The special hearing of the High Court of Dakar on the Sweet Beauty case, which opposed Miss Adji Raby Sarr to Mr. Ousmane Sonko, was an incredible opportunity for all of Senegal to get an idea of the truth of the facts. on a story of buttocks that kept the country in suspense for two years. This affair will have had its share of deaths and material damage that cannot be estimated. This scar on all our faces, has, at times, stripped our country of its veil of lucidity. It was therefore necessary that a trial be held to bring this whole unhealthy story to light. So, I didn’t hesitate to go to the Dakar courthouse, listen to Adji Raby Sarr, Ndèye Khady Ndiaye, and hope to have Ousmane Sonko opposite so that the dark waltz of « crazy » buttocks and sexes, which confused our Republic, be conjured.

The main accused will unfortunately not be part of the game, giving a taste of unfinished business and above all revealing a manifest cowardice to take refuge behind a pool of about fifteen lawyers begging for a dismissal to compel to appear, these are the words of Lawyer Ciré Clédor Ly, a client who wants to defend himself everywhere except at the bar. Isn’t it Ousmane Sonko who shouted everywhere that he was in a hurry to get to a trial to dismantle a plot and burst an infamous abscess that we would like to throw in his face? His disappearance in Ziguinchor during the first appearance, the organization of makeshift barricades by young people whom he does not hesitate to make cannon fodder around his home and the leak ahead of his television interview, to thumb his nose to authorities and demanding conditions for an appearance all say one word: cowardice.

The choice of his lawyers to leave the room, if Judge El Hadj Issa Ndiaye upheld the Sweet Beauty session, says a lot about a defense that was only allowed to speak by « courtesy » of a conciliatory judge. The Sonko defense’s subterfuge, made of a logic of rupture, in a constant game of displacement of a purely judicial case between litigants on the quicksand of a political struggle, will quickly be drowned. When a conspiracy has been shouted from all the rooftops and an opportunity to be heard is offered, common sense dictates that we stand up in front of all to tell our part of the truth, especially when our aspirations are to lead them. One cannot want to be on the throne of Alexander the Great by acting like Diogenes, although the latter was gifted with intelligence and repartee.

Ladies left to their fate

The abandonment of Ndèye Khady Ndiaye by her defence, including her court-appointed lawyer, after having tried a game of new constitutions in the middle of a hearing by counsel from Ousmane Sonko for the benefit of the owner of Sweet Beauty, an invocation of an inhumane situation for a pregnant woman, and the quest for a delay with the card of a postponement until her delivery, is symbolic of a logic of obstruction which would surely have kept this affair up to date for a long time yet.  Little stock taking will be made of the disorder that accompanies the appearances and summonses of Citizen Sonko! The « finish » is the ultimate step in the jargon of Sweet Beauty according to Adji Sarr and Seynabou Ngom who were at the bar. Judge El Hadj Issa Ndiaye did not hesitate so that on the day of May 23, 2023, this case, navigating between poor quality porn and the exploitation of people in distress, was cleared. The Senegalese people awaited with all their soul the « finish » of this nightmare.

People in distress and little people who found themselves cowardly abandoned to their fate, there were some in this Sweet Beauty affair. Seeing a Ndèye Khady Ndiaye, of reckless courage and ignorant temerity, tell the judges that she would defend herself with God’s help, after being told that her lawyers had « decided not to plead », this is quite different from not having a lawyer, is heart-breaking. Here is a woman who wanted to play her part, stumbling in her statements at the bar and returning on facts that contradict what may have been said in the minutes of investigations and hearings, as well as the various confrontations of the defendants, in particular in the office of the examining magistrate. A lawyer at her side would surely have asked her to be careful, to review certain statements and not to scuttle herself in this way. At the altar of cowardice, Ousmane Sonko will have let Ndèye Khady Ndiaye empty herself of all her soul in order to save the little honour he has left.

Unfortunately, this will not be the case. Adji Sarr will appear at the bar and expose all the harm she says she has suffered, in crude language, with salacious, funny or rude details, depending on the ear that appreciates. You have to listen to her replay at the hearing of the Justice Palace in Dakar, the films of the different dates where she says she was raped and abused by Ousmane Sonko, this enhances ones understanding of the adage that says that you cannot really have a big head in front of a person who has seen you nude. Former-masseuse Adji Sarr did not backtrack during her interrogation. She accused the almighty Sonko of repeated rapes and death threats. She launched into the description of the different massages practiced at Sweet Beauty.

The ears of the audience whistled in the presentation of the glaucous « Kamasutra » of Sweet Beauty with invigorating and relaxing massages, where the customers get naked, penis waxing sessions for able-bodied adults, « body -body” characterized by applying oil to the private parts of clients and rubbing them until ejaculation. This gloomy presentation will continue with the scientific truths of Dr. Alfousseyni Gaye who spoke of the sperm samples from the genital organ of Adji Sarr, on the fateful evening of February 2, 2021. It is therefore not surprising that the Senegalese newspapers next day publications narrate the audience hearings which in part resemble proofs of the Marquis de Sade. The morality police will be able to strike down everyone except the media on this one. Judge Ndiaye will save the audience from a broadcast of images and videos requested by Lawyer El Hadji Diouf, counsel for Adji Sarr, because he believes that it could shock. He temporarily saved Senegal from drowning in « patriotic porn » that the worst peeping toms would be ashamed to watch.

The foot always where it should not be

The question that every mind should ask now that the Sweet Beauty affair is known to the world, is surely to understand what a cantor of righteousness like Ousmane Sonko, who spilled a Facebook post (later deleted), when the affair broke out, declaring that he had never set foot in Sweet Beauty, was doing in such a place. The former gendarmerie captain, Seydina Oumar Touré, during his testimony before Judge Ndiaye, will answer a question from the magistrate asking him after his description of the premises, if he would hang out there. Mr. Touré manifest refusal was dry and firm, but marked by an embarrassment that leaves certain stains on the mind. One would think that Ousmane Sonko did not care about the hopes of his militants in him, to show such a culpable lightness.

I cannot talk about dirt without omitting the latest outing from Mr. Sonko, following his conspicuous absence at the bar. He copiously insulted Lady Adji Sarr and stigmatized her physical features. Say, that they we very far from the days when, according to the words of the Adji Sarr, the leader of the patriots abandoned his family on December 31 to see, come what may, “the object of his desires”. Bipolarity has its name, if I can slip with regret into the breach opened by the current mayor of Ziguinchor.

Ousmane Sonko is the only individual capable of praising a person in front of an entire community and then dedicating them to demons if the postures of this person run contrary to his interests. According to his moods, it is not possible to know which of his geniuses to trust. Adji Sarr, Oumar Maham Diallo, Barthélemy Dias, Aminata Touré, are some of the people who have gone from shadow to light and vice versa in the matrix of the leader of the Pastef party. Today, Judge El Hadji Issa Ndiaye and his assessors are spared. What will they hear with an unfavourable verdict to this all-powerful individual! When he came out of the confrontation last December before the Dean of the examining magistrates, Oumar Maham Diallo, he described Adji Raby Sarr as a polite and correct girl, led like a puppet by the authors lurking in the shadow of a plot of state.

Six months later, when this lady stood at the bar of the Court to reveal her share of the truth about the repetitive rapes, death threats and all the salacious intimacy that the « Patriot » in chief subjected this « Cosette » to, Ousmane Sonko will call her a « monkey » or a « macaque » with a stroke. How can a man be dripping with so much barbaric misogyny, self-hatred and so sorely lacking in empathy? One can only have a bruised heart hearing such an infamous statement in view of the devastation that cardiovascular disease is wreaking under our skies. There is not a Senegalese who does not know a relative, a friend, an acquaintance or who is himself exposed to a stroke. Nothing should come as a surprise from a man who wants to be a champion of a black people, yet stigmatizes the dark pigmentation of the skin.

A judgment for dignity

The ballet of young ladies who came to testify at the bar of the Court in the Sweet Beauty case was made up of vulnerable people, led in a business of pleasure, stripped of any say in the use to which their bodies were subjected. If Senegal has the art of crushing its little people, it excels in breaking and destroying its women. This ranges from the refusal to speak to victims of rape, to the diabolical hold on women’s bodies. Adji Sarr, Aïssata “Maman” Ba, Seynabou Ngom and their ex-boss, Ndèye Khady Ndiaye, all share the fact of being the victims of misogyny and of an empire over women’s bodies. It seems that they are only good for giving pleasure and satisfying the desires of a stronger sex, often made up of men of limitless cowardice.  Lawyer Ndèye Anta Mbaye will make a point of honour in her pleading, to demand respect for the dignity of our women. Their situation as vulnerable women, distraught when they arrive in Dakar, torn between hunger and the struggle for survival, has made them prey for predators. The mention of the sums they received for everything they were made to do and suffer outraged the entire hearing of the Dakar Court.

We can read in the preface to The Miserable by Victor Hugo that the three problems of the century, which are « the degradation of man by the proletariat, the degradation of women by hunger » and « the atrophy of the child by the night » will always justify the raising of voices to condemn, rebel and breathe the humane. Patriotic porn, held at Sweet Beauty, is the ultimate symbol of a complete dehumanization of a society, with women left as prey for predators of all kinds. The « Cosette », this land in swarms, and silencing evil « Thenardite » is essential to all.  Beyond the rapes and death threats mentioned in the case, the judges will have the heavy task of restoring dignity to the protagonists and punishing heinous facts. It is about a national catharsis to heal from a sexual trauma that will have made us all lose our minds and our humanity.

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

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH