Ousmene Sembene: Voltaicas (Voltaïques),
Editorial Arte y Literatura, La Habana, 1976, pp. 7-18

Preface

David González López 

  
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
 

He had to overcome, indeed, a considerable number of stumbling blocks. Having been born in 1923 in a town of the south of what we know today as Senegal, Ousmene Sembene was only able to attend school until he was thirteen. A life which was to be intense with experiences and a rigorous discipline in self-teaching, would remedy the shortcomings that would have been, for others, an insurmountable obstacle on the path to intellectual improvement. 

During World War II, he fought on the side of the Allies in Europe (“Because it was necessary to defend France, well, I went to defend it”, Sembene has said.) We immediately recall the characters of his film Emitai, who resist being dragged into a war which they do not understand.) At the end of the conflict he returned to his country, but shortly thereafter again traveled to France, following the footsteps of thousands of migrants who looked up to the colonial power in their quest for the economic possibilities that the colony could not offer them. 

For ten years he worked in one of those few “possibilities” open to Africans in France: he was a docker at the port of Marseilles. He was practically an adult that he completed his knowledge of French, a language in which he would write his literary works and his first movie scripts. 

But living close to an abundant and increasingly politicized proletariat, he acquired something more precious still: the awareness of the true mechanisms of capitalist exploitation and of social change. Sembene became a militant of the Confédération Génerale du Travail (CGT, French workers’ union) and of the French Communist Party.

Endowed with the additional package of knowledge that he acquired in these positions, in his spare time he sought in literature the vehicle to give a visible form to his conclusions about society and the actions of the men who compose it. In 1956, he published his first novel in Paris, Le docker noir (The Black Docker), succeeded, the following year, by O Pays, mon beau people! (Oh, Country, My Beloved People!), which tells the story of a Casamanzan (a man from the region where Sembene was born) who fought in the French army. In this novel, through the character of a new type of politicized African, Sembene questions the institutions constructed by the colonial power and attacks the immobility of the established order, as well as religion when used to promote idleness and apathy.

Although from one work to the other an unquestionable leap with respect to quality can be noted, it will not be until his following books that Sembene will occupy a prominent place in contemporary African literature. It is important to point out, however, that ever since his first two works, Sembene poses a strong class problematic in an African context, an outstanding fact in the fiction of a continent which  –- this must be borne in mind — did not count more than a handful of independent countries at the time.

Les bouts de bois de Dieu (God’s Bits of Wood ), published by this very publishing house in 1975 for Cuban readers, had seen the light in 1960, the year in which a large number of countries of West and Central Africa –- Senegal included — got rid, at least formally, of the colonial yoke; it is also the year when Sembene returns to Africa. The novel is a fresco, one we could almost label as epic, of Senegalese society. Although the plot is circumscribed to the heroic struggle of the workers of the Dakar-Niger railroad in 1947-1948, Sembene does not stop short after revealing the historical meaning which those developments had for every colonial territory. Aware of the relative level of “development” of his country with respect to neighbouring colonial territories, on the eve of the political independence of a large portion of Africa, he directs his attention towards certain conflicts which would become more acute or which would acquire a renewed importance with this new political status. It must not be forgotten that the activity of its ports, its railroads and the incipient, small industries of Senegal turned this country into a showcase of the colonial power, and gradually gave rise to a proletariat with which a new outlook on things would emerge.

By the way, the African Party for the Independence of Senegal, founded in 1957 on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and following the line of the international communist movement, was the first inter-territorial political party of the former French colonies to decidedly propose the independence of said colonies. Together with that vanguard, the country also contained a number of remnants of a feudal character, slavery, primitive community plus other forms of underdevelopment superimposed by colonization. It is precisely this panorama, with its marked contrasts, but in which the new Africa can also be detected, which Ousmane Sembene unravels in his novel.

But upon his return home, Sembene has to work out the solution to another problem: his communication with the masses. Indeed, he faced the same difficulty that almost every other African writer experienced, the issue of language. In order to publish, he must write in the language inherited from the colonial master, which is neither his own native tongue nor that of the majority of his compatriots. One of the means wo which he would resort in order to overcome this dilemma will be cinema. He leaves home for the USSR, as a scholarship student, in order to become one of the founders of cinema in black Africa. He makes his two first short-length films in 1963 and 1964. His urge to communicate with his public in a more direct way (“It was by militantism that I reached the cinema”, he has said) and his marked sense of image will turn him, from the very first instant, into an accomplished and direct filmmaker.

Nevertheless, his endeavor faces multiple obstacles. In order to have an idea of the situation of cinema in black Africa, one must consider the fact that the public of those countries is subjected to a gradual process of submission to ignorance through films specially “selected” for the “natives” by the two French firms that control almost all the dissemination of cinema productions in the region. The movies of African producers are scantly profitable and subjected to high taxes. On the other hand, they are also prone to a more rigorous censorship than that of books in certain neo-colonial countries, because they reach a wider public and constitute, as Sembene himself has rightly pointed out, an art that is more accessible to the immediate understanding of the problems of the African peoples for the radical transformation of their situation. Sembene, occasionally harassed by the severe censorship of his movies, continues to combine films and literature and even in many instances he takes to the big screen the plots that he has previously worked on in his stories or novels, in order to assure them a wider dissemination.

In 1962, Sembene publishes Voltaïques: nouvelles. The book opens with a short story and a simple plot, “Devant l’histoire” (“Vis-à-vis history”), which presents two different groups of characters in front of the box office of a movie theater in which Sampson and Delilah, “an historical film” is being presented. (Whoever has seen the film Cabascabo, by the Nigerian Umaru Ganda, will remember that, in one of its rare dialogues, a woman replies to the question about what she has seen at the movies, she replies: “Day before yesterday, a police movie; yesterday, a western; and today, Sampson and Delilah”. It seems that the latter was a true scourge for West African spectators.) A young, well-to-do, “cultured”, westernized couple struggles with the dilemma of whether to see the worthless movie designed to subject the masses to ignorance, or looking for some other more exclusive but boring entertainment. On the other hand, the mass of the people, a simple spectator of the small drama facing the characters, either line up to see Sampson and Delilah without any fuss, and subject themselves to its negative and mesmerizing influence, or they go, without any contradiction whatsoever, on a quest for their own roots, singing Soundiata or listening to a kora being played by a local musician.

The important thing is that the couple in question, being a part of the “enlightened” petty bourgeosie, can no longer enjoy neither the stupid lethargy caused by the ideological drug, nor the cultural roots which they themselves have severed. They have lost their balance, and with the growing distance which they take from the people, their possibilities of recovering it gradually diminish.

In “Un amour de la Rue Sablonneuse” (“A love of Sablonneuse Street”) a symbolic story is told about a happy street –- or a city, or a country -— whose world outlook, of an almost primitive simplicity, is disarticulated by the inrush of negative elements, characteristic of certain contemporary African societies. The love story which functions as a superficial plot, and which, because of its simplicity, recalls African legends of love, has no room in a world whose values have been upset. The previous relationships among the locals, who had until then ignored the existence of irreconcilable contradictions, disintegrate, and Sablonneuse Street becomes ‘the saddest in the world.”

With “Prise de conscience” (“Becoming Aware”), Sembene attacks an endemic evil in many recently independent countries in which a new links dependency and exploitation has been established: opportunism. This is the case with certain union leaders who, at the time of the anti-colonial struggle, played an important role. With the establishment of new and feeble independent states they accommodated themselves to the game of neo-colonial interests and ruling cliques bent on perpetuating them. It is a favorable moment for certain leaders to become corrupt, as they are satisfied, for the time being, with the granting of political independence.

Some African governments have gradually subordinated workers’ unions to their interests, thereby weakening their role as an instrument of class struggle. In this task, they count on the help of the manipulated unions in various developed capitalist countries who finance the union leaders of underdeveloped countries addicted to their interests, constructing buildings for the unions and providing “assistance” in organizational and technical matters. That is how opportunism is disseminated inside the workers’ movement in recently liberated countries.

The young states also undergo protracted political, economic or social crises, susceptible to being used by governments to justify unkept popular promises or sometimes the persecution of leaders who recall them.

Ibra, “hope of the workers’ world”, as Sembene ironically calls him, is one of those negative and achieved specimens. He had been an important union leader who displayed positive actions during the anti-colonial struggle. Now he has now fused with recently implanted neo-colonialism. He has his car, his weekend house, his bank account which increases thanks to his sinecures; his vacations in France, his relations at the highest level (with people who would not have dared mingle with him previously). At this stage, the masses, still lack the required amounts of force and organization, although they begin to gain awareness of the treachery which has affected their interests, still subordinate themselves to his anti-worker maneuvers.

But there is also Ibra’s antagonist, Malic, the grassroots union leader who does not back down in the struggle against the sold-out union leader, even when they accuse him of being a subversive element and threaten him with jail. Malic is the true hope of this world that Sembene so vividly depicts because he has experienced it and knows well its shining aspects as well as its shadows.

If, when presenting a negative character such as Ibra, Sembene resorts to his slight of a woman, after “Becoming Aware” he includes three stories in a row (“La mère” –“The Mother”—, “Ses trois jours” –“Her Three Days”— and “Lettres de France” –“Letters from France”—) which are a virtual chant to women. Whoever has read Sembene’s works, or seen his films, will not be surprised by the importance reserved to women in Voltaïques. It is because, for his purpose of upholding the banner of the oppressed, Sembene dedicates a special attention to those who are exploited twofold, and in that condition become –once the moment arrives— two-fold struggling individuals, twice victorious over exploitation.

With “La mère”, written in the style of African epic poems sung about heroes, Sembene reaches a note that leads him to conclude the story with a chant to the world’s exploited individuals and to the mothers who gave birth to them.

In “Ses trois jours”, we are shown all the psychological complexities of the reflections, the varying states of mind and the longings of a woman who is ready to welcome the husband she shares with three other wives (we must keep in mind that the Senegalese are predominantly Muslim) for the three days of life together which polygamy grants her. This is perhaps the most “human” story among this collection; the characters as well as the –- frequently atavistic — relationships between them, are depicted in such a realistic way that this tale could be taken as a magnificent document containing information about customs if it were not also a work endowed with a moving psychological fineness and a compelling call to action. Another achievement in this story is the way in which the narration moves slowly along with the same tempo which the leading character painfully suffers, up to the sudden dénouement, the slow passing of “her three days”.

“Lettres de France” is an epistolary story. It contains a succession of letters written to an African friend by a young woman who has traveled to France in order to marry a man whom she has only seen in a photograph which her father showed her. Upon her arrival in France (just as it happens to so many immigrants who clash with the reality of a country that they only know through sceneries depicted on post-cards), the young woman discovers that her husband hardly resembles what she had imagined from the photo. It is only through the friendship and the support extended to her by a young migrant, an African workers’ union activist, that the individual, lost in the thicket of an alien country, can be saved by a return to Africa.

This story also affords us a glimpse into the life of African migrants, their unemployment, their juggling acts in order to survive, their work in the unions; their contacts with groups of migrants from other countries and with progressive metropolitan workers, issues which are characteristic of workers in exile. Here, an idea always present in Sembene is once again repeated: in spite of the fact that the world changes, and that African ways of thinking could not have been the same yesterday as it is today. This is because not even Africa remains the same, and so the elderly deserve the esteem of the younger generations.

In this tale, the only reference to date is afforded by the referendum of 1958, shortly after De Gaulle’s access to power and the inauguration of the Fifth Republic in France. It is the time when a proposal is put to the colonial populations for them to accept the integration into a new type of “community”, with close links of “cooperation”, between the colonial power and the former “Overseas Territories” of the moribund “French Union”. In exchange for a renunciation to complete and immediate independence the referendum is offered as an alternative option. Only the voters of Guinea, thanks to the active efforts displayed by the Democratic Party of Guinea to make Africans aware of the real issues, favored the “NO”. In a few days, France withdrew all her firms from this territory, and independent Guinea was subjected to a ferocious blockade for having opted for independence. In the other territories, Senegal included, basically due to fear of French reprisals, the integration into the new community proposed by Paris was approved, but the experiment would be short-lived.

The mention of the referendum is not unimportant, because what is being debated around it is precisely the possibility of some kind of “special” linkage between the metropolitan power and its colonies. At the same time, Sembene’s story has to do with the practical impossibility of an African individual adapting to the life usually reserved in France for his/her co-nationals.

If the protagonist of “Lettres de France” manages to save herself, that of “La noire de…” (“Black Girl”) perishes, smashed by the type of life she lives in the “mother country”, from which she has no possibility of escaping. This young black girl has gone through both stages of exodus for the population of colonies and neo-colonies: from the countryside to the city; from the city to traveling abroad. But whereas the protagonist of “Lettres de France” keeps in contact with her migrant compatriots, that of “La noire de…” has no links with them and cannot write to her relatives back home. Deprived even of her name (that the French are incapable of pronouncing), she is damned. After her story we find a poem about the secular exploitation of Africans and the approaching re-encounter of their total freedom.

Sembene put “La noire de…” to film in 1966. It was the first African full-length fiction film and it received numerous international awards.

Between “Lettres de France” and “La noire de…”, Sembene offers us three short stories full of humor and irony in which he attacks the manipulation of religion to cover up dubious purposes: in “Communité” (“Community”), in order to facilitate the exploitation in a relationship between unequal parties (although, of course, the blind faith demanded of the weak party by the strong party is a metaphor of the proposals that the metropolitan power –- the Mecca — puts to the consideration of the colonized in 1958); in “Mahmoud Fall”, with the objective of robbing the poor faithful; and in “Souleiman”, for the purpose of masking a voracious senile lust.

In “Chaiba”, a few strokes suffice for Sembene to paint before us the portrait of an Algerian through which he renders, once again, his view of the exploited proletariat which, in spite of its condition, has not lost its sensibility nor its capacity to stand up way beyond the limits which its physical aspect seem to indicate.

While this book opens with a scene which contrasts the different attitudes of two diverse and antagonistic social classes vis-à-vis the cultural manifestations of various origins, it closes with a story that presents a group of popular youths, or of young intellectuals close to the people, who are searching for the meaning and the roots of their culture. In “Voltaïques”, Sembene digs deeply into the origin of tribal marks, those scarifications that the “big ladies” from the bourgeoisie now go take off in France by subjecting themselves to plastic surgery. The allegory takes on its full meaning when the youngsters discover that their ancestors began to slash their faces and bodies since they refused to submit to slavery.

Following Voltaïques, Sembene published, in 1964, L’Harmattan (The Harmattan), a work in which he evokes the campaign around the 1958 referendum in an African country. In 1958 Vehi Ciosane ou blanche genèse suivi du Le Mandat (Vehi Ciosane or White Genesis, Followed by The Money Order) appears. Three years later, Sembene took The Money Order to the big screen, and this was first African full-length fiction film in color and spoken in an African language (ever since, it is not frequent to see an African full-length movie in a non-African language), which also received several international awards. In 1971 he filmed Emitai. Both films have been screened in Cuba, in cinemas as well as on television, in recent years.

In 1973 he published his novel, Xala, that he brought to film the following year. Xala means “temporary sexual impotence”. In the plot, Sembene strikes hard at Third World bourgeoisies who, after having struggled against colonialism in the past, constitute themselves, after independence, into “impotent” classes who can do no more than imitate the patterns of behavior of Western bourgeoisies.

For some years now, Sembene occupies a part of his time by collaborating with the Senegalese review Kaddu (Opinion), edited in Wolof, language spoken by 80% of the Senegalese peoples.

Summing up, Sembene Ousmane is an intellectual whose works are impatiently expected by the public. And this is due to his political clarity, which always induces him to point to the most pressing problems faced by Africans. In his analysis of the distresses affecting recently independent countries, he has the advantage of counting on a powerful weapon of knowledge, and in the way of expressing his conclusions, he can also count on a literary sensibility that is only surpassed by his will to transmit his ideas to the widest possible auditorium. On one occasion, he said:

“There are many African writers whom I admire, but their works speak about a timeless Africa. They have written good things, but, for me, they are not vanguard writers.”

And the fact is that, when he writes or films, Sembene always places himself close to the problems of his time, and on the side of those who know to what extent a community of cats and mice is no more than a utopian construct.