Senegal’s democratic shine dims under Wade-groups
November 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment
By Nick Tattersall
DAKAR, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Senegal’s carefully polished reputation as a bastion of democracy in turbulent West Africa is dimming as its octogenarian leader, Abdoulaye Wade, grows increasingly autocratic, rights groups say.
Political posturing aimed at positioning his son to succeed him, the detention without trial of critical journalists and the diminishing powers of parliament all betray Senegal’s faltering democratic credentials, Wade’s critics say.
They say his obsession with hosting an international Islamic conference next year — a two-day event for which luxury hotels and new highways are being built in Dakar — have pushed more pressing social and economic problems off the political agenda.
“The Republic’s agenda is dominated in the short term by the organisation of the Islamic Summit and in the medium term by political manoeuvring around President Wade’s succession,” said Alioune Tine, head of African human rights group RADDHO.
“The presidential role has become an arch-institution which is not just overbearing but enslaving and subjugating all the other institutions, reducing them to dwarf status,” he told a news conference in Dakar on Wednesday.
Wade’s son, Karim, is an influential presidential adviser and head of the government agency managing the infrastructure projects for the Islamic conference, a role which has seen him increasingly involved in public debate and raised questions about his own political ambitions.
“This skilfully maintained veil of mystery (around Karim) allows his accomplices and henchmen to sow in the public mind the idea that the son of the head of state could legitimately succeed his father,” Habib Sy, director of Senegalese anti-graft group Aid Transparency, wrote in a local newspaper this month.
Wade’s spokesman has publicly denied that Karim is the president’s anointed successor.
WEAKENING PARLIAMENT
Senegal’s reputation for political stability has long made it a favourite among western donors and investors. It was one of the first African countries to espouse multiparty politics in the 1970s and is the only West African country other than the Atlantic archipelago of Cape Verde never to have seen a coup.
But riots swept across the capital last week after police tried to evict thousands of street vendors. The protests were fuelled by wider discontent over Wade’s perceived failure to address high youth unemployment and rising food prices.
Diplomats and local civil society groups have voiced growing concern over the increasing power of the presidency.
Macky Sall, the country’s parliamentary speaker, was unceremoniously sacked by Wade as deputy leader of the ruling PDS party two weeks ago after summoning Karim to appear before a finance commission charged with overseeing public spending.
Some political commentators fear Sall may now also lose his position as head of the national assembly.
“If he is removed from parliament as he has been from the party, it will totally ruin what credibility remains for the national assembly,” Tine said.
The senate is an even weaker balance against the power of the executive. The PDS won 34 of 35 seats in an August poll boycotted by the opposition, while the remaining 65 senators are appointed directly by Wade.
Journalists who have criticised Wade have found themselves jailed, triggering criticism from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
“The government’s continued use of criminal defamation and insult laws to jail and prosecute journalists undermines Senegal’s democratic credentials,” it said this month after four journalists held for critical stories were provisionally freed. (Editing by Pascal Fletcher)
© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.
In French Suburbs, Same Rage, but New Tactics
November 27, 2007 | Leave a Comment
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
PARIS, Nov. 27 — Two years after France’s immigrant suburbs exploded in rage, the rituals and acts of resentment have reappeared with an eerie sameness: roving gangs clashing with riot police forces, the government appealing for calm, residents complaining that they are ignored.
And while the scale of the unrest of the past few days does not yet compare with the three-week convulsion in hundreds of suburbs and towns in 2005, a chilling new factor makes it, in some sense, more menacing. The onetime rock throwers and car burners have taken up hunting shotguns and turned them on the police.
More than 100 officers have been wounded, several of them seriously, according to the police. Thirty were hit with buckshot and pellets from shotguns, and one of the wounded was hit with a type of bullet used to kill large game, Patrice Ribeiro, a police spokesman, said in a telephone interview. One of the officers lost an eye; another’s shoulder was shattered by gunfire.
It is legal to own a shotgun in France — as long as the owner has a license — and police circles were swirling with rumors that the bands of youths were procuring more weapons.
“This is a real guerrilla war,” Mr. Ribeiro told RTL radio, warning that the police, who have struggled to avoid excessive force, will not be fired upon indefinitely without responding.
The police have made more than 30 arrests but have been restrained in controlling the violence, using tear gas to disperse the bands of young people and firing paint balls to identify people for possible arrests later.
The prefecture of the police in the Val d’Oise area, where most of the violence has occurred, said Tuesday night that there were no reported injuries among civilians that could be linked to the police.
The events of the past three days, set off by the deaths of two teenagers whose minibike collided with a police vehicle on Sunday, make clear that the underlying causes of frustration and anger — particularly among unemployed, undereducated youths, mostly the offspring of Arab and African immigrants — remain the same.
“We have heard promise after promise, but nothing has been done in the suburbs since the last riots, nothing,” said François Pupponi, the Socialist mayor of Sarcelles, which has been struck by the violence, in an interview. “The suburbs are like tinderboxes. You have people in terrible social circumstances, plus all the rage, plus all the hate, plus all the rumors, and all you need is one spark to set them on fire.”
On Tuesday, there were the first signs of the violence spreading beyond the Paris region when a dozen cars were set afire in the southern city of Toulouse.
In the wake of the unrest in 2005, the government of then-President Jacques Chirac (with Nicolas Sarkozy, now the president, as the tough, law-and-order interior minister) announced measures to improve life in the suburbs, including extra money for housing, schools and neighborhood associations, as well as counseling and job training for unemployed youths. None has gone very far.
At that time, Mr. Sarkozy alienated large numbers of inhabitants in the troubled ethnic pockets of France, but afterward reverted to a low-key approach, which he has maintained ever since. During his presidential campaign, he stayed away from the troubled suburbs, aware that his presence could inflame public opinion against him.
In his six months as president, he has largely focused on injecting new life into France’s flaccid economy through creating jobs and lowering taxes and consumer prices.
His most notable initiative in dealing with youth crime has been punitive: the passage of a law last July that required a minimum sentence for repeat offenders and in many cases allowed minors between 16 and 18 years old to be tried and sentenced as adults.
Since September, Fadela Amara, his outspoken junior minister charged with drawing up a policy for the suburbs, has been holding town hall meetings throughout France in preparation for what is to be a “Marshall Plan” for the suburbs. Her proposals are scheduled to be made public in January.
“We’ve been talking about a Marshall Plan for the suburbs since the early 1990s,” said Adil Jazouli, a sociologist who focuses on the suburbs. “We don’t need poetry. We don’t need reflection. We need money.”
After he returns from China on Wednesday morning, Mr. Sarkozy plans to visit a seriously wounded senior policeman at a hospital near the northern Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel.
It was in Villiers-le-Bel on Sunday afternoon that the deaths of two teenagers identified as Moushin, 15, and Larimi, 16, occurred, the event that set off the latest unrest. The teenagers were riding without helmets on a minibike that collided with a police car; rumors that the police had caused the accident elicited calls for revenge.
The crash was reminiscent of the electrocution deaths in another Paris suburb in October 2005 of two teenagers, who, according to some accounts, were running away from police. That event set off the worst civil unrest in France in four decades, plunging the country into what Mr. Chirac called “a profound malaise.”
But Mr. Sarkozy, still reeling from huge transit strikes and student protests throughout France this month, is unlikely to use the current unrest as a vehicle to turn introspective or vent his rage too loudly at those he once called “scum.”
In 2005, he vowed to clean out young troublemakers from one Paris suburb with a Kärcher, the brand name of a high-powered hose used to wash off graffiti; when he pledged in another suburb that year to rid poor suburban neighborhoods of their “scum,” he was pelted with bottles and rocks.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister François Fillon told Parliament that the clashes were “unacceptable, intolerable, incomprehensible,” and he pledged punishment for the offenders in the affected suburbs.
“Those who shoot at policemen, those who beat a police officer almost to death, are criminals and must be treated as such,” he said, adding, “We will do everything so that tonight there is a maximum security presence.”
Under heavy security on Tuesday night, Mr. Fillon visited Villiers-le-Bel, where the two youths had died, in what he called a show of support for the police and firefighters. About 1,000 police officers were deployed there.
Critics of the Sarkozy government complain that many areas in the suburbs are without a police presence, and that the only time there is a show of security is after violence erupts.
“Sarkozy promised to send more police to the suburbs, but in so many places there are fewer police than there were two years ago,” said Mohamed Hamidi, the French founder of Bondy Blog, a popular political blog created in the Paris suburb of Bondy after the outbreak of violence in 2005. “He didn’t keep his word. Who suffers from all the violence and the burning cars? The people who live in these neighborhoods.”
In Villiers-le-Bel on Tuesday night, the atmosphere was tense, with white police trucks and antiriot police officers on the streets. Earlier in the day, about 300 people, including children, marched silently in memory of the two dead teenagers.
At a bakery on a small plaza in town, Habib Friaa, the baker, mourned their deaths, especially that of Larimi, who had started an apprenticeship with him two months ago.
“Baking was his passion,” Mr. Friaa said. “He was a courageous young man, someone who had hope.”
Ariane Bernard contributed reporting from Paris, and Basil Katz from Villiers-le-Bel.
Senegal Muslims show love of work in peanut-picking
November 27, 2007 | Leave a Comment
By Nick Tattersall
KHELCOM FIELDS, Senegal, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Thousands of Senegalese Muslims, from bankers to bus drivers, flocked to the country’s dusty peanut fields this week in an annual show of devotion to the powerful Mouride brotherhood.
Bent double under blazing sunshine, ranks of men, women and children harvested the groundnuts by hand from the dry earth after a call to work — or “Ndiguel” — from the Mourides’ spiritual leader, Serigne Saliou Mbacke.
It has become a key fixture for Mourides, a Sufi Islam movement whose doctrine of hard work as a route to paradise has made it a powerful economic and political force in Senegal.
“Pray as if you will die tomorrow and work as if you will live forever” is one of the oft-quoted teachings of Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, the Muslim mystic who founded the movement in 1883.
Many of the devotees stay for days or even weeks, sleeping at night in clusters of tents spread across tens of thousands of hectares of plantations — known as the “Khelcom fields” — around the holy city of Touba.
“The working and living conditions are very difficult, so you are obliged to show solidarity,” said Saliou Niang, 25, a student in hotel management, sipping mint tea under the moonlight after a day toiling in the dust.
“It’s a spiritual training you receive here. In a world that is becoming more and more individualist, you learn to share, to work together,” he said, as other Mourides sang religious chants and drummed in the background.
GLOBALISATION
Mouride influence runs deep across Senegal.
Brightly painted taxis and buses carry mottos such as “Djeuredjef Serigne Fallou” (Thank you Serigne Fallou), a former Mouride leader, or “Grand Marabout”, revered for his mystical abilities to heal the sick and change the weather.
Hand-painted depictions of the one surviving photograph of Bamba, his face wrapped in a flowing white scarf, adorn shop fronts and businesses in towns around the former French colony.
Mouridism is largely confined to Senegal and neighbouring Gambia, unlike the larger Tidjane brotherhood which has spread more widely across West Africa from Morocco.
But the marabouts’ teachings to go out into the world and bring back wealth to build up the movement has led the Mourides to establish a formidable trading network across the globe.
From street sellers in New York, Paris, Rome and Madrid to import/export dealers in Hong Kong and Dubai, many of the Senegalese doing business abroad are members of the brotherhood.
Type “Khelcom” into an Internet search engine and one of the first pages to come up is “Khelcom-Wheels-Dealers”, a used car dealer serving the Senegalese community in South Hackensack, New Jersey.
Known even by fellow Senegalese as wily operators, these jet-setting Mourides have been dubbed “Modou Modou” because, when caught selling fake designer goods, they give the ubiquitous name “Modou” in the hope of not being identified.
“All Mourides when they travel just need to get money to bring back to Touba,” said Hamdan Thiam, 45, who lived in the Canary Islands, Barcelona and Paris before returning to Touba to study Bamba’s teachings more deeply.
As a result, Touba and neighbouring Mbacke have grown from just a tiny village at the time of Bamba’s birth to become Senegal’s second-largest conurbation after Dakar, with a population of more than half a million.
“Touba is the middle of paradise,” said Thiam, grinning in the shadow of the city’s vast marble-covered mosque.
© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.
Election Boycott Threatens Senegal’s Democratic Reputation
April 12, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Dakar 12 April 2007 |
Tran report - Download 413k
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Even though Senegal is located in a part More Spokesman Yankhoba Seydi, of the Rewmi Party, which came in second "Let us talk about the rules. There are many things that are wrong The president’s office says the opposition is boycotting because it is scared of being crushed in the next election. Election observer Alioune Tine says the presidential election was fair, despite some problems. International observers also said the vote was free and fair, despite minor problems and some inequality in media coverage. Tine, the director of the Senegal-based human rights group, RADDHO, "You know the president is a man who wants people to recognize his RADDHO is one of about a dozen civil society groups, called the Civil Forum, trying to stop the boycott. "I think that the problem with the opposition is that the condition The Civil Forum submitted a letter to President Wade last Friday requesting to mediate a meeting between the two sides. Presidential spokesman Amadou Sall says there is no need for civil "We do not know why [under] this condition we [would] we receive This all comes as Senegal fine-tunes its request to the United At stake is up to $800 milllion to finance a large-scale business and residential development. Team leader Sogue Diarisso says he is confident Senegal’s high rank He says Senegal is starting out much higher rating than other poor But Chris Fomunyoh, the Central and West Africa program director for "When you have a huge segment that is not participating in the The twice-delayed legislative election is scheduled to take place
of the world known for volatile and violent politics, it is the only
West African country to not have had a coup. Seven years ago, it held
democratic elections that brought a new party to power. But, after
President Abdoulaye Wade was re-elected earlier this year, opponents
cried fraud and have vowed to boycott the upcoming legislative
election. Local civil society is alarmed, while analysts consider the
long-term impact of this potential boycott. Phuong Tran has more from
Dakar.
President Abdoulaye Wade outlines his next term after official results declare him the winner of Senegal’s election, 1 Mar 2007
than 10 opposition parties say they refuse to participate in an
election they say will be unfair. They say the president won his
re-election through fraud.
in the presidential election, says his party wants electoral changes
before participating.
in the registration process. Let us check the multiple cards that [are]
issued for the voters," he said.
says the opposition needs to recognize Mr. Wade fairly won almost 56
percent of the vote, before the president will meet with them.
competence, to recognize [his] qualities, et cetera, it is a human
feeling," he said.
is to discuss or to boycott. It was not the best way to [encourage]
dialogue and to make our electoral system [stronger]," he said.
society to play referee. He says the constitutional court already ruled
elections were fair.
civil society. To do what? I really do not know if the president will
do it," he said.
States Millennium Challenge Corporation, which rewards poor, but
well-governed countries with grants to reduce poverty.
for good governance will not drop significantly, as a result of the
threatened boycott.
countries, in terms of democracy, and that the threat of a boycott does
not change the solid core of Senegal’s democratic history.
the U.S.-based election watchdog group National Democratic Institute,
says a boycott can hurt a country’s democracy, in the long-term.
political process, it is difficult to expect that those that win power,
through that process, will have legitimacy they need to be able to
govern," he said.
June 3. The president’s office has said that it does not plan to delay
the election again, regardless of opposition party participation.
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15 vie for Senegal’s legislative polls
April 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment
afrol News, 10 April - At
least 15 political parties have officialised their intentions to
contest in Senegal’s 3 June legislative polls by forwarding their lists
of candidates to the Interior Ministry which has three days to approve
or disapprove them.
Already the polls
have become sour by the confirmed boycott of the main opposition
parties, including those of the key contenders of President Abdoulaye
Wade in the 25 February polls.
Officials of Mr Idrissa Seck’s Rewmi, Pari Socialiste and AFP, said
their boycott was necessitated by President Wade’s alleged rigging of
the polls, although they were declared free, fair and transparent by
the international observers and authenticated by the constitutional
court in Senegal.
The boycotting opposition parties control more than 40 percent of the
votes in the last Presidential polls, which is why the boycott is
expected to discredit the legislative polls.
The angry opposition parties said they can take part in the 3 June
polls only if the electoral roll has been cleansed and the replacement
of the autonomous electoral commission by an independent national
electoral commission because the former allowed voting process to be
rigged in favour of the ruling Parti Democratic Senegalaise (PDS) of Mr
Wade.
Opposition leaders have also asked President Wade to sack the Interior
Minister, Ousmane Ngom, whose office organised the last elections.
Their other demands had to do with the cancellation of the demarcation
of the constituencies, which they alleged, was done to favour PDS.
President Wade turned a deaf ear to the opposition complaints. His
party is expected to continue its winning spree during the 3 June
legislative polls.
Senegal postponed the legislative polls which was should have taken
place side by side with the 25 February Presidential polls. It was
first postponed in 2005 following a massive destruction by flood in the
country.
At the time, President Wade argued that instead of organising
elections, his government opted to raise funds for the flood victims
whose compounds had been invaded by waters.
By staff writer
© afrol News
15 lists filed for Senegal legislative elections in June
April 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Dakar,
April 10 (NNN-APS) Fifteen political groups or coalitions of parties
have filed their lists of candidates with the Interior ministry for the
June 3 legislative elections.
The Interior Ministry, which is in charge of organizing the
elections, has three days after receiving the lists on Friday to
validate the lists based on accepted criteria.
Several political parties of the opposition have decided to boycott
the June legislative elections as they consider the Feb 25 presidential
polls won by President Abdoulaye Wade with 55.90 of the cast, was an
"electoral masquerade".
These parties are the most significant ones in the opposition
because they represent more the 40 per cent of popular support
according to the result of the last presidential election.
They demand the cleaning of the electoral rolls and the creation of
an independent national electoral commission in the place of the
autonomous national electoral commission (CENA) whose performance did
not satisfy them during the presidential polls.
Senegal Food Stand Feeds Community on a Few Dollars a Day
April 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Dakar 09 April 2007 |
According Before the sun rises, Astou Diaw, 47, and her daughter, Yoni, ride a Before "I wanted to help out my husband and our seven kids," she said. "It A ten-minute bus ride later, Diaw arrives at her husband’s metal shop, which is also the kitchen for her food stand. Mother and daughter work quickly. They heat a bucket of water, and stir beans over a fire that will go While Yoni washes glasses, Diaw fills a large silver bowl with the Mamadou Diop comes in for the local drink, a heavily-sugared frothy local drink that tastes like a spicy mix of coffee and tea. He is a security guard who leaves his house before sunrise every day to travel 30 kilometers to Dakar. "I come when I have the money. Sometimes, when I do not have money, A group of men debate the recent presidential elections in Senegal. Four hours and dozens of customers later, Diaw counts her change. "Mondays are the hardest because most people do not have money yet Folding her apron, Diaw takes a lentil sandwich with mayonnaise. Despite her cash problem on most Mondays, Diaw was able to make $2,000 last year from her food stand. This is in a country where about half the population is unemployed,
Breakfast diners at Diaw’s food stand
to most poverty indicators, almost half the population of Sub-Saharan
Africa is living on less than $1 a day. One Senegalese food stand owner
shows how far a dollar goes in this part of the world. Her
aluminum-sided, cardboard-roofed sandwich and coffee stand in Dakar has
become the community kitchen for hundreds of people, mostly men who
come from far away to work in the city. For a little over one dollar,
diners can afford breakfast, lunch, hot coffee, plus a helping of
morning news. Phuong Tran has more from Dakar, Senegal.
bus through Dakar’s faintly-lit streets to get to her corner breakfast
stand where she has sold bean filled baguettes and coffee for four
years.
Astou Diaw
sandwiches, Diaw sold local juices, water and peanuts. But a breakfast
stand seemed a better way to help support her family.
is hard work and sometimes I cannot cover my costs. But even though it
is really hard, I still am able to help out more than before."
into her signature spicy lentil sandwich, a best selling 50 cent long
baguette.
lentils. By seven thirty, she takes her seat for the morning rush.
Customer Mamadou Dieng
I will still come by and she will sell me on credit," he said. "Here I
can eat good home cooked food. Women like her help us out a lot. We do
not have much money. At Astou’s stand, for less than 50 cents, you can
be full."
She is short of the six dollars needed to cover her expenses on bread,
butter, coffee and beans.
to pay at the beginning of the work week," she said. "Maybe tomorrow
will be better."
Leaving her daughter to work the lunch shift, Diaw leaves and waits for
the bus to go home.
and for those who work, their average annual salary is about $700.
Print Version
In Senegal, a life of begging and beatings
April 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment
click to enlarge
Thies, Senegal — MOUSSA Ba’s eyes shine with a fierce passion for
poverty and dirt and suffering, because he believes they are good for
children. He’s not ashamed to say that he is a hard man, and that each
of his 30 beggar boys is terrified of his whip.
Filthy and ragged, these boys, as young as 5 or 6, scurry barefoot
through the dusty streets with tomato paste cans as begging bowls,
knowing that if they come back two days running with no coins for Ba,
they will pay the price.
"There is no child who is less lucky than the others. There is only a
child who is more cunning than the others," Ba said. "Of course it
makes me angry. If I see such a temperament, then it’s a flaw in
character, so I do get angry and I do beat them."
Although many Senegalese see what Ba does as a racket, he isn’t merely a modern-day Fagin. He is a religious teacher, or marabout, and the boys are his talibes, or students, sent by their parents to board and learn the Koran. Most come from distant rural villages.
In Senegal, the talibes often spend less time in the daara,
or school, than on the streets begging. It is a form of child labor so
pervasive and harsh that it has caused a public outcry here. The
government outlawed child exploitation and trafficking in 2005, but
critics say it has done little to enforce the law.
The United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, estimated in a 2004 report that Senegal has 100,000 child beggars, mostly talibes — almost 1% of the population.
"Now most marabouts are more interested in money than
teaching," said Malick Diagne, deputy director of Tostan, a U.S.
humanitarian organization that is working to help the beggar boys.
"Sometimes you see kids late at night crying, ‘I can’t go home because
my amount of money has not been collected yet.’ "
Here on the streets of Senegal’s second-largest city, the tin can boys dodge the traffic and approach cars with pleading eyes.
People often give them food and objects that are white, such as rice,
candles, sugar or pale cookies, believing that this will protect the
giver from evil. The boys usually sell their haul cheaply to women in
the market to augment the daily quota of coins for their marabout.
*
RURAL Senegalese children have been learning from marabouts in Koranic schools since the 11th century, according to Tostan. But in the 1970s, drought and poverty hit rural areas and many marabouts drifted to cities and began to rely on begging.
The ragged man’s shirt that hangs on tiny Mamadou Jalo makes him look
even thinner than he is. He speaks haltingly, in whispered confidences,
his big, dark eyes glancing about tremulously.
He doesn’t know his age, but locals put it at about 6 or 7. He does
remember his mother and the enveloping warmth of her cuddle in the days
before his family sent him to Ba.
"I miss it," he said. "When I finish school I’ll go back to see my mother."
He lives in constant fear of not collecting the coins he needs to escape the whip.
"I’m sad. I don’t like the marabout. He beats me and he
makes me beg for money. I have to get 250 CFA [50 cents] a day. If it’s
two days running, he beats me with a whip. He beats me very hard.
Everyone is beaten."
The children spend nine hours a day begging and five hours learning the
Koran. At 8 a.m. the boys are sent out to beg for three hours, then
they return to the shack for learning, which involves chanting Koranic
verses, until 1 p.m. They beg for their lunch until 2, learn the Koran
until 5, then are sent out to beg until 10.
Humanitarian agencies in Senegal have worked for years to halt the exploitation of talibes,
but with little success in this overwhelmingly Muslim country where
charity to beggars is a deeply ingrained part of the culture. Some
agencies set up shelters or drop-in centers for the boys, only to find that within a few months they had no customers. For talibes, life on the streets is a habit hard to break.
When they finish schooling in the daara, typically in their
mid-teens, not all go home, said UNICEF country representative Ian
Hopgood. Many remain on the streets, begging — the only life they
really know.
The government denies it has been slow to prosecute those who exploit children.
|
Page 2 of 2 |
2
|
"The government is determined to stop the begging and roaming of
children in the streets and their exploitation, and will enforce laws
and regulations on the matter," Information Minister Bacar Dia said,
addressing a meeting on the issue in October.
The 46-year-old Ba, who was a talibe from age 6 and saw his
own father only twice, believes the hard, unrelenting life on the
streets gives his boys an education no school can offer; it makes them
tough enough to face the worst that life can throw at them.
Like most daaras, his is a half-built house where
he squats for free. The rusted corrugated iron roof leaks copiously in
the rainy season. The boys sleep like sardines, without mattresses.
Flies swirl into the air when any of them stirs. The boys rarely wash,
and don’t need to, Ba contends.
"The fact you are dirty on the surface is not real dirt. What’s real
dirt is spiritual dirt," he said, brushing off the thought that poor
hygiene and crowding among the talibes could cause sickness.
"Nothing like that will happen. God has an angel with a big wing. The angel lays down its wing and the talibes lie
down on that wing and the angel lays its other wing over and if any
illness comes, it won’t hurt them. They can even sleep on the wet
ground and it won’t hurt them."
Marabouts such as Ba say they force children to beg for money for food because parents don’t pay fees.
Tostan, which is based in Thies, is working with 115 marabouts here, offering civics and sanitation classes for talibes and their teachers, providing basics such as soap and shoes, and offering small loans to enable the marabouts to wean themselves from begging. It also is encouraging townspeople to "adopt" their neighborhood talibes, to buy them food and clothing.
Oumou Sy, 75, feeds and washes about 10 talibes in her house each morning. She gives them coins for their marabout, even though she knows that perpetuates the system.
"They’re desperate," she said. "If you don’t do it as an individual,
they’re going to get beaten. If you can change the life of one talibe, it’s worth it."
*
NOT all the marabouts beat children for failing to collect enough money. Ahmad Sow, 44, who has about 27 boys in his daara, beats those who are lax in learning the Koran.
But even in one of the better and cleaner daaras such as Sow’s, life is hard for the boys, who beg six or seven hours a day.
Ba remembers begging all day as a child. He remembers the hunger, the
fear of being thrashed, and says he is now fervently thankful for that.
"Even if I was angry and frustrated as a child, I am grateful to God
for that now, because look where it took me. If I was not beaten and if
I didn’t live in harsh conditions, I would not be where I am today," he
said, sitting amid conditions that, materially at least, could hardly
be worse.
He extolled the beauty of learning as the honeyed voice of a young man
reciting the verses of the Koran rose in the small dirt courtyard.
"If you take a child and he leads a soft life, he’s spoiled," Ba said. "But the talibes learn to be strong and independent."
As darkness fell on Thies, Mamadou Jalo was still out begging in the streets.
Mamadou has only one dream, a yearning that stitches together his days,
makes some of them good and others terrible. It’s a dream that slips
through his fingers every single day.
"My dream is money," he says softly.
*
robyn.dixon@latimes.com
Senegal Independence Day Calls into Question France’s Future Role
April 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Dakar 04 April 2007 |
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Throughout Thousands in downtown Dakar lined up on General Charles de Gaulle Boulevard to see Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade. This street has had decades of independence day parades since Senegal gained its sovereignty in 1960. Local political analyst Yoro Dia says Senegal’s relationship with "When you are a product of French colonial system, you have a French colonial mentality," he said. "The most important thing is what people are thinking in Paris. What Dia says it is inevitable France will lose some influence because he says Mr. Wade is the last of the colonial generation. "Wade is a kind of bridge between that colonial generation, people "I think this is the biggest change. You no longer have the relationship between the master and the [colonized]," he added. For 24-year-old government economist, Alfa, Senegal is still close to its former colonizer. "Nothing [has] really changed. It is our partner. We love French people. It is our big brother," said Alfa. But when asked where most people his age want to go if they are to For army Commander Alain Diop, the celebration honors Senegal’s responsibilities as a sovereign country. He says the day is a reminder of Senegal’s ability to make both peace and war. Officials say there were less military in attendance this year
Francophone West Africa, analysts say France’s influence has been
changing. In Senegal, the country observed its 47th year of
independence from France. With an octogenarian president entering his
last term, analysts say it is inevitable France will lose influence
with future leaders of its former colony. Phuong Tran has for VOA more
from Dakar.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade greets crowd at the Independence Day parade, 04 Apr 2007
France will soon change, because there are no more presidential
candidates trained in the French colonial system like Mr. Wade.
people are thinking in Washington [D.C.], you do not care. What people
are thinking in Senegal, you do not care. But what people are thinking
in Paris, you do care," he continued.
Senegal political analyst Yoro Dia
who fight for independence and the other generation, people who were
born in Senegal, trained in the United States, people who do not have
the colonial mentality," said Dia.
leave Senegal, he does not hesitate in replying: "For the students,
they want to go to America or China to learn more."
Commander Alain Diop
because more are serving overseas in neighboring countries’ conflicts.
Print Version
Senegal opposition confirms will boycott June polls
April 7, 2007 | Leave a Comment
By Diadie Ba
DAKAR (Reuters) - Senegal’s main opposition parties confirmed on
Friday they would boycott parliamentary elections set for June,
withdrawing their candidacy deposits hours away from the deadline for
submissions, a spokesman said.
A group of 12 opposition parties said on Monday they would boycott
the June 3 elections, accusing the government of buying votes and
doctoring the electoral roll in President Abdoulaye Wade’s re-election
in February.
"I have been mandated by the 12 opposition parties to withdraw the
deposits for the legislative elections from the public treasury. Now it
is a done deal, we will not take part in the elections," their
representative, Aly Haidar, told Reuters.
Monday’s announcement dented Senegal’s reputation for democracy and
embarrassed Wade hours ahead of his inauguration on Tuesday for a
second term in office at a lavish ceremony attended by almost 20 heads
of state from across Africa.
Wade easily won the February 25 presidential poll with 55.9 percent
of votes, but opposition parties accused him of doctoring voter lists
and buying votes.
Opposition parties had demanded the dismissal of Interior Minister
Ousmane Ngom and the redrawing of electoral boundaries before elections
take place, saying the current allocation of constituencies heavily
favoured Wade’s ruling Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS). Wade rejected
both of these demands.
"I must point out that it is President Wade who has broken off all
dialogue with the opposition in refusing an audit of the electoral
list. Therefore more than 40 percent of the electorate will not be
taking part in the elections," Haidar said.
The parties of most of the 14 rival candidates who challenged Wade
in the February poll are in the group boycotting the legislative
elections.
They include the Rewmi party of second-placed Idrissa Seck, Wade’s
estranged former premier and the Socialist Party, which led the former
French colony for four decades before being swept from power by Wade’s
election in 2000.
That election — one of Africa’s first peaceful transfers of power
from one elected government to another — enhanced Senegal’s reputation
for stability and democracy in a volatile continent.
Originally scheduled for February 2006, the legislative elections
were postponed by a year after Wade said the money for organising them
was needed to cope with widespread flooding after the heaviest rains in
decades in late 2005.
The polls were postponed again in February after the opposition protested against the map of electoral boundaries.
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