Ousmane Sembène: The Making of a Militant Artist

8 “Here We Come, Marshal!”

58 When Pétain, premier of Vichy France, announced the Armistice on June 16, 1940, the colonies received this news as a big letdown, especially in Senegal, the most French of all. People had mixed feelings about this turn of events, and there was a great deal of incredulity, and even shame, involved. France, “Mother of the Arts, Arms and the Law”1 was now under the yoke of Nazi Germany, that “embodiment of absolute Evil.” The rhetoric of imperialist conservatism had hit its mark. Ousmane Sembène, who refused to chant the “Marseillaise,” was not the type to be easily deluded into believing that his ancestors had blue eyes. But as Maurice Fall rightly pointed out to me, “every young man was proud to be a French citizen and was lost in admiration of France.” After the defeat of the French troops, Dakar sank deep into grief. Prayers were again held in mosques and here is what was written by Mamadou Moustapha Mbacké, a marabout in Touba, the homebase of the Murid brotherhood, to the AOF General Gov8 “Here We Come, Marshal!” “here we come, marshal!” 59 ernor: “At a time when our motherland [sic!] is going through such a tragic period, I want to reaffirm, on behalf of the whole Murid community, my undivided loyalty. . . . We are ready to make every material or moral sacrifice to save France.”2 Then many young men started to volunteer. According to historian Cheikh Faty Faye, by the end of January 1941, the entire district of Dakar had already given more than 3,170,055 francs to the Secours National (National Relief). The case of a schoolteacher from Rufisque is quite typical of the overly jingoistic mood prevailing at the time. He was an évolué, an assimilated, and he felt, like Sembène, that he owed France something in return for having brought stability and “jolted us out of our lethargy.” After he was declared unfit to practice the art of war, the schoolteacher asked the Public Treasury to withdraw from his monthly salary 100 francs, a sum representing his personal contribution to the war effort—and this, he insisted, until the final victory against Germany. According to Doudou Guèye, such an extraordinary fascination was quite usual among the so-called évolués: “At school, in all our songs, we celebrated the glory of France, her strength and her beauty; they also told us that we were all, whites and Blacks, her children.”3 However, one must always point out that in spite of this ideological drill, France laid claim to her colonial possessions by the sheer force of weapons. But as Cheikh Hamidou Kane reminds us, “when the arm is weak, the mind is at great risk.”4 So intense was Sembène’s love for France that 50 years later it was still remembered by his friends. Maurice Fall told me one anecdote that gives a good idea of Sembène’s eagerness to be drafted into the army: “It was one Thursday afternoon, in 1943. We were, as usual, hanging around the Rex movie theater, on the Avenue Faidherbe, waiting for an opportunity to see the afternoon movie matinee. There was a vacant lot a couple of blocks away, which kids from a nearby school had turned into a recreational battlefield. That day, Gorgui Thiaw (Eric) was playing with a sling, using pips from a jujube tree as projectiles. One of the sling shots inadvertently hit Sembène in the eye, and as he was writhing in terrible pain, he started to yell out: ‘Oh man, my eye is screwed up! Look, he screwed up my eye! Now I can no longer enroll in the army, they won’t take you if you’re one-eyed!’”5 However, this bellicose zeal should not always be ascribed to the patriotism of the concerned. According to Issa Sembène, a native of Rufisque and a former colonial soldier (class of 1940), at the time few young people were aware of their status as French citizens. The war mainly represented for them a tremendous opportunity to achieve their dream of going abroad. 60 dakar There was of course a great deal of machismo involved, as nobody wanted to pass for a coward: “We were proud,” says Issa Sembène, “to be declared fit because those who weren’t felt emasculated, and we called them ‘sissies.’ We all wanted to...