WAR, INSUBMISSION, ART

desertion and resistance

• 

  Rene Vautier, 1950, France, 25'

  It is 1949. At 21 years old, the young filmmaker travels to West Africa to film, for the Ligue de l’enseignement, the life of African peasants. This organization aims to highlight France’s educational mission in its colonies. On site, René Vautier decides to document a reality that was not commissioned: forced labor, atrocities committed by the French occupation army in the villages, “vulture” companies stripping Africa, child labor, shamefully low wages, and bombed villages.

  Forced to improvise (the only copy of the script had disappeared), René Vautier’s rebellious and defiant voice trembles and makes the viewer tremble as he recites the names of the executioners, the administrators in power, and the colonial companies that exploit, mistreat, and murder Black people.

  The reels that René Vautier managed to save from censorship earned him thirteen indictments and a one-year prison sentence.
  After 40 years of prohibition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave him a copy of his film, finally recognized as “courageous and necessary.” However, René Vautier refused to request a new distribution visa. We will only see the images that were saved from censorship.

   

  

  AFRIQUE 50

  Text and Direction: René VAUTIER
  Music: Keita FODEBA
  Production: René VAUTIER – France 1949-1950 Black & White 17 min.

  The only Whites who entered this village before you were either the Administrator, who came to collect taxes, or the recruiter, who came to take men for the army. So the village is wary, but among the children curiosity is stronger than fear.

  Here comes an ambassador, still not very reassured, and then here they all are. They examine you, scrutinize you. Watch out, they stick out their tongues. The examination is favorable; you are adopted. They may agree to guide you through their village. Follow them!

  You will see very picturesque things, no doubt, but gradually you will realize that this picturesque scene hides great misery. Baraman is going to get married; his friends help him prepare the mud bricks with which he will build his hut, but after each storm, the hut will need serious repairs. Here, tongues and hands work busily, just like in the washhouses back home, but the Niger serves as both bathtub and water reservoir for drinking. Pounding millet occupies a long part of the African women’s day… And of course, they must also take care of the children’s hygiene, like all women of the world. Here is the hairdressing salon… For the men, the filmmaker’s razor does the job quickly, but for the ladies… What a success!

  Let us continue our visit.

  Here is the ropemaker, braiding sisal fibers into all the cords used by the village. The fishermen, like in the small ports of Brittany, mend their nets. The weaver weaves cotton into long strips, which the tailor will assemble into clothes, but these cotton loincloths and boubous are often insufficient for the cool African nights. Here are the boatmen, making a dugout canoe by joining two hollowed trunks; nails are a luxury they cannot afford.

  Meanwhile, the children try to imitate the adults, sometimes succeeding, sometimes playing. What else could they do? Only 4% of school-age children in Black Africa have access to schools. Just enough so the administration has clerks and colonial companies have accountants. The kids play… a snail shell replaces a spinning top, or a gourd replaces the ball, but this game is too rough for the wise… Oxford and Toulouse do not have a monopoly on rugby… and when one is very dusty, the Niger is not far. Do you prefer the calm, the peace of the fields? Follow these two philosophers joining the herd keepers.

  Over there, in a comfortable stone house, the Administrator takes a nap, crushed by the sun. But here you have to work, following the herd searching for pasture in the bush… and you return to the village in the evening, when the children finish their play, when the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer, when people gather on the riverbanks waiting for the last canoes…

  Are you surprised to see a village without a school or doctor? In Africa, schools are opened when the large colonial companies need accountants, doctors are sent when big colonial companies risk lacking labor. But this village is still lucky in its misery; it is at peace!

  Look at what awaits African villages:
  Here was the village of Palaka in northern Ivory Coast. The village chief could not pay a tax balance: 3,700 francs! On February 27, 1949, at 5 a.m., troops arrived, surrounded the village, fired, burned, killed! Here, the village chief, Sikali Wattara, was smoked out and shot in the back of the neck. A French bullet…! Here, a seven-month-old child was killed. A French bullet blew out her skull… Here, blood on the wall, a pregnant woman came to die. Two French bullets in her belly… On this African soil, four corpses, three men and one woman, murdered in our name, the people of France!

  You are astonished… Burned huts, massacred inhabitants, livestock left to rot in the sun, this is not the official image of colonization. Here, as everywhere, it is the reign of the vultures. And the vultures that share Africa have names:
  West African Trading Company, 650 million profit in 1949.
  French West Africa Company, 365 million profit in 1949.
  DAVUM, 180 million profit.
  L’Africaine Française, Le Niger français, French Ivory Coast Company, Anglo-Saxon Trust Unilever: 11.5 billion profit in one year. 40 million per day stolen from Africans! In exchange, missionaries of commerce introduced progress in Africa. Progress…

  Here is the famous Markala-Sansanding dam on the Niger. A turbine provides electricity to the houses of the Whites. But there is no electricity to open the locks in front of the barges of the big Colonial Companies, because the sweat of Blacks, at 50 francs per day, costs less than installing and maintaining a turbine.

  Apparently, beyond the seas, there are steamrollers, very useful machines for making roads. But in Africa, no need for steamrollers; Blacks cost less. In the millet fields, cotton fields, peanut fields, Black women and children work. Lesieur and Unilever’s profits soar. Improving equipment? Why bother! A machine would do the work of 20 Blacks, of course. But 20 Blacks at 50 francs per day are cheaper than a machine. So, use the Black… Moreover, the blacksmith is there to repair and make tools… and his sons can help. A school? No need to read to operate the bellows 16 hours a day… Blacks work in plantations, Blacks work in forests, for 50 francs per day…

  Africa’s wealth accumulates.

  A Sudanese proverb says: “When the dung beetle rolls its ball, it struggles, but it is to fill its granary.” When Blacks toil under the African sun, it is always to fill the safe of the big Colonial Companies, to load the holds of ships waiting to leave, full of African sap. In return, shutters must be made for the Administrator’s house. Not on the head; a Black head is dirty for an Administrator’s shutter. Stretch and hurry! A company barge runs aground on a sandbank. No tugboat needed; Blacks are cheaper than fuel. If a Black drowns or is eaten by a crocodile, 500 francs will be given to his widow…

  Pushing bamboo for 50 francs per day.

  Since 1946, forced labor is abolished in Black Africa, but taxes must be paid in cash, and you have seen how villages unable to pay in full are treated. To get money, there is only one way: work for the colonial company, at 50 francs per day. And Blacks push poles to slide cotton loads down rivers, with no hope of clothing; cocoa loads, with no hope of chocolate; peanut loads, with no hope of oil or soap; okoumé and mahogany loads, with no hope of furniture in their huts. Over there, the boats wait, the large Colonial Company ships wait in the early morning, to leave loaded with African products, with the toil of Blacks. But gradually, from Dakar to Brazzaville, Abidjan to Niamey, the African people rise, unite, seek the reasons for this exploitation, misery, and collective killings.

  The African people, relying on the French Constitution, demand the return of the land stolen by the Colonial Companies, demand the return of their sons, taken to fight their yellow brothers. The African people rise peacefully, claiming what is theirs. From Dakar to Brazzaville, Abidjan to Niamey, the African people demand, but face an administration which even an MRP deputy, Abbé BOGANDA, said was corrupt, racist, and Machiavellian, that did not represent France but committed crimes in France’s name and civilization’s. This Colonial Administration responds to Africans as it did to the Malagasy and Vietnamese, with force, clubs, prison, rifles.

  Military trucks appear, spreading ruin… ruin and death, in our name, the People of France. Agbovil, Dimbokro, Séguéla, Daloa, Bouaflé, Kétékré, cities, roundups, shootings, names of cities sounding to Africans like Oradours… The police have passed… ruins… roundups… shootings… N’GO BENA killed with a butt, M’BOG UM murdered during a search, MARIE N’GUENO died following police interrogation, and so many others, names of martyrs sounding to Africans like D’Estienne d’ORVES, like Guy MOQUET. Administrator AUZURET murders in his district, Commander CUNY burns one of his subjects alive. Ruin… arrests… dozens of deaths, the police pass. In the Bassam prison holding 1,000 Africans, MAMBA BAKAYOKO died at 70, died fighting so schools and hospitals would replace prison classes, so machines would ease men’s suffering, not prepare for new wars, so all these children could live in peace, free and proud… MAMBA BAKAYOKO died so the African people could finally know happiness. MAMBA BAKAYOKO died, but all African people took their place next to the People of France, in the great joint struggle of peoples for Peace and Happiness. From Abidjan to Niamey, Dakar to Brazzaville, the People of France and the African people are shoulder to shoulder. And this place in the common struggle, the African people will hold against all until the battle of life is won.