, there was the break with the Wades and the adhesion to the Apr. I heard from time to time the stories of his adventures via my friend Abdoulaye Fall, founding member of the party. Many years later, I finally met Moustapha, in March 2021, in the wake of the events following the sordid story that everyone knows. When I saw Moustapha, he told me something that pleased me, chilled me and made me shudder at the same time. He told me: “You know, I believe in three things: the Republic, democracy and freedom.” Right away, esteem, respect, affection and friendship. Moustapha is my friend, and this sentence is hardly banal. We quickly became close; between 2021 and 2023, I saw Moustapha almost every day, in the same place, to comment on African and international political news. We also often talked about our readings, because Moustapha is a big reader. He gets up early and reads until late morning, before starting his activities.

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Since that first day of meeting, we have spoken on the phone at least three times a day; we have the same hatred of populism, racism, and the same commitment against fascism. We dream of a new spring of democracy and progress everywhere without ever limiting ourselves to Africa, considering the universality of the human race. Each time someone loses hope in the face of the defeat of progressive currents and the advance of extremism and nationalism, Moustapha always has the right words to say that history is never over, that we must never stop believing in reason and in the ability through words and creative action to change the face of the world and especially people’s lives. He is very Sisyphean in this sense.

Moustapha is an activist in the noble sense of the term, that is to say a bearer of a cause, a raw, lively, committed and fundamentally democratic man. He is the example of the affirmed republican who considers that above the Republic, there is nothing and no one. This has been the driving force behind his commitment, because for him, the Republic is not a disembodied, aerial thing, which we recall in great lyrical flights without concrete materiality. The Republic for Moustapha is an essence, a spirituality as it was imagined by the great republican thinkers. But it is also and above all for him, a requirement to build equitable human societies, grounded in knowledge that frees the individual from dogmas that confine and from obscurantism that harms.

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Since his arrest, I have refused to come out with ready-made phrases like « Moustapha does not deserve prison ». He hates this type of phrase anyway, because convinced he often tells me « Left – yes, Moustapha never pronounces my first name, he always calls me that – I am only doing my duty. You always have to do what you have to do. Senegal does not belong to anyone, we who live there today are just non-permanent tenants, others were there before us and other generations will come after us ». 

Moustapha knew that he was going to be arrested and imprisoned. He prepared himself and his relatives for it. But I have two pieces of bad news for those who want to impose the dictates of terror on him: Moustapha will not keep quiet, and he does not know the feeling of fear. Better still, he is a man insensitive to honours, because he knows that most of them are fleeting and insincere. From his first strike as a student against the attitude of a school principal of whom he was also the… From his role as a tutor to his union activities at the BCEAO, which led to his dismissal, to his departure from the PDS and his exclusion from the APR, he has become a hardened man and an activist who has reached the highest level of militancy, where you act neither for appointments nor for elections, but in the name of the supreme tribunal of conscience.

Abdel Hamid Kichk once said: « Paradise is in my chest, I carry it wherever I go. » I would say the same thing about Moustapha, who carries freedom in his DNA, and which he will always keep intact, even in the depths of a prison. One day, history books will tell the story of Moustapha Diakhaté’s role in the return of civil peace in March 2021 and his clear efforts to preserve the Republic between March 2021 and April 2024. I don’t know everything, but I know a bit, between what he was kind enough to tell me and what I gleaned from other credible sources, and that out of humility and modesty, he did not want to reveal to me. Moustapha is a sincere patriot, a prickly republican and a genuine democrat, and he is a profoundly good, generous and endearing man.

One of the mornings that come, I will go see Moustapha. I will wake up with difficulty in the morning, with a sad face, I will leave my car in the prison parking lot. I will wait in front of this immense green iron gate, and when it opens, I will hurry among the people to reach the room of loudspeakers with a sound that is difficult to hear. I will hear my name and I will go see Moustapha… if he deigns to receive me, because I know my friend, he never does anything like the others.

By Hamidou ANNE / hamidou.anne@lequotidien.sn

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH / Serigne S. DIAGNE