Nation-Building, Propaganda, and Literature in Francophone Africa

6. National Conferences and Media Decentralization in Francophone Africa

Nation-Building, Propaganda, and Literature in Francophone Africa 160 Africa was not, of course, unaffected by the realignment of global powers that took place during the last decade or so of the twentieth century. Indeed, these events served to further underline the singularity of the francophone sub-Saharan African context as countries underwent remarkable cultural and political transitions. Although this concluding chapter does not offer an exhaustive account of these transitions, issues pertaining to governmental reform and the particular circumstances generated for political dissidence by media decentralization will be addressed and connections established to some of the book’s general themes—orality and popular culture, official literature and propaganda, resistance and democratization mechanisms. While African countries had experimented with and adopted a plethora of political models in the immediate aftermath of independence—monarchies , military rule, Marxism-Leninism, African Socialism, and so forth— various experiments with democratic and electoral reform took place from 1990 onward throughout francophone sub-Saharan Africa (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Guinea, Senegal, etc.), and National Conferences were held in the spirit of reconciliation in countries with political histories as diverse as Benin, Chad, the Congo, Gabon, Madagascar , Mali, Niger, Togo, and Zaire.3 As Patrick Manning has shown, the strong common roots and the shared traditions of francophone African nations brought close interactions and commonalities to the experi6NATIONAL CONFERENCES AND MEDIA DECENTRALIZATION IN FRANCOPHONE AFRICA You had to read foreign newspapers to be troubled about our fate. —HENRI LOPES1 Of my soul the retina leans to expand daily because by a thousand stories I was scorched A new skin. —ANTJIE KROG2 National Conferences and Media Decentralization 161 ence of their democratization movements. . . . The demands for convening conferences of the “forces vives de la nation” and for establishing pluralistic political order became the most prominent elements in this wave of contestation.4 Yet, while optimism may have characterized the initial sentiment during the preliminary stages of sociopolitical transformation, entrenched postcolonial alignments and configurations would more often than not prove resilient to the multifarious attempts made toward their displacement. As John F. Clark has argued, “in the cases in which political transitions took place, it became clearer that political change did not necessarily spell an end to corruption or undemocratic politics.”5 National Conferences and Reconciliation in Francophone Africa Benin was the first country to hold a National Conference, February 19–28, 1990, and then to conduct multiparty elections in 1991 in a country where Mathieu Kérékou’s Marxist government had been in power since 1972. Similar attempts at political transition occurred across francophone Africa— Gabon’s conference was held in 1990, and others followed in 1991 in the Congo, Mali, Niger, and Togo. Marien Ngouabi had already held a National Conference in the Congo in 1972, but unlike their historical precursors , these new National Conferences were not conceived as platforms for the ruling parties to outline their policies and guidelines but rather as Conf érence nationale souveraine, that is sovereign National Conferences, invested with the power to issue new constitutional and governmental directives. Since independence and up until the 1991 National Conference, power had changed hands in the Congo on five occasions. Fulbert Youlou remained in power until 1963 when, following widespread demonstrations, riots, and a general strike that came to a head between August 13 and 15—days that are now commemorated each year as the Trois Glorieuses—he was replaced by Alphonse Massamba-Débat. Massamba-Débat’s own presidency lasted only until 1968. The Congo’s first great ideologue, Marien Ngouabi, then became president and remained in office until his assassination in 1977. The fourth administration, headed by Joachim Yhombi-Opango, lasted only until 1979 when he was voted out of office by the Central Committee, leaving the way to Denis Sassou Nguesso’s twelve years as president. A number of events triggered the movement away from Marxism-Leninism toward a multiparty system. As Clark has demonstrated, “both an economic crisis and a crisis of legitimacy were responsible for the collapse of Nation-Building, Propaganda, and Literature in Francophone Africa 162 the ancien régime in Congo,”6 and “Benin’s stunning National Conference in 1990, which promised transition to democracy through elections, strengthened cries for multipartisme in francophone Africa” (Clark, 66). Of course, the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the fracturing of the Soviet Union contributed toward political transition in the Congo, and...