Africa, here and now

Desire of Africa

Boniface Mongo Mboussa is a writer, literary critic and teacher. He is recognized as one of the most eminent specialists in African literature. He agreed to answer our questions on the current relationship between the West and Africa, on their differences, their common past and more generally he evokes without detour their dissensions.

The interview has been split into two parts: the first is published below, the second is accessible here.

Could you tell us a few words about your background?

In my youth, my country, Congo (Brazzaville) was of Marxist inspiration. The State sent the young people it wanted to become managers to train in the USSR and I was one of them. My acclimatization was very difficult, I had never been out of the country: climate, food, social relations, language, etc. A real culture shock. A real culture shock.

Upon arrival, foreign students were placed in villages to immerse themselves in the Russian language and culture. There always had to be an Asian, a European, a Latino and an African in each group, so there was no compatriot to hold on to.

One year, in winter, the pipes exploded, there was ice everywhere in the apartment. Put yourself in my shoes, I had just arrived from Brazzaville. And I didn't know how to walk... The Russians slide on the ice, it's a game for them. For us, it was fall after fall.

In the amphitheatre, the teacher was giving his lecture in Russian and we didn't understand anything! At the beginning, it was very hard. And then, finally, I stayed there for seven years and I had extraordinary experiences, very far from the clichés that we still hear today about Russians. For example, the cultural life was abundant and of an incomparable richness compared to Europe.

My destiny is linked to the USSR: when I arrived, Gorbachev took power and when my studies of Russian civilization were completed, the system collapsed. Just like in the Congo, where there was a war. If I had gone back there, trained in the USSR, I would have found myself with a target on my back. So I left for France and one thing leading to another I turned to comparative literature and African literature. Today, I am a professor in Paris in an American university. It's the chance of life.

Literature is a window to understanding the current relationship between Africa and the West. To what extent can it help us to better understand our African interlocutors?

The current relationship between Africa and the West is the result of a long history rooted in the memory of colonialism.

Take the example of Ahmadou Kourouma, the author of the classic novel Les Soleils des Indépendances. Kourouma knew the French colonial system very well. He went to French school and was sent to fight the Vietnamese. He is part of the generation that saw the West fall into the trap of its own universal declarations of justice for all.

When independence came, the colonial powers did not understand that their colonized could also fight for justice in the name of the same universal principles.

In reality, there is the ideal and the reality: this is one of the tragedies of the West. It is not politics, it is facts. This memory, when a Westerner goes to work in Africa, he carries it with him and it is still extremely vivid. It is also at the foundation of the post-war African novel.

And the generations of today, how do they view these relationships between the West and Africa?

The new generations have not experienced independence or the transition period, only the nationalists. The same political leaders who fought to drive the colonial powers out of Africa were sometimes more predatory to their people than the colonialists. The youth cannot forgive this. It is beyond justice because this predation affects all sectors of the daily life of many Africans.

Moreover, young people only see the West through what it projects, hence the obsession to come here. Salim Bachi wrote a novel, Le chien d'Ulysse, in which young Algerians come to the Mediterranean to satisfy their desire for France. Yet Algeria is a country in which the colonial wound is still very much alive. But young people forgive because they have seen the practices of the fathers of independence.

What does "Africa" mean? Here in France, it is used to refer to sub-Saharan Africa. We will specify "northern" to talk about the Maghreb countries.

The etymology of the word Africa is a vast subject of discussion. It would seem that "Africa" comes from "Ifriqiya", which in the Middle Ages designated a territory that today corresponds more or less to Tunisia.

How did we go from North Africa to Black Africa? I do not know. This opens the discussion to a triple African divide. In international organizations, "Africa" is all of Africa. However, the reality is different.

One day, invited by a Moroccan friend to a conference in Mali, this friend said to me: "Boniface, I am very happy to be here, it is the first time I have been to Africa. It's interesting, because this is the first cut: North Africa and Black Africa. Yet there is a long history of unity.

I take an example in relation to France: the magazine Africultures. Today, it is directed by a Frenchman, but no one remembers that it was created by an Algerian, Fayçal Chehat, inspired by the mythical "Pan-African Festival of Algiers", in 1969.

When Senghor created the negritude, there was in Dakar the "World Festival of Negro Arts", in 1966, at the time of the Algerian war. All the Blacks of the world were there. Africans were asked to choose: France (with the support of its pro-French African supporters) or chaos.

The Algerians were not in Dakar. They convened a pan-African (not "negro") festival where Africa was invited. This is where the first criticism of "negritude" was born. And Fayçal, when he arrives in Paris, it is this spirit that he wants to revive.

Africultures is still the reference source of information in France on cultural Africa, but almost everyone has forgotten Fayçal. It is a collective oblivion. History has not taken this path: Algeria and the countries of North Africa have turned to other countries, other discourses, such as pan-Arabism, to the point that this Moroccan friend no longer perceives Morocco as African.

What are the second and third cuts?

The second is Christian Africa and Muslim Africa. Africa has been Islamicized since the 11th century and Christianized since the Romans. Central Africa, exuberant, French, Christianized, does not understand that there are brothers with Arab names and vice versa.

One day, at the Malian border, a customs officer looked at my passport and said to me: "There is a mistake on your name, they wrote Mboussa (my grandfather's name) instead of Moussa". The colonial administrations had a lot of difficulty transcribing African names, so typos are common and have persisted. I told him that my name was Mboussa, but he didn't believe me. This customs officer was acting in good faith, but there is an irreconcilable misunderstanding.

The third is English-speaking Africa and French-speaking Africa. English-speaking Africa does not find itself in the "salon culture" of the French-speaking world (the fine speeches, etc.). In Anglophone Africa, there is Pan-Africanism, inspired by the ideal of Ghanaian President Kwame Nkruhmah. Pan-Africanism is concrete. In French-speaking Africa, there is negritude (all the values and civilizations of the black world): it is too broad, abstract. There, we can see the cultural shock.

So when we are here, in Europe, all that is Africa. But it is crossed by deep fault lines, there are schisms.