Excerpts from the speech by Nicholas Sarkozy

“…the African man has never really entered history” 

President Nicholas Sarkozy, the new French President, has caused more waves – this time in a speech on Africa made in Dakar, Senegal on July 26^th, 2007.  Below we publish a translation of parts of the controversial speech and add some African reactions.

(This is an unofficial translation. For the full text in French click here) 

…The colonials came, and looted, helped themselves, exploited, took resources and wealth that did not belong to them. They stripped the colonised of their personalities, of their freedom, of their lands, and of the fruits of their labours. 

They took, but I would like to say, with respect, that they also gave: they built bridges, roads, hospitals, chemists, schools. They made virgin soil bear fruit, they invested their concern, their labours and their knowledge. I want to say it here: The colonials were not all thieves. The colonials were not all exploiters. 

There were bad men among them, but there were also among them men of goodwill, men who thought they were carrying out a civilising mission, men who thought they were doing the right thing. They were wrong, but some of them were sincere. They thought they were bringing freedom when they were feeding alienation. They thought they were breaking the chains of obscurantism, superstition and servitude. In fact they were forging far heavier chains and imposing a far more onerous form of servitude, one that weighed on spirits and souls. They thought they were bringing love without realising that they were sowing the seeds of revolt and hatred.

Colonialism is not responsible for all of Africa’s current difficulties. It is not responsible for the bloody wars that Africans fight against each other. It is not responsible for genocides. It is not responsible for dictators. It is not responsible for fanaticism. It is not responsible for corruption and prevarication. It is not responsible for wastage and pollution.But colonialism was an offence that was paid for by the bitterness and the suffering of those who thought they had given their all and didn’t understand why people were so angry with them about it.

Colonialism was an offence that destroyed its subjects’ self-esteem and gave birth in their hearts to that self-hatred that always ends up being turned on other people.

Colonialism was an offence but in this offence was born the embryo of a common destiny. This idea is particularly important to me.

I have come to tell you that you should not be ashamed of the values of African civilisation, that these values do not drag you down but elevate you, that they are an antidote to the materialism and individualism that enslave the modern man, that they are the most precious of inheritances in the face of the dehumanisation and homogenisation of the world.

I have come to tell you that the modern man who feels a need to reconcile himself with nature has a lot to learn from the African man who has lived in harmony with nature for millennia.

[…]

But I have also come to tell you that there are within you, youth of Africa, two inheritances, two wisdoms, two traditions that have fought each other for so long: that of Africa and that of Europe.

I have come to tell you that this split between the African and the European within you forms your ruptured identity.

I have not come, youth of Africa, to preach.

I have not come to moralise.

But I have come to tell you that the European part of you is the result of a terrible act of arrogance on the part of the West, but that this European part of you is not unworthy.

For it calls you to freedom, emancipation, justice, and equality between men and women.

For it calls you to universal reason and consciousness.

The tragedy of Africa is that the African man has never really entered history. The African peasant, who for centuries has lived according to the seasons, whose ideal is to be in harmony with nature, has known only the eternal renewal of time via the endless repetition of the same actions and the same words.

In this mentality, where everything always starts over again, there is no place for human adventure, nor for any idea of progress.

In this universe where nature is in charge of everything, a man may be free from the anxiety of history that dogs the modern man, but he remains immobile, caught in an unchanging order where everything seems as though it has already been written.

This man never projects himself into the future. It never occurs to him to break free from the repetition and invent a destiny for himself.

This, if you will allow a friend of Africa to say it, is Africa’s problem. Africa’s challenge is to enter history more fully. It is to find the force, the energy, the desire and the will to listen to and to marry her own history.

Africa’s challenge is to stop forever repeating and going over things, and to free herself from the myth of the eternal renewal; it is to realise that the golden age that she always harks back to will never return for the simple reason that it never existed.

Africa’s problem is that her present is permeated with nostalgia for the paradise lost of her childhood.Africa’s problem is that she judges the present according to a wholly imaginary notion of original purity that no-one could ever hope to revive.