The news reaching us from Mali is hardly good despite the days that follow one another. Since 2020 and the first coup d’état that will be followed by another in 2021, the country has adopted an authoritarian turn that sees all spaces of freedom closed or drastically reduced. Mali is bogged down in a transition whose outcome is not apparent, with each day a junta that strengthens its base and at the same time shows that it is incapable of responding to the concerns of citizens on what is the bare minimum, for example access to electricity. In these conditions, the dismissal of Choguel Maïga is almost anecdotal. He played and lost. Moreover, all those who compromise themselves with authoritarianism mixed with populism, in the name of so-called nationalist, patriotic principles or whatever, will lose in the end, because their allies of circumstance are neither for democracy nor for freedom. And this, deep down, is normal for a dictatorship in which my friend Yoro Dia habitually reminds us that the first virtue is silence. Independent media, political activists and true civil society – not this one, in Africa, the rentier of tension – can only prosper by taking great risks. Authoritarianisms in the context of illiberal democracy or in rather closed spaces like Mali, prosper by silencing any dissenting voice.

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The latest news that concerns me, coming from Mali, is the closure on November 26 of Joliba TV News, a local private channel, by the country’s High Authority for Communication, and the withdrawal of the media’s license. This decision follows a complaint filed on November 12 by the High Council for Communication of…Burkina Faso. According to the facts reported by various concordant sources, the Burkinabe entity had filed a complaint against Issa Kaou N’Djim, a Malian politician, who expressed doubts about the veracity of the allegations of destabilization of Burkina Faso, emanating from the Ouagadougou junta. The person concerned has since been arrested and imprisoned and is awaiting trial scheduled for December. It so happens that a complaint filed by a public body in Burkina Faso led to the imprisonment of an activist in Mali for a reason of such frivolity that would make one smile if all this were not ultimately tragic. The common tragedy in Africa is that one can go to prison for such outlandish accusations. And the petitioners of freedoms and defenders of yesterday’s rights can turn into accomplices in crimes in the name of the interests of the moment. It must be said that between allies of the AES, we give each other the helping hands we can.  Because in Burkina Faso too, the situation of freedoms is worrying. The junta, with its more than dubious methods, has purely and simply announced that the transition would last 5 years, therefore the space of a mandate, if the country was in a normal democratic and electoral cycle.

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The reaction of Mohamed Attaher Halidou, a journalist from Joliba TV, is full of wisdom and dignity. His words are a breath of fresh air for all the activists who are fighting with anger and courage so that the repression of ideas and opinions that diverge from those of the Princes’ do not become the norm. He urges not to give up in Africa when the threat becomes institutionalized. Here I have a word for the evening messengers, followers of fleeting honours and alliance adjustments, who travel through places of life to transmit threats, intimidation and promises of penal isolation. I tell them the same thing I said 14 years ago, one evening at the Concorde Lafayette hotel; the same thing I said ten years ago on our Dakar cornice, often beautiful, sometimes hermetic. The journalist Attaher Halidou, a Cesti graduate, tells us, as if to dictate the beautiful verb of resistance: “History is an implacable judge. All compromises are paid for, all transitions too. At Joliba TV, we prefer to lose a License but the HAC will never dictate our professional conduct.”  Joliba under our leadership will never be a sounding board. » Naturally, I support the management and journalists of Joliba TV, because they are here as ramparts of freedom and carry within them a hope: that of not giving in to the injunctions of the powerful. The press is at the sole service of the republican homeland, and wherever the brown plague imposes itself, it aims to extinguish this bright beacon of freedom that is credible and independent journalism, to oppose it with the night of ignorance. In the same vein, I support the Malian democrats who have been demanding without satisfaction since June 20 for the release of the eleven political leaders arrested, even though they only committed one crime: meeting at the private home of a Malian opposition leader.

Mali is a country that is dear to me. I have been there many times, sometimes just to smell the scent of Joliba, nourish myself with its spiritual messages and look at the hill of Koulouba, from my precious niche of Badala. I have many brilliant friends in this country, committed and concerned about the economic and social progress of this beautiful plural nation. To the men and women politicians, artists, intellectuals whose suffering with dignity I hear from here, I promise that tomorrow calm mornings will come, and the flame of democracy and freedom will burst forth again. My affectionate thoughts go to the one who will recognize himself, elder, precious friend.

By Hamidou ANNE / hamidou.anne@lequotidien.sn

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH