If there is one thing that Senegal continues to show in front of the whole world, it is this incredible capacity to be able to create stars and give an aura to everything. This strength that we, Senegalese, have to give to anything coming from outside more than its weight will lead us to our loss. It is in this country that Cheikhou Chérifou, « the child prophet », filled stadiums black with people in 1999. Ten years later (2010 more precisely), the Indian actress Pallavi Kulkarni, playing the main role in a Bollywood series titled Vaidehi, pulled crowds between Dakar airport in Yoff and the Senegalese Cultural Pyramid (Pcs), worthy of the welcome of a head of state from an allied nation or a National Team having won a major title. How can we be surprised that in this new decade, a lawyer in the person of Juan Branco, master of the courtrooms of Twitter, comes to this country where being adored is so simple, giving oneself baths of crowd and play important?

Placed Under Judicial Control: Juan Branco Expulsed from Senegal

The tribune could not be better for such a bad actor to perform by trying his hand at a dangerous life made of defiance of a State and contempt of institutions. An opportunity could not be greater for a lawyer who has taken no quality legal action in the defense of his client, Ousmane Sonko, apart from a flood of hollow monologues to which only those who like to hear the sound of their own voices incessantly have the secret.

The circus in three stages of Juan Branco in Senegal, starting with his illegal entry into the territory to his expulsion from the country, after his arrest in a canoe in Rosso and his detention in Rebeuss, has something to offend on more than one level. Such condescending postures with regard to our magistrates and actors of Justice have rarely been observed.

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To see a little white boy whose age does not exceed the years of service of many of our magistrates, heckle a public prosecutor without being worried and refuse to answer questions from an examining magistrate for the simple fact of a privilege bias of a new Tintin trying his hand at Africa is revolting. To see distinguished Senegalese lawyers who would not recruit a Juan Branco as a legal assistant in their own offices, to use the words of Madiambal Diagne, line up behind a junior without feats of arms, so that he spews out his nonsense in front of the world, is enough to break the heart. Observing that journalists were running after an individual who barely gives them the floor when he leaves a press conference to extract a few words from him and play the game of overexcited groupies says a lot about a state of complex that many people have internalized under our heavens.

Those people who shout about being pan-Africanists from the rooftops, play with bombastic talk about the liberation of the continent, but are quick to swallow all the drool dripping from a white toad. Pan-Africanists who give themselves hand and foot tied to a hero smearing grease like condescension and the complex of the « White Savior » should not be surprised, if the fate of their political champion is relegated to second priorities to make way in the quest for stardom of a French lawyer in search of sensation.

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This crazy Branco story will have further revealed that even under our skies, after more than sixty years of independence, the last of the enlightened ones of a former metropolis can come and strut their stuff on conquered ground, trample on the honour of our Justice, excessively manipulate part of the youth, get their adrenaline pumping by playing hide and seek with our Defense and Security Forces, before having the doors of return opened by airlift.  He will find material to lay the story of a spoiled child who has come to spend a good recess in a backyard subject to his whims. He will take care to distribute the right roles, give lessons from time to time and continue to perpetuate in his obtuse mind, all the refrain of an imminent mission to save Africans who are trying their hand at democracy and management. of a state.

A Senegalese businessman confided to me in an amused tone that he was accompanied in certain major appointments in Senegal and all over Africa, by white collaborators and assistants. He will say that this « cosmetic » has its role, insofar as it disturbs the spirits and forces them to give seriousness to his initiatives and his approach. He told, very satisfied, of what he gained from the fact of wrestling with collaborators from Western countries to face his own brothers, everywhere in Africa. I was wary of such an approach, but the Branco show, which has just exhausted all the white privilege cards in our country, confirms to me that he is right, if that is the path we all choose. Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Foucault’s Discipline and Punish had been on my desk for some time, and I had to go through it again, with memories of university work. After the adventures of Tintin de Rosso and all the outrage that our Justice has suffered in such a short time, I could not have better summer reading on power relations and the complex analysis of all the traumas that eat away at minds of colonized peoples.

By Serigne Saliou DIAGNE / saliou.diagne@lequotidien.sn

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH