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In Senegal, a commemorative plaque will be placed this Saturday, December 17, on Mamadou-Dia Square in Thiès, a town 70 kilometers from Dakar, to pay tribute to this forgotten player in the country’s independence.
With our correspondent in Dakar, Thea Olivier
Sixty years ago, the then President of the Council of Ministers was arrested for ” coup attempt “following having the gendarmerie intervene in the National Assembly to prevent the vote of a motion of censure once morest his government which he considered abusive, a turning point for the young Senegal of the time which passed from a two-headed parliamentary regime to a presidential regime dominated by Léopold Sedar Senghor.
Babacar Diop, mayor of Thiès, still remembers with emotion Mamadou Dia whom he met when he was a student and with whom he collaborated for years, before his death in 2009.
« He might no longer see at the end of his life. So I read for him and he also dictated letters to me. He was very old but he had a certain energy that he kept “, he recalls.
Born in 1910, this former teacher fought for the independence of Senegal, hand in hand, with Léopold Sedar Senghor with whom he founded the Senegalese Democratic Bloc (BDS).
Having become president of the Council of Ministers, Mamadou Dia signed the independence agreements in 1960, then shared executive power with Léopold Sedar Senghor, before the crisis of December 1962.
« Mamadou Dia was a nationalist. He was for self-managing socialism and for the economic independence of our country, unlike Senghor, who was more conciliatory and more French. So the crisis will burst and this crisis opposes two different visions “, explains Babacar Diop.
A crisis that Mamadou Dia evoked, without bitterness, with Babacar Diop recently recently elected under the colors of the opposition coalition Yewwi Askan Wi.
« He considered that the independences were a missed opportunity and followingwards, he considered that the alternation of 2 000 too was a missed opportunity. He believed that it was up to the younger generation to lead the process of emancipation of our continent “adds Babacar Diop.
Sidelined for forty years from the official history of independence in favor of Léopold Sedar Senghor, Mamadou Dia was gradually rehabilitated by the country’s new political forces.
In search of new references
As the name of Mamadou Dia returns to the political scene alongside Thomas Sankara or Cheikh Anta Diop, the question arises of his legacy in the current Senegalese political arena.
Joined by RFI, Mohammadou Moustapha Sow, teacher-researcher in contemporary African history at Cheikh-Anta-Diop University (UCAD), specializing in the post-colonial period, talks regarding the decline of the Senghorian era.
« Mamadou Dia has already started doing justice to himself by publishing several books. He returns to what happened in 1962 and gives his version of the facts. We are already entering into a memorial battle and it is a legacy disputed by a good part of the political parties. Mamadou Dia had left a party, the Movement for Socialism and Unity (MSU), then there is the party, the PASTEF [Patriotes africains du Sénégal pour le travail, l’éthique et la fraternité, NDLR] which also gives the name of its seat to President Mamadou Dia, which means that it claims all the political heritage and the course of this man as a person who embodied ethics in politics. Finally, there is the current party in power which claims, in a certain way, the political heritage of Mamadou Dia too, and then, the president inaugurated with great fanfare the building of President Mamadou Dia. It is the decline of the Senghorian era in fact. We are in a quest for new references “, he analyzes.
Read also: Mamadou Dia speaks, story of an unpublished archive
