Farewell, Bamako

Posted on June 28, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

Last weekend my family and I left Bamako and returned to our home in eastern Pennsylvania. The process of packing up one house, traveling thousands of miles through four airports with two young children and hundreds of pounds of luggage, then setting up another house in the space of a few days has been, well, wearying. Already our time in Mali begins to seem hazy and distant, like a dream one remembers only with great difficulty.

In the weeks after Mali’s coup d’état in late March, a lot of Americans and other foreigners left Mali. Against official advice, and some official pressure, we chose to stay on. Were we right to do so? The situation in Bamako has remained generally stable, despite episodes like the April 30 “counter-coup” and the May 21 storming of the presidential palace. At no time during our ten months in Bamako were my family and I in any direct physical danger. You could say that we made the right call. But we also realize that things could have worked out very differently.

The main problem for everyone in the city, not just expats, has been uncertainty: What if food runs out? What if security deteriorates? What if troops go on the rampage? What if robberies and exactions become widespread? Fortunately, we never had to face these contingencies. So far, unless you had links to the regime of ousted President Amadou Toumani Touré, or you directly challenged the interests of the junta, they’ve left you alone.

And we’re glad we stayed as long as we did. It was important to us to leave on our own timetable rather than someone else’s, and we achieved much over the past 90 days.

Throughout the events of the last few months, I went on teaching my anthropology and development course at Bamako’s Université des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, with only a few cancelled classes. While I wasn’t able to conclude the course before our departure, I did recruit a replacement instructor to give the final lectures and administer the exam in my absence. My research on urban marriage also continued apace: in fact, I suspect I got more done in the three months of fieldwork following the coup than in the seven months preceding it. Since late March my research team conducted over a hundred interviews (nothing like the risk of sudden evacuation to make you efficient with your time!).

After trying for months, our daughter at last learned to swim across the American Club pool. (We practically had the place to ourselves since the coup.) Two weeks ago she completed second grade. My son also finished the year at his day care/preschool, having picked up a fair amount of French and made some friends in the process.

For a long time I’ve been wanting to thank the people who helped us during our time in Bamako. They are true heroes of the revolution. Almost none of them will ever read this blog, but I feel I should recognize them here all the same.

  • Bakary D., for making sure I could always find what I needed in the market.
  • Nana K. and Mohamed T., for putting us up in their home for two weeks before we found our own place.
  • Gaoussou M., Leanne C. and Megan L. at the U.S. Embassy, for guidance and support.
  • Yaya B. and Djeneba D., for organizing focus group discussions and transcribing the recordings.
  • Noumouké K., Nana T. and Bintou K., for arranging, conducting and transcribing interviews.
  • Arthur W. of Bamako International Academy, for providing a wonderful education experience for my daughter.
  • Alou D., for getting us where we needed to go.
  • Bamoussa B., Ousmane S. and Kamory K., for teaching me more aikido techniques than I ever believed I could master in ten months. Domo arigato sensei.
  • Issou D., for being a fantastic training partner, and a fine tailor too.
  • Houryata D., for introducing me to some memorable individuals who helped me think about marriage in new ways.
  • Tiemoko T., for assuring that my teaching efforts at the university were not entirely in vain.
  • Soumaila C., for logistical and legal assistance.
  • Lassine S., for friendship and thought-provoking discussions.
  • To the whole Konaté clan (of Dougabougou, Badialan, Kalaban Coura and ATTbougou) for support and kinship.

I know we’ll be back in Bamako. I just don’t know when. That will depend on how the political situation shapes up, and as I wrote last week, I just can’t predict what’s in store. In the meantime I will continue to make occasional posts to this blog, limiting myself to the backlog of material accumulated during my Bamako fieldwork. Look for that long-awaited post on the dojos of Bamako in the weeks to come….

Farewell, Bamako. Allah ka nyogon ye nogoya. We hope to see you again soon.

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90 days of disaster

Posted on June 21, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

Several weeks ago I had an e-mail exchange with an acquaintance about events in Mali. I was uneasy about the way the military had suspended the country’s existing political institutions. I wrote, “the junta’s repeated attempts to ‘push the reset button’ and start the whole state apparatus over from scratch seems to me inherently dangerous.”

“Everything in life is dangerous,” responded my interlocutor, an American who was in favor of the coup. “That’s why we’ve supported thugs like Mubarak up to the last minute. It’s getting us a bad rep around the world. Sometimes, you have to see that change is needed, support what’s possible, hope (and work) for the best.”

It’s been exactly three months since the coup d’état that ousted President Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT), Mali’s democratically elected president, just a few weeks from the end of his second and final term of office. Now seems like an appropriate time to take stock of the coup’s impact on Mali.

Let’s begin with the security situation. Captain Sanogo and the CNRDRE justified their putsch by saying that ATT’s government was mismanaging the war against northern separatist rebels, and that the army needed more support to wage its war properly. He had a point: attempts to root out the rebellion had been largely ineffective. Within days after the coup, however, the rebels drove out Malian government forces from the three large administrative regions (Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal) as well as a portion of the Mopti region. In short, the separatists got everything they’d been looking for. Three months later they’re still ruling the north and it’s unclear whether or when they will be driven out. Despite recent bluster about an imminent offensive to retake the rebel-held zone, the Malian military does not have the capacity to reunify the country on its own.

On the political front, Captain Sanogo claimed that the elections (scheduled for late April) would have led the country to “civil war.” He had a point: given the insecurity in the north, it’s not clear how elections could have been held in those regions. But Mali has now entered an unprecedented period of political turmoil characterized by institutional voids across the board; if it was unclear in March whether elections could occur, it’s even less clear three months later whether or when they might be able to take place. After a few weeks of direct military rule, the junta nominally handed over power to an interim civilian government, but it seems to continue holding sway over key areas (notably the media and the justice system), and the civilian authorities have proven either unable or unwilling to confront the junta. Many observers both inside and outside Mali now believe that the government of Prime Minister Cheikh Modibo Diarra is beholden to the coup plotters.

Economically speaking? Don’t get me started. Captain Sanogo said that ATT’s corrupt government was robbing the country blind. Maybe he had a point, but the aftermath of the coup has cost Malians far more. Mali has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in bilateral aid on which this poor, landlocked, arid country is utterly reliant. Then there’s a billion dollars worth of World Bank assistance, now suspended; the total damage to the Malian economy may amount to one and a half trillion CFA francs (about US$3 billion). The Millennium Challenge Corporation has terminated its contract with Mali, and private investors (like the multimillion-dollar Illovo sugar project that had been slated for Markala) have been swarming for the exits. Government revenues are down across the board, to the point that there’s a real danger of the state failing to pay salaries on time. The tourist sector, which had been on life support since late 2011, is now dead, and Bamako’s flagship Grand Hotel just announced it’s closing its doors. Once a fixture of international festivals and events, Mali is no longer fréquentable.

Looking back, it’s hard to see how the situation in Mali could possibly have gotten any worse than it is now if the coup had never taken place. An ATT-led government, left to its own devices, might eventually have lost the north; elections might never have happened; the economic hardships might have come about anyway. But all these things definitely did happen since Captain Sanogo and his colleagues came to power. Not to mention the added insult of the attack on Dioncounda Traoré, the country’s transitional president, who a month later is still recuperating in Paris, and undoubtedly afraid for his security should he return to Mali.

Yes, Mali was badly governed before the current crisis. Yes, its leaders were corrupt. Yes, there was a lack of political will to confront the problem in the north. As I said, maybe Captain Sanogo had a point about all these grievances. Yet the last 90 days suggest that whatever problems Mali was facing on March 21, a putsch was not the answer to them. “Sanogo’s only merit is getting two-thirds of his country occupied,” Niger’s foreign minister recently told VOA.

There was a time in Africa when a coup could be salutary. (ATT originally came to power in 1991 through one such coup: after ousting the dictator, he stayed in power just long enough to organize elections, then stepped down and stayed out of power for a decade.) But times have changed, and nowadays overthrowing a democratically elected regime, however incompetent or irresponsible it may be, cannot happen without generating serious, lasting negative consequences.

I was not a fan of ATT’s government, and like most people in Mali, I was looking forward to its end. I don’t believe the rumors, widespread here, that ATT wanted to cling to power. I never met the man, but everything I heard about him in the last year suggests he was exhausted, sick of politics, and ready for retirement. I also don’t believe the stories that the election results would have been determined in advance, that ATT had already designated his successor. Malians love a conspiracy theory, but these theories are almost always baseless.

Don’t let the relative calm of the last 30 days fool you: not only is this country still in the hole, it’s digging in deeper. I don’t know how Mali will move forward from its present impasse. And how we got to where we are today illustrates why a coup d’état is almost always a bad idea. I have to disagree with anyone who thinks this dangerous leap into the unknown was necessary, even laudable. The best way to address pressing problems is through  incremental changes, reforming existing institutions rather than overturning them. When people like Captain Sanogo lead us to bypass those institutions, most often the “remedy” they offer turns out to be worse than the disease it was supposed to cure. Mali’s last three months offer ample proof.

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A southern sojourn

Posted on June 18, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

This blog is about Bamako, but I hope you’ll indulge me now when I write about someplace else. I spent the last few days on a kind of pilgrimage, a trip to the part of Mali where I used to live but which I haven’t seen for over ten years. I’d wanted to visit months earlier, but local responsibilities kept getting in the way, then the military coup. This month, with my return to the U.S. imminent, I realized it was now or never.

So my wife, kids, our friend Soumaila and I made the 400-km trip to Sikasso in Soumaila’s uncle’s Peugeot. The trip went smoothly. There were no signs of Mali’s political crisis, and we only had to stop twice, once outside Bamako so a policeman could check Soumaila’s license, and once outside Sikasso so a soldier could inspect the trunk.

Sikasso is Mali’s second-largest city, with something like 200,000 inhabitants these days. It’s in the heart of the country’s most productive farmland, and serves as a transit point for goods entering Mali from Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire. Sikasso isn’t a touristy place: when I first went there in 1997 there was only one restaurant worthy of the name, at the Hotel Mamelon, and even there the selections were sparse. Still today this same restaurant is pretty much the only place in town where you can sit and order food from a menu. Luckily for us, this time around they had everything we ordered, and the service was faster.

Like Bamako, Sikasso has grown rapidly over the last decade, nearly doubling in population. Many other things have changed as well since my last visit. The highway from Bamako has been resurfaced and is in wonderful shape. Many of the primary arteries through Sikasso are now paved as well. The marketplace, where I used to spend much of my free time hanging out, has recently been rebuilt with an expansive central roofed area where there used to be just individual stalls and shops. And there are banks everywhere now — where the city once had four or five, a dozen different banks are now represented in Sikasso, many with multiple branches and even ATM machines. Perhaps this means  Sikasso residents have more money than before, or at least they’re keeping it in bank accounts more than they used to.

Market day in Sikasso, June 2012

After a night there we took a day trip 100 km further south to the area near Kadiolo, down near the border with Côte d’Ivoire. The highway from Sikasso to the border hasn’t been resurfaced, in fact it’s in worse shape than I remember, with many potholes along the way.

Ançar Dine road sign, near Loulouni

Even from the road I could notice a few changes. In little towns and villages like Loulouni and Sieoukourani you can now frequently see women wearing the hijab. They’re still a minority, but when I was here a dozen years ago one almost never saw a hijab outside of Bamako and regional capitals like Sikasso. And in many of these same roadside towns one sees hand-painted signs for Ançar Dine — not the Islamist group controlling much of northern Mali, but the apolitical, Bamako-based movement headed by Chérif Ousmane Haïdara. The hijabs and signs may be related phenomena.

Lofiné, the village where I spent two years of my Peace Corps service at the end of the 1990s, is in many respects the same as when I was there. The people are still poor, still proud, still working hard to get by. I took some video in the village which I hope to integrate into this post in the coming weeks.

Some things have changed. A few years ago the village undertook a lotissement or allotment process to have its dwellings laid out according to a system of grids; previously, it was a labyrinth, which villagers told me was created purposely in the old days to confuse slave raiders. From the perspective of any outsider, Lofiné was utterly illegible, to use the term in James Scott’s sense. Even after two years, I couldn’t enter the labyrinth without getting lost and having to retrace my steps. I’ll never know what it looked like from the air, but I imagine it was one of those fractal shapes like Ron Eglash has observed in villages across the continent.

Anyhow, due to the lotissement, in the last few years many of the houses were knocked down and rebuilt along a grid pattern. The compound of my jatigi or host family, for example, shifted about 15 meters to the south, which meant most of its two dozen structures had to be demolished and put up elsewhere. All this happened at most eight years ago, and yet today all the buildings, even the newer ones, look equally weathered, their adobe pale and cracked, their roofs sagging like they’ve been there forever. At least they’re legible now.

The hand pump where I used to get my water is now surrounded by solar panels powering an electric pump that is supposed to move water to various taps that have been installed around the village. Unfortunately the system wasn’t working during my visit, and the taps were dry, but maybe it represents progress of a sort.

The house built specifically for me to live in, and subsequently occupied by two other Peace Corps Volunteers, collapsed some years back. The only sign of it now is the faint outline of its walls on the ground. The latrine is still there; at least I left something behind. Oh, and there are the flamboyant trees I planted in front of my door. These are trees with no practical purpose whatsoever: you can’t use them for medicine, you can’t eat the fruits, they don’t even make much shade in the hot season. Their only redeeming feature is that their blossoms are pretty this time of year.

See that pile of firewood? That’s where I used to live.

For me Lofiné was always about the people, and I was able to see my jatigi and many of my old friends, an emotional experience after all these years. I’m glad I didn’t cry, because they would have felt embarrassed for me and told me to stop. That’s just the way people are there.

But I still felt those tears squeezing against my eyeballs, trying to get out.

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The cultural iceberg

Posted on June 12, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

In the winter of 2011 I spent an evening commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, the organization that first brought me to Mali 15 years ago. That night I joined a panel of former Volunteers — including a woman who’d taught biology in Mozambique, a man who’d taught tractor repair in Burkina Faso, and a woman who’d advised entrepreneurs in Moldova — in which we reflected on what our experience has meant to us. I shared some thoughts (an audio rendering of which is available here) on how living in Mali had changed me, and expressed a feeling of deep kinship with my fellow Volunteers, the notion that despite our different postings and duties we could instantly relate to one another. What was it, I wondered aloud, that we had in common? The woman who’d served in Mozambique spoke up: “It’s the understanding that people everywhere are the same.”

I didn’t say so at the time, but her response was not at all what I was trying to get at. Yes, in many ways we Homo sapiens are the same the world over. We love our children, we seek human fellowship, we struggle with our dreams, our limitations and our relationships. Yet what had truly marked me as a Peace Corps Volunteer was the discovery of just how differently we can perceive and experience the world we inhabit together. This discovery later led me to a career in anthropology and to the study of culture.

Last week in a conversation with some fellow expats in Bamako about Malian culture, I trotted out a trusty analogy likening culture to an iceberg: the part that’s readily apparent to the observer (e.g. dress, foodways, religious rituals, the arts) is dwarfed by the part that’s unapparent (e.g. attitudes, beliefs, obligations, the ordering of time, notions of logic and why things happen). This metaphor is a favorite of cultural anthropologists and cross-cultural trainers; if you Google “culture iceberg” you can find dozens of variations on the graphic at right.

Since first coming to Mali, I’ve dedicated my life to studying culture here, to mapping out the cultural landscape in hopes of better understanding it and helping others to do the same. And what I’ve learned is that I will never finish the task: the more I uncover, the more I realize remains to be uncovered. The “cultural iceberg” just goes deeper and deeper. I see culture not as a veneer stretched thinly over our common humanity, but as a deep-seated force causing us to see, think and feel fundamentally differently from one another.

There’s a risk whenever we talk about culture of over-generalizing and exaggerating. Anthropologists are wary of casting culture as static or timeless; three of the dirtiest words I know in the professional lexicon are essentialism, primordialism, and yes, “culturalism.” Cultural difference may be ever-present but is never all-powerful. It is shaped by humans even as it shapes us. It cannot explain things like warfare or poverty. I see far too many deterministic analyses identifying culture as the culprit behind social ills, divorced from political and economic considerations. [The book Why Nations Fail, published earlier this year by economist Daron Acemoglu and political scientist James Robinson, offers a refreshing rebuttal to such analyses.]

At the same time, it would be a mistake to write culture out of the equation too quickly when thinking about issues of governance and economic development. Here I want to call attention to four areas of cultural difference that have been especially striking since I began my Bamako fieldwork ten months ago. Let me first add the disclaimer that there’s no such thing as “Bamako culture,” let alone “Malian culture”: there are too many distinctions of language, ethnicity and regional origin for such labels to make sense. But I do think there are certain common denominators which, while not necessarily unique to this setting, must be taken into account by anyone seeking to understand events and society here.

  • In the realm of politics, as I wrote in March, a leader’s legitimacy with the population may not derive from any constitutional mandate. Even though Captain Amadou Sanogo, head of the junta that toppled democratically elected President Amadou Toumani Touré from power, has officially renounced his claim as head of state, there are a good many people in Bamako who still consider him “their” president, international opinion and Mali’s constitution notwithstanding.
  • Where gender relations are concerned, popular perceptions tend to portray sex differences as both sweeping and essential, and even portray women as vastly outnumbering men, as I wrote in January. Such perceptions can seem immune to scientific evidence. It’s not clear to me, moreover, that many people here of either sex share international donors’ stated goals pertaining to gender equality. The unprecedented backlash against President Touré’s bid to reform Mali’s family law in 2009 speaks to this fact (even if the backlash also stemmed from a cynical campaign of misinformation by leading Muslim organizations).
  • In terms of interpersonal relations, you cannot ignore the dynamic I’ll gloss as “collectivity”: people here often act and see themselves as members of groups before acting and seeing themselves as autonomous individuals. Family and caste membership have powerful influence over personal behavior. This has a lot to do with the problem of corruption, as I wrote in May. It affects relations between employers and employees, between teachers and students, and between leaders and ordinary citizens. It also had a tremendous impact on marriage, the phenomenon I’ve been researching in Bamako. When everything from one’s choice of spouse to one’s régime matrimonial (i.e., whether one’s marriage is officially monogamous or polygamous) is subject to intense discussion and negotiation not only with one’s parents but with one’s entire extended family, it becomes apparent that marriage is much more about the union of two kin groups than two individuals.
  • Finally, there’s the matter of causation — basically, what makes things happen. Success in business, politics or warfare may be attributed more to supernatural causes than natural ones. There is a whole sector of the local economy — you could think of it as the “spiritual economy” — dedicated to helping people prepare spiritually for future events, from finding the right marriage partner to getting a job or a promotion to winning an election. Politically speaking, if Malians recognize that their country’s current ills result from regional and global factors, many also wonder whether unappeased spirits could be responsible for Mali’s woes. (See the latter half of my post from late May for more on this.)

I don’t believe these or other cultural phenomena keep Mali poor, or that they make its government corrupt. But they are vital features of the local landscape that outsiders ignore at their peril. The cultural iceberg, to go back to the old metaphor, has sunk a great many ships over the years, and will continue doing so in Mali as long as people unfamiliar with this society fail to mind the iceberg’s hidden depths.

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Quiet, too quiet

Posted on June 8, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

Here in Bamako we are very thankful for slow news weeks. When seven more days go by without another attempted coup, counter-coup, violent demonstration or physical assault on the head of state, that is just fine by us.

The quiet will almost certainly not last, however. Already there are rumblings. From abroad, a special meeting of representatives of ECOWAS, the African Union, and the United Nations in Abidjan has demanded the immediate dissolution of Mali’s CNRDRE military junta, and is discussing an international military intervention under the auspices of the UN and African Union.

And there are rumblings here in Mali, where unnamed military sources cited by the Xinhua News Agency have spoken of an imminent offensive to re-take the north of the country, starting with the town of Douentza, on the southern border of rebel-held territory, “within the week.” (I’m no expert, but signaling one’s operational intentions in such detail doesn’t seem like a great idea, militarily speaking. On the other hand, what if it’s all part of a disinformation campaign to throw the rebels off balance? Or maybe that’s only what the army wants them to think….)

We’ve heard little, thankfully, from the pro-putsch political organizations (COPAM, MP22) lately. In the wake of the May 21 attack on Mali’s transitional head of state Dioncounda Traoré, which has spurred a criminal investigation of some of these groups’ leaders, they seem to be keeping a low profile. And we’ve heard no further talk of installing a “parallel government” led by CNRDRE leader Captain Amadou Sanogo, as some pro-junta groups sought to do a couple of weeks ago.

Despite calls for Captain Sanogo to quit the political scene, and despite his having signed an agreement last month to do just that, many in Bamako still suspect him of seeking to maintain his influence and power. In the last week he has been seen around town in a large motorcade with an imposing security detail. For some observers, this sends the wrong message. “As long as [Captain Sanogo] continues to parade around with an entourage appropriate only for a sitting President of the Republic, international donors will hold back from doing anything,” wrote a journalist in L’Aurore today.

Sanogo has recently paid visits to various military headquarters in Bamako and Kati. He may be trying to head off discontent among the troops by assuring them that the government will deliver on the better living conditions and pay they were promised in the early days of the coup. Again, his undertaking this mission suggests to some that the captain is still the man in charge. For one local journalist, Sanogo is “visibly pulling the strings of the Malian army.”

Over the past week Sanogo has emerged from the silence he’d kept since signing the accord with ECOWAS on May 20. In an interview with a Financial Times correspondent, he said he is done with politics, then went on to criticize Dioncounda Traoré: “This person, nobody likes him. For 20 years he was in parliament, a minister. And now we want him back?” (The captain made similar statements in a recent interview with Jeune Afrique.) No wonder people have their doubts about Sanogo’s intentions.

It doesn’t help that Mali’s civilian authorities have yet to emerge fully from the junta’s shadow. Former foreign minister and PARENA party boss Tiébilé Dramé told the same Financial Times correspondent, “The army is still in control of everything and constitutional institutions have little authority…. The state is upside down.”

Will the army definitively return to barracks and give the government of Prime Minister Cheikh Modibo Diarra free reign to run the country? Can it mount a credible challenge to the rebels controlling the north — who’ve been having their own problems lately? When will Dioncounda Traoré return from Paris where he’s been recuperating for over two weeks?

Too many questions. Not enough answers.

Update, 22:00 GMT: Here’s one positive sign in Malian civil-military relations — the military has taken down its roadblocks outside the ORTM broadcasting studios. As of today, I can confirm that for the first time in over a month, the street between the ORTM and Hotel de l’Amitié is open in both directions.

And I highly recommend this excellent article by the Financial Times‘ Xan Rice about the C.A.V. billboards that have been appearing throughout Bamako for the past 7 weeks.

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Fighting for the republic, with beats and rhymes

Posted on June 5, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

Malian society has seen unprecedented levels of tension since Mali’s northern rebellion, military coup d’état and subsequent political turmoil came to a head a few months ago. Young Malians, and young Bamakois in particular, have felt increasingly victimized by the selfishness of their elders, and in their desperation they have been easily manipulated by the same unscrupulous politicians who got Mali into such a mess to begin with.

Young people in Mali — la jeunesse, as they are glossed in French — constitute the country’s single largest demographic group: half the country’s population is age 15 or younger. Yet they have also been the biggest losers in Mali’s backward slide: dysfunctional schools, no jobs, no hope, and no way to make themselves heard in a society that too often privileges seniority over everything else.

One of the few expressive outlets available to young urban Malians in recent years has been rap. And unlike its counterpart in the U.S., rap in Mali has remained relentlessly engaged with difficult social and political questions. Never has this been more true than in the months following the coup.

Mali’s de facto partition has given rise to what may be the first made-in-Mali benefit recording, a track by rappers Amkoullel and Mylmo entitled “S.O.S.” The video, featuring French subtitles, is below; the single is available on Amazon. Proceeds are supposed to fund humanitarian aid for northern Mali.

Particularly noteworthy has been the role of a collective of rappers and activists that formed immediately after the coup. Calling themselves “Les Sofas de la République” (sofas being a Mandé name for the warriors in the army of anti-colonial resistance leader Samory Touré), these young men took time to think through their country’s crisis and their own responsibility in it. “After 20 years of democracy we were back to square one in a country without a state, without laws, without anything,” group spokesman Mohamed “Ras” Bathily lamented to me. As he expressed it,

If we elected an inept government, it’s because in the run-up to elections we weren’t interested in the credibility of the men for whom we were going to vote. Nobody was interested in their social platform, in their morality, we just wanted the cash and the t-shirts they were giving away. Even though they took advantage of our ignorance, our poverty and our vulnerability to offer us trifles, we never had this civic reflex to vote for a platform, not for a man. It was this error we made, the result of which was the election of an incompetent government, the loss of two-thirds of our territory, chaotic governance in every domain, no economy, no jobs, no health care, you see, nothing was working! So we said, “This must never happen again.” And this self-critique, this recognition of our own responsibility must lead to an active civic awareness.

Just ten days after the coup, Les Sofas de la République released a rap song and video entitled “Ca Suffit!” [“That’s Enough!”], with lyrics in Bamanan calling to account the nation’s corrupt leaders, demagogues and profiteering soldiers. It was an immediate sensation, and within 48 hours Les Sofas had over 5000 Facebook friends.

With the media attention generated by its new visibility, the group began calling press conferences and issuing statements attempting to re-frame political discourse in Bamako. After the junta suspended Mali’s 1992 constitution, Les Sofas advocated a return to constitutional rule. Bathily and another prominent Sofas member, rapper Master Soumy, both have masters degrees in law, and during the debate over what would follow the 40-day “interim period” when no elections could be properly held, they called out Mali’s political establishment for what they considered its self-interested reading of the constitution.

But it’s rap, not law, that has remained the core of Les Sofas’ approach. The group has two audiences: young people, who listen to hip-hop, and political authorities, who can be influenced indirectly by mobilizing the youth. Bathily characterized hip-hop to me as “the best way to reach the youth, who don’t read anymore, who don’t watch the TV news anymore, who aren’t cultivated but who cling to music.” This is why hip-hop is the vehicle through which Les Sofas convey their political message. The impact of the “Ca Suffit!” song and video, according to Bathily, derived

first from the melody, and then after two or three listens the message would get through, and a lot of people joined the cause. As Bob Marley said, before telling the youth what to do, speak to them in language they understand. Then you can tell them what you want to tell them. When you offer candy to a child he’ll come! Offer him some chocolate, he’ll come! And once he comes, you can tell him what you want him to do. But if you start out saying ‘Do this’ without offering anything, he’ll go to whoever’s offering some candy.

Les Sofas’ second track, released last week, is “Aw ya to an ka lafia”, meaning “Leave us in peace.” It is a direct response to the May 21 attack on President Dioncounda Traoré, denouncing the politicians who continue to squabble over power in Bamako instead of addressing Mali’s partition and the humanitarian crisis in the country’s north. [The recording below is audio only.]

Learning about Les Sofas and their mission, I’ve found it striking that this ad hoc collective of rappers, radio hosts and activists actually embodies “civil society” much more than Bamako’s plethora of local NGOs and civic associations, most of which have been thoroughly co-opted by the political elite. (This critique applies broadly across Africa, where the “civil society” paradigm has become almost meaningless.) Using consciousness-raising and mass mobilization, Les Sofas seek to uphold republican institutions and give voice to Mali’s disenfranchised young people.

“From now on we will watch to ensure that Mali will not be the victim of ideological aggression to manipulate the people, that it won’t be the victim of territorial aggression, that rebels will never again come attack Mali and occupy it, that Mali will never again be the victim of institutional aggression by the coup d’état that happened on March 22nd,” Bathily told me. “If these things have happened it’s because we failed in our civic duty. Aware of our mistake, of our irresponsibility, we’ve assumed our civic duty to defend the republic and watch over it.”

As the group expands and its membership grows, it could constitute a force to be reckoned with, perhaps even a model for grassroots activism and genuine democracy. And what helps drive its growth is the medium of hip-hop.

All of which makes me nostalgic for the days when hip-hop in America meant something more than unabashed sexism and conspicuous consumption.

Update, June 9, 17:00 GMT: An article published in the Malian press this weekend reports that the ORTM is “censoring” activist artists by refusing to air their latest videos (Les Sofas’ “Aw ya to an ka lafia” and the Amkoullel-Mylmo collaboration “S.O.S”). Apparently authorities are concerned that such messages could disturb public order. One wonders why they didn’t consider that before broadcasting the press conference announcing COPAM’s “national convention” three weeks ago….

See also an online interview with rapper Amkoullel about his single “S.O.S.”

Update, September 14, 12:00 GMT: Les Sofas have launched a new campaign, according to an article from Bamako’s Le Republicain newspaper, aimed at voter education among young Malians.

Update, December 1: Rapper Master Soumy, a founding member of Les Sofas, has released a single (maybe from a forthcoming album) entitled “Anw bee de no don,” which means “We’re all at fault.” You can read an article from a weekly Bamako arts magazine or listen to the audio online.

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Bamako’s lone pollster strikes again

Posted on June 1, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

You almost never see opinion polls conducted in Bamako. Yes, there are periodic nation-wide social surveys like the Afrobarometer, which studies attitudes toward government and the economy, and the Demographic and Health Surveys, which ask respondents about fertility, family planning and health-seeking experiences. But polls like the ones Gallup and Harris constantly use to gauge American opinions just haven’t been a part of the social and political landscape in Bamako. So if you ever wanted to know what a representative sample of people here thought of a given politician or policy, you were out of luck.

If you were like me, you often wondered: Just how well-liked is junta leader Captain Amadou Sanogo? Is he more popular among uneducated than educated people? How many people suspect France of supporting the Tuareg rebellion? These are important questions, but believe it or not, nobody knew the answers, because nobody did polls here. Not the Malian government, not the foreign donors, not the NGOs.

Sidiki Guindo, the lone pollster

Then, from the heart of Mali’s Dogon country, along came a statistician named Sidiki Guindo. Trained in Mali, Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, this young man is on a mission to use social research and statistical analysis to illuminate the pressing issues facing his country. Mr. Guindo published a poll in April 2011 that compared the popularity of several likely candidates in the April 2012 presidential election. Mr. Guindo has recently disseminated the results of another opinion poll he conducted, this time in late April of this year, when he dispatched a team of 30 researchers to interview 1100 Bamako residents. And because he felt strongly that it needed to be done, Mr. Guindo told me by phone, he funded the job out of his own pocket, something on the order of one million CFA francs (a couple thousand US dollars).

You can read the results of Mr. Guindo’s latest poll in the original French, with nice charts and analysis, but I will provide some highlights below. Remember, these data are from a month ago, shortly after the government of Prime Minister Cheick Modibo Diarra was installed and just before the “counter-coup” of April 30/May 1st.

  • Asked “Are you satisfied that [President Amadou Toumani Touré or] ATT’s regime ended before even organizing elections?”, 64% of respondents reported that they were satisfied.
  • Asked “Who is responsible for dividing Mali in two?”, 51% of Bamakois blamed ATT and his government, about 26% blamed the rebels, and 12% blamed Captain Sanogo.
  • Asked “Are you satisfied with the return to constitutional rule?”, 75% of Bamakois responded positively.
  • Asked “Are you satisfied with the composition of the new government?”, 80% responded positively.
  • Asked “Should Dioncounda Traoré continue as president after the 40-day interim period?”, 52% of Bamakois said he should remain in office, 43% said he should be replaced, and 5% were indifferent.
  • Asked “Should the situation in the north be resolved through force or negotiation?”, 54% opted for force versus 45% for negotiation.
  • 66% of respondents saw ECOWAS as helping Mali fight the rebellion, 27% saw ECOWAS as neutral, and 6% saw ECOWAS as aiding the rebellion.
  • 39% of respondents saw the USA as helping Mali fight the rebellion, 51% saw the USA as neutral, and 9% saw the USA as aiding the rebellion.
  • 15% of respondents saw France as helping Mali fight the rebellion, 30% saw France as neutral, and 55% saw France as aiding the rebellion.
  • The three most popular figures on the national political scene were Prime Minister Cheick Modibo Diarra (78% favorable rating), former prime minister and presidential candidate Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (76% favorable rating), and Captain Amadou Sanogo (65% favorable rating).
  • The three least popular figures were Amadou Toumani Touré (29% favorable), Oumar Mariko (26%) and Modibo Sidibé (26%).

I know what you’re thinking: Isn’t this poll too good to be true? Can we really expect an altruistic statistician to sound out public opinions that governments and private agencies have been either unable or unwilling to measure themselves? Does Mr. Guindo really know what he’s doing? Could he have some hidden agenda?

Given what we don’t know about Mr. Guindo, it may be wise to take these polling data with a grain of salt. And yet they seem plausible, if only because they show Bamakois to be closely divided on key questions (e.g. who should be president, or how to respond to the northern rebellion). Also quite plausibly, they show Bamakois to be highly critical of the ousted ATT government.

A few days after the March coup d’état, I wrote about local perceptions of political legitimacy and the fact that a legal mandate appeared to be neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a leader to be perceived as legitimate in the eyes of Bamakois. In revealing the broad public support for the coup and the conduct of its leaders, as well as  overwhelming public disapproval of ATT’s rule, this poll — if it’s accurate — would confirm the preliminary impressions I sketched out then.

Whatever the merits and faults of Mr. Guindo’s work, we can hope that it blazes a trail for more social research to come, conducted by concerned Malians and extending to all regions of the country. If Mali is to get its democracy back on track, having a reliable way to measure public opinion — something those of us in the developed world take for granted — will be a valuable tool.

Correction: An earlier version of this post described the April 2011 poll as predicting a victory by Modibo Sidibé in the 2012 presidential elections; in fact Sidibé was only identified as the most popular of the candidates belonging to the ADEMA party, none of whom however was the most popular choice among those polled.

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Corruption is for everyone!

Posted on May 30, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

Maybe this is a good sign: For the first time in months, it’s been a slow news week in Bamako. President Dioncounda Traoré is still in Paris for medical treatment, junta leader Captain Amadou Sanogo has not made a public statement or appearance in ten days, and the only major political event that was supposed to happen recently — a march in support of Dioncounda Traoré and Mali’s internationally brokered transition process — was called off yesterday after religious leaders asked the organizers to postpone it. The investigation of last week’s attack on Dioncounda in his office has made some progress. The city has been calm.

In a previous post I wrote about how corruption in Mali is not limited to the nation’s politicians. By way of illustration I’d like to offer some excerpts from a humorous series of e-mails sent by Oumar, a Malian construction engineer, trained in the USSR who also spent several years working in New York City. His anecdotes, written in French leavened with bits of English, Russian, Bambara and Songhoi, reveal just how widespread the problem is: the rules are there, but nobody wants to follow them, and God forbid you should ever try to have them enforced. There’s only one rule people respect: Never say “No” to your relatives!

The following is my translation of Oumar’s words.

i worked as an inspector for the New York City School Construction Authority. In truth i never saw anything extraordinary that couldn’t be done in Mali. Maybe 70% of the architects and engineers were from East Bloc countries, India or China. Who would have imagined that 80% of the masons would be Pakistanis? What i got out of it was especially the sense of responsibility, respect for human life and working conditions, in a word workplace safety.

A construction site in Bamako
(NOT the one Oumar writes about here)

Naturally when i became a construction coordinator in Mali i wanted to bring some of these basic rules with me. And therein lies my problem today: starting at my work site, which employs close to 2000 workers daily, i asked all the contractors to supply hard hats, steel-toed boots and gloves, at least to those at risk. After a two-month battle i succeeded. Imagine my surprise the next day to find all the hard hats lying on the ground, supposedly because the workers felt too hot in them. A month later, all the hard hats, boots and gloves were stolen.

Nevertheless, i managed to get the contractors to use safety nets to protect workers against falls from the upper floors, and harnesses to attach to the scaffolding. Then the harnesses and nets were stolen.

Now we’re doing the wiring. Even with a 4-km fence around the work site, every day we catch two or three people stealing concrete and wire. They are family men, heads of households. To think that we’re building a public facility for all of Mali’s children!

You can hire a mason at 8 a.m., by 10 a.m. he’s gone because you’re paying him 4000 francs [US$8] per day; meanwhile someone called him with a 25000-franc, 6-day contract that pays 10000 francs in advance and he leaves without even telling you. On the 6th day he comes back through the same channel that recommended him to you in the first place, a relative of yours, or maybe your boss. That’s the problem.

What really hurts me is this: two weeks ago a colleague who’s in workplace safety tells me to check out his job site. Around noon i show up and find a 10-year-old child working on an upper floor without any protection. I grab him by the collar and go to kick him off the site, but at the gate i run into my friend who intervenes. “Are you crazy?” he asks me. “It’s already noon, let him at least finish the day.” “What if he falls off the building at 3:45?” i ask. “Let us take care of it, we’re in Mali, not America,” he says. i can hear the worker insult me as he climbs back up the stairs.

You want to hear more? Several months ago a cousin calls me up. After the usual greetings she asks if i can get a job for her little brother, a construction technician. So off we go, i entrust him to a contractor, and a month later the contractor tells me “Your nephew is really great.” He is working long hours, even weekends. The next day i congratulate my cousin and say Listen, on work sites, there’s everything, construction materials, drugs, women, especially theft, you do the math; as soon as you have a problem come see me. But i might as well be talking to a sack of concrete.

Ba-da-bing, one evening in Ramadan as i’m getting ready to break the fast my phone rings, it’s the site supervisor saying Kodjougou Kera [a bad thing happened], we just caught your cousin red-handed stealing wire, but don’t worry i’m going to handle everything. Two minutes later he calls back to say The boss just showed up and i can’t help you. i phone the boy’s sister to let her know, then switch my phone off.

Long story short, i have to pay 250 000 francs [US$500], the value of what he admitted to stealing, plus another 75000 francs to get his motorcycle back from some masons to whom he owed money, so his sister could rest easy.

If you think i am done with it, wait till you hear the end. So three days later, my phone rings again and it’s my cousin who says Let me put my husband on. He says Tell your contractor friend that maybe he’s head of a business, but i’m head of a brigade of gendarmes, and if he doesn’t take the boy back at work, the day one of his relatives winds up in my custody he’ll have to deal with me.

Is he saying this because he really thinks it, or to impress his wife?  alla houma yalam  i give up

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Blessings and curses

Posted on May 25, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

The power went out in our neighborhood around 10:30 this morning — a noteworthy occurrence, since blackouts have become quite rare in the last month (though apparently the problems at EDM, the state electrical utility, are far from over). The power was still out a couple of hours later when I went to Friday prayers near the Badalabougou market with my friend Lassine. We sat sweating in the sweltering mosque and listened to the imam deliver his wajilu, his Friday sermon.

I don’t usually pay much attention to the sermons. While I can get the gist of them, to be honest my Bamanan isn’t good enough to help me follow the finer theological points, so I tend to tune them out. But a few minutes into today’s wajilu I heard the imam utter the word CEDEAO (“sedeyawu“), the French acronym for the Economic Community of West African States.

Now I was interested. Why was the imam talking about ECOWAS in his sermon? This is a preacher who often urges parishioners in general terms to join together and work for unity, and to overcome petty differences. But I had never heard him venture into such explicitly political territory before. It soon became clear that he was coming out in full support of the agreement signed last weekend between ECOWAS and Mali’s military junta, the CNRDRE. Mali’s leaders and ECOWAS would never advocate anything that was against the nation’s interests, he said. He condemned the recent disturbances in Bamako and admonished us not to follow those who seek to destabilize the country.

(This last was probably a reference to diehard opposition leader Oumar Mariko, who is persisting in his bid to make the CNRDRE’s Captain Amadou Sanogo the new president of Mali. The fact that Sanogo has completely ignored this campaign is further evidence that Mariko inhabits his own parallel universe, where the March 22 coup d’état was actually a people’s revolution that will finally usher in the dictatorship of the proletariat.)

No sooner was the sermon concluded than the power came back on, and we were able to finish Friday prayers under the draft of ceiling fans. It was as though the imam’s words had the power to cool our hearts.

From the international news media one often hears about firebrand imams throughout the Muslim world using their pulpits to whip their congregations into a political frenzy. In Bamako, however, I rarely hear imams address overtly political topics in Friday sermons. Which made the Badalabougou imam’s message this afternoon all the more powerful.

Outside of worship services, religious figures have been playing significant and generally responsible roles throughout Mali’s political crisis. They have repeatedly held public inter-faith prayers for peace. They have organized humanitarian aid convoys to help those suffering in Mali’s rebel-held northern regions. They have condemned violence and called for dialogue. At a time when political authorities are severely distrusted, various religious leaders have been suggested as neutral figures to lead the transition. Monsignor Jean Zerbo, the Catholic Archbishop of Bamako, recently had to disassociate himself from an effort to draft him as transitional president. That his name could receive serious consideration in a country where perhaps five percent of the population is Christian attests to the ecumenical nature of Malian society.

Then there was the recent visit to Captain Sanogo by the Chérif of Nioro, head of an influential Sufi brotherhood known as the Hamalliyya. We can only speculate on the nature of this private visit, but many Malians are convinced that the Chérif persuaded the junta leader to abandon his political ambitions and to sign the agreement with ECOWAS. If this is true, the Chérif rendered an inestimable service to his country by achieving something legions of diplomats and politicians from across the region had failed to do.

Popular interpretations of political events here often contain a spiritual element. The belief in djinn — immortal creatures inhabiting the invisible world — is widespread here. People don’t necessarily situate these beliefs within an Islamic context; they may also be associated with what are locally known as “traditional religions.” Djinn are thought to exist everywhere but may have special affinity for specific places. (One Malian friend recently revealed to me that his workplace, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bamako office, is full of djinn.) Mortals may need to placate a djinn linked to a particular locale from time to time with ritual offerings, in order to “stay on its good side.”

Lately on Bamanan-language radio we’ve been hearing some analysis that Mali’s current woes, from the northern rebellion to the coup d’état to the violent demonstrations that rocked Bamako this week, are the result of failing to assuage certain local djinn. Effectively, the city (perhaps the whole country) has been cursed by offended spirits. Representatives of Bamako’s founding families have reportedly met with leading marabouts (mystic specialists, most often working at least partially within the framework of Islamic beliefs and scriptures) and political figures to ascertain which djinn must be placated and how. Many Bamakois believe that as soon as the djinn are properly taken care of, everything else will fall into place. Such beliefs fit with a longstanding pattern of thought here that human events are driven primarily by invisible forces, with their proximate, visible causes being merely of secondary importance.

Malians often hesitate to speak of such beliefs, and in truth I hesitate to write about them because of the way they can exoticize and mystify culture and society here. But I don’t think beliefs in djinn, or in baraka (the blessings conveyed by holy figures), even though they’re quite common, mean Malians perceive of their problems solely on a supernatural register. The world of the invisible is a parallel world that can influence the visible world, but does not always do so.

As for me, I’m hoping that Oumar Mariko and his band of unruly spirits continue to ensconce themselves in their own parallel world, leaving the world inhabited by the rest of us in peace. Though we may need to go placate them every now and again.

Update, Monday, May 28: A long piece published in Info Matin today discusses the question of spirits that need to be placated in and around Bamako, and their role in the nation’s current political crisis.

Update, Friday, Nov. 30: Bamako newspaper La Nouvelle Patrie writes that one of Bamako’s best-known clerics, Cherif Ousmane Madani Haïdara, interceded with the Kati-based junta on multiple occasions following the coup to obtain the release of political prisoners and obtain financial support for the wives of soldiers arrested by the junta.

Update, March 25, 2014: Another Malian editorialist, writing in Tjikan, suggests that all of Mali’s misfortunes in recent years may be due to overeager religious leaders seeking to invoke curses upon political leaders whose positions they oppose. “According to certain traditionalists we approached, Power is a creation of God. For whatever reason, it does not like for leaders to be humiliated, let alone cursed,” he writes, hinting that the country’s luck might turn if these same religious leaders returned to the site of their original sins (the Stade du 26 Mars, where they took part in mass political rallies) to seek divine forgiveness.

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The shamed and the shameless

Posted on May 23, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

After Monday’s chaotic events, God sent the rains Tuesday morning to cool Bamakois’ heads and calm their spirits. It started around 4 a.m. just as the first calls to fajiri prayer were ringing out across the city, and built quickly to a heavy downpour punctuated by lightning and booms. After an hour or two it gradually tapered into a steady drizzle that lasted for four hours, until the morning commute was over. God kept sending down rolls of thunder every few minutes just to remind us He was serious.

Bamako remained calm throughout the day on Tuesday, and people heeded the prime minister’s admonitions from the night before not to demonstrate or march. There were no roadblocks or protests in town. Shops and banks were open, and traffic was more or less normal. Bamakois went about their business.

Their main topic of conversation, of course, was the beating of President Dioncounda Traoré on Monday afternoon. I don’t know anyone who actually likes or would vote for Dioncounda. But I didn’t speak to anyone yesterday who wasn’t upset about what happened to him. In fact everybody was downright ashamed. Ashamed that an old man would get knocked out by young hooligans in his own office. Ashamed that unscrupulous politicians have fanned the flames of Bamako’s already heated political discourse to the point where something like this could happen. Ashamed that Mali, which used to be an example in the region — of stability and calm, at least, if not meaningful democracy — has now become just another dysfunctional African country, the sort you keep hearing about in the international news media for all the wrong reasons.

Starting late on Monday, condemnations of the beating came fast and furious from Mali’s political class. I didn’t hear anyone defend it, although notorious firebrand Oumar Mariko, whose Kayira radio network had been urging listeners to mobilize against Dioncounda and a nefarious ECOWAS plot to take away Mali’s sovereignty, told the BBC French service the whole thing was the fault of ECOWAS for putting Mali into this situation by “imposing” Dioncounda as president.

Mariko and his political allies in COPAM (the Coordination des Organisations Patriotiques du Mali) went ahead with their “sovereign national conference” yesterday, refusing to recognize Dioncounda as president and concluding the two-day session by naming junta leader Captain Amadou Sanogo as Mali’s new president. This act, coming on the heels of a long-awaited agreement getting Sanogo out of politics, speaks to the shamelessness of COPAM’s leaders and the stubborn ignorance of its members. And it further strengthens an old maxim of mine: beware of any organization that has the word “patriot” or “patriotic” in its name. How on earth can COPAM claim to speak on behalf of all the Malian people — to declare its meeting “sovereign”? I’ve never met any of its members (though a few of the more intellectual among them are active on the Malilink e-mail forum), and don’t know anyone who supports its radical agenda. Then again, I tend not to hang out with hot-headed young men….

The hope among Bamakois now is that their current shame will cause them to reflect on their situation and to pull back from the abyss. If this dynamic gathers strength, it can marginalize the radical voices and help build some kind of consensus at the center. Wednesday is shaping up to be another hot day, but perhaps cool heads will prevail.

Update, 1900 GMT: The day was calm, but a COPAM rally at Modibo Keita Stadium — in which, it was rumored, the coalition was going to “swear in” head putschist Amadou Sanogo as Mali’s new president — was reportedly dispersed by security forces not long ago.

The BBC now reports that Dioncounda has flown to Paris for medical tests.

Thursday, 1300 GMT: In fact yesterday’s rally at the stadium was never “dispersed,” but it appears that attendance fell far short of the organizers’ expectations. ORTM news broadcast footage from the rally Wednesday evening, showing probably fewer than 1000 people clustered in the middle of the stadium’s western stands, surrounded by empty seats. It seems there was some disagreement between COPAM and Oumar Mariko’s MP22 movement as to whether the meeting should be called off. In any event, the most important invitee, Captain Sanogo, was a definite no-show. Which didn’t prevent those present from swearing him in anyway.

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