Twenty-nine. November is running its last kilometers, and on its tomb will rise the first day of December. Two thousand and twenty-five is coming. Between 44 and this new year that we hope for, time will have run eighty years. December, soon, and the freshness will bite into a thousand and one skins, into a thousand and one faces. A thousand and one flames nevertheless remain biting, in millions of hearts, in millions of memories, the event of 44 always presenting gray areas. And because there is a duty of Memory and Truth, Thiaroye is discussed at the Plateau. Prime Minister’s office. Professor Mamadou Diouf. His colleagues. The historical sequence. And let no mind replay it in black and white, synonymous with French narrative. In color: coloring the event with today’s palette. Senegalese, this narrative. Because in reality, “as early as 44, it was established that it was a massacre. What happened is that we tried to put a blanket of silence around these events. There was a blackout. On December 1, 1944, no radio station talked about the event, no local newspaper talked about the event.” In Louis Mérat’s report, it will even be said this: “We must build oblivion, on this event.” And so things were done, more than half a century. But, Senegal sent its sons to France, and who will talk about the evidence of the time. This, so that the narrative of oblivion of the former colonial empire, on what it always refused to call a massacre, is overcome. Among its sons, Professor Mamadou Fall, coordinator of the General History Project of Senegal, who said the lines above. And there was Professor Rokhaya Fall. “The objectives included searching for unpublished documents, documents essential to revealing the truth about the Thiaroye massacre and answering the questions that remain, that cast a shadow, gray areas concerning this episode,” she will say. It was a lightning mission (from November 18 to 28, 2024), but it was not without results. We will hear Pr R. Fall announce that “death certificates of riflemen” were obtained. “By exploring,” she continues, “the death registers of Dakar from 45, we found many death certificates of riflemen, and I think that a thorough look and verifications are needed on these certificates.”
Faces on the shadows
The head of the mission of the experts who went to exhume, in the name of truth, what was buried by lies, made this announcement in a conference room of the Senegalese Prime Minister’s Office decorated with an image of riflemen… without faces. December 1944, and today November 2024, anonymous people wait in the ruins of history, waiting to find their identity. And what shadows, behind the table from which the sons of the country in charge of reestablishing the facts spoke! Many shadows, soon perhaps, will have faces, according to what Professor Fall reports. “The delegation was also interested in the newspapers of the time. We have iconographic funds, and newspapers such as Le Télégramme, l’Aurore reported scenes of life and the trajectory of African prisoners. These testimonies have made it possible to add a dramatic experience to the thousands of soldiers, for the most part, who have not been identified. Certain iconographic sources have made it possible to put a face to certain prisoners of war.
“The decision to commemorate is a political decision”
A successful lightning mission, and of course, work that must continue. In April, the committee officially set up by Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko will submit a white paper to the government. Also, these first steps towards a new narrative of 44 through the discovery of unpublished evidence were only possible because there was a political will at the base. Honors, to the new state authorities. “The decision to commemorate is a political decision,” said, in his introduction, Pr Mamadou Diouf. And, “choosing the commemoration of Thiaroye is indeed a double act. First element, it is an act of sovereignty. And an act of sovereignty that repositions Senegal and in the West African space and in the French empire, its history and its repercussions.” In order for one State to maintain the leaden blanket, another State’s will to lift the blanket, however heavy it may be, was imposed. History is something that becomes politicized, recalls Professor Diouf: “A State is always a historian State. The State always tries to control the narrative on its performance, on its origins, on everything that we want…” And eight decades is a long enough time to build a solid narrative system. To indulge in it, Professor Mamadou Fall will emphasize, is to inevitably run the risk of not understanding anything about what happened. Or, of only understanding what the official narrative, here French, wants to make people understand. “That is why,” explains Mr. Fall, “we bypassed the system of the Jacobin central State to go to the municipalities. And it is at this level that we found the real data that will allow us to produce our own narrative of the facts.” We: the committee, which includes Mrs. Rokhaya Fall and Messrs. Mamadou Diouf, Mamadou Fall, Saliou Ngom, Makhone Touré, Adama Aly Pam.
This coming story…
This institutional Senegal, which decides to commemorate, as well as its sons of the committee, who have begun to dig into the past, do not have thoughts only for themselves. “The choice of the current Senegalese government to commemorate is precisely the choice that also explains the new name of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is called the Ministry of African Integration and Foreign Affairs. So, Thiaroye, it is a display of the African dimension in relation to any other dimension. The second thing is that the committee will invest in the idea that we will share all the information with all the countries that have had nationals.” Perspective: “At the end of the journey, perhaps next year, certainly, the commemoration will no longer be a Senegalese commemoration.” It will be a pan-African celebration. “And this African celebration announces a story to come, and this story to come is the history of the region. This is why the committee also insists on the need to promote a program that will be a regional history program, but also a teaching program that will take into consideration this place of memory and this story of memory and history on which we are working.”
