Return to Sender, Do Not Repeat Order: Nicolas Sarkozy’s Speech at the University of Dakar
Chris Dunton
This insistence that the slave trade did damage to everyone might have some validity if, following Marx on the subject of the proletariat and the capitalist, Sarkozy were to argue that those found guilty of sustaining the trade did dirt on their own humanity. But Sarkozy’s pitch is different, having the effect of arguing, as Dany Laferrière puts it, that “if [slavery] is a crime against everyone, then no-one is culpable.” It takes a remarkable capacity to offer insult, to speak like this in the vicinity of the island of Gorée.
In any event, whether or not guilt for the trade might be attached to any specific party, Sarkozy’s young Africans are invited, if not exactly to forget the past, to “pass beyond” it: that is, as satisfyingly docile students, not to ask too many questions. “Africa,” Sarkozy proceeds, “bears its share of responsibility for its own misfortune.” As elsewhere, one might acknowledge a degree of validity in this recognition, another example being the statement “Africa’s dilemma is to remain true to itself without remaining immobile” (as throughout, notice here how Sarkozy conveys the impression of having made a balanced assessment of the situation through the use of repetition and a binary proposition). The speech is, however, so sanctimonious and – when it is not, so replete with truisms – that any redeeming momentary clarity is subsumed beneath the prevailing murk.
On the subject of colonialists Sarkozy begins with a resounding assertion: “They were mistaken.” Mbembe latches on to this claim in his commentary on the speech and notes that the rhetorical or persuasive value of the phrase (four short sharp words in the original: “Ils ont eu tort”) is to classify colonialism as an error, not a crime. This permits Sarkozy to proceed: “[The colonialist] took, but I shall say to you, with respect, that he also gave [bridges, roads, hospitals: note the binary construction employed yet again] . . . I say to you here, not all colonialists were thieves, not all colonialists were exploiters.” In other words, any assessment of the deeds of the colonialists boils down to a question of individual morality; there was nothing systemic about colonialism.And in the full flush of self-righteousness Sarkozy then goes on to assert: “Colonization is not responsible . . . for genocides . . . for dictators . . . for corruption . . . for oil spillages and pollution.” The accumulation of instances here ensures a forward momentum that must from a critical perspective be resisted through the building of speed bumps, so that after “genocides” one insists on the time to enquire “Rwanda?” and after “oil spillages”, “the Niger Delta?”
Sarkozy has asked his audience not to get bogged down in the (colonial) past, but to look to the future, a necessary move if no-one is to trace Hutu / Tutsi enmity back to colonial administrative policy or the despoliation of the Delta to neo-colonial corporate strategy. So what, in Sarkozy’s view, has Africa – that continent of “misfortunes” – given to the world? Not entirely unpredictably, this has quite a lot to do with rhythm. With the idea that things like dancing come naturally to the African in a way that they don’t with whitey.
Sarkozy is at pains to acknowledge that the African does possess logic and reason. Yet when he refers to “the African who has lived in a symbiotic relationship with nature for millennia”, the logical equation that could form the ground for a valid binary proposition appears absent, for much the same could be claimed of a Greek shepherd (of course these are quite dark-skinned).
The problem of Africa – exemplified in the peasant’s eternal round – is, it seems, that it has not entered history, but remains forever immersed in an infantile nostalgia. One of several reasons for alarm at formulations of this kind is that while Sarkozy refers to “history” with some regularity, he seems unable to understand its workings – or, if able, then unwilling to admit the outcomes of such an understanding. Contrast the following passage on the annulment of Abiola’s 1993 election victory from Patrick Wilmot’s recent book Nigeria: The Nightmare Scenario – a passage that, however broadly worded, does have some pegs to tether it to material grounds: “The main reason for the annulment was the recognition that Nigerian voters had entered the modern world, and were pursuing their interests rather than drift like sheep in paths laid down by ethnic, regional and religious leaders.”