STICHPROBEN Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien

Vienna Journal of African Studies

Nr. 30/2016 16. Jg.

Herausgeberin/Publisher: ECCO - Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Angewandte Afrikanistik/

Working Group Applied African Studies

Editorial Advisory Board: Tunde Adeleke, Katrin Bromber, Frederick Cooper, Toyin Falola,

Heidi Hudson, Nancy Rose Hunt, Alexander Keese, Roman Loimeier, Paul Lovejoy, Elisio Macamo, Henning Melber, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni,

Brigitte Reinwald, Alena Rettová, Aly Tandian, Judith Van Allen, Clarissa Vierke

Redaktion/Editorial Committee: Ulrike Auer, Eric Burton, Martina Ciganikova,

Claudia Dal-Bianco, Birgit Englert, Bea Gomes, Ingeborg Grau, Martina Kopf, Miša Krenčeyová, Clemens Pfeffer, Kirsten Rüther,

Walter Schicho, Arno Sonderegger, Daniela Waldburger

Managing Editors: Ulrike Auer, Miša Krenčeyová

STICHPROBEN Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien Vienna Journal of African Studies Nr. 30/2016; 16.Jg. Erscheinungsweise: halbjährlich Preis des Einzelhefts: 7 € im Direktverkauf Preis des Jahresabonnements: Inland: € 15,50 (= € 12 + 2 x € 1,75 Porto) Europa: € 19,00 (= € 12 + 2 x € 3,50 Porto) Weltweit: € 22,90 (= € 12 + 2 x € 5,45 Porto) Abonnementsbezug und Redaktionsadresse: STICHPROBEN-Redaktion Uni Campus Hof 5.1., Spitalgasse 2 A-1090 Wien e-mail: stichproben.afrikanistik@univie.ac.at Homepage: http://stichproben.univie.ac.at 1. Auflage 2016 © by ECCo, A-1090 Wien Jede Verwertung bedarf der vorherigen schriftlichen Zustimmung der Redaktion. Verantwortlich für Inhalt und Korrekturen sind die AutorInnen bzw. die Redaktion. Medieninhaberin: ECCo - Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Angewandte Afrikanistik c/o Institut für Afrikawissenschaften der Universität Wien Uni Campus Hof 5.1., Spitalgasse 2 A-1090 Wien Umschlagfoto: Johannes Knierzinger Umschlaggestaltung: Miša Krenčeyová

Special Issue:

Guinea: One Revolution at a Time

Carole Ammann, Michelle Engeler, Johannes Knierzinger

(eds.)

Table of Contents Guinea: Spearhead of Change or Eternal Maverick? Johannes Knierzinger, Michelle Engeler, Carole Ammann

1

Political Crisis and ECOWAS-Mediated Transition in Guinea Mohamed Saliou Camara

9

Everyday Politics: Market Women and the Local Government in Kankan, Guinea Carole Ammann

37

Being Young in the Guinée Forestière: Members of Youth Associations as Political Entrepreneurs Michelle Engeler

63

Une gouvernance locale à l’épreuve du temps. Politiques nationales, pouvoirs locaux et stratégies des miniers en Guinée Pascal Rey

87

«Il faut être là où l’or sort !» De l’itinérance temporaire au maintien d’un mode de vie mobile chez les orpailleurs de Haute Guinée. Matthieu Bolay

111

Fria in Guinea: A Dismissed Bauxite Town Johannes Knierzinger

137

Authors 161

Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien. No. 30/2016, Vol. 16, 1-7.

Guinea: Spearhead of Change or Eternal Maverick?

Johannes Knierzinger, Michelle Engeler and Carole Ammann

The population of Guinea, a Muslim dominated West African country of about ten million inhabitants, is currently facing challenging times: After a permanent fall in standards of living and a rise in poverty in the last ten years, the country’s economy has additionally been ravaged by the recent Ebola crisis. Guinea’s current real food prices are among the highest in the world. Oxfam only lists Zimbabwe and Angola as countries with less affordable foodstuffs (Oxfam 2015). After the lives of thousands of Guineans have been claimed by the rampant Ebola epidemic, millions continue to suffer from the resulting economic isolation of the country.1

Only a few years ago, things looked very promising in Guinea: Rising raw material prices and an emerging civil society have raised hopes for a nationwide renaissance, both in terms of economic development and of political clarity. Riding on a global wave of Southern “uprisings” that were discernible in the 2000s, the resource-rich country was courted by transnational mining companies and experienced a series of social movements demanding political change, more participation and better living conditions.2 A result of these movements was Guinea’s first credible presidential elections in 2010 (European Union 2011), which further fueled the population’s hope to bring its country back onto the international political arena.

Both developments, the proudly announced economic take-off and the fragile political renaissance, lost momentum with the global economic

1 For further information on Ebola see Rohwerder (2014), Schroven (2014), Lazuta (2015), Benton/Dionne (2015) and WHO (2016). 2 The 2006/07 uprisings are described and discussed in a couple of academic studies and reports, amongst others International Crisis Group (2007), McGovern (2007), Engeler (2008), Human Rights Watch (2007), and Schroven (2010).

2 Stichproben downturn that followed the global financial crisis since 2007/8. Shortly after spearheading global efforts of Southern governments to raise mining taxes and to impose higher transparency, the current government under Alpha Condé had to backpedal in 2013 by revising its newly published mining code, thereby giving in to the pressure of mining majors and the World Bank (cf. Knierzinger 2014).

The current situation can be compared with Guinea’s independence and the years that followed. In 1958, the country’s famous “Non” against General de Gaulle’s plans for a reformed continuation of the French colonial empire, the Communauté française, pronounced by its fiery revolutionary leader Sékou Touré, was followed by nationwide euphoria, but eventually led to political isolation, ethnic tensions and increasing poverty.3 Cut off from trade in cash crops that had filled the state coffers and the pockets of thousands of petty farmers until the retreat of the colonialists, the socialist government solely relied on three bauxite mines controlled by a global aluminum oligopoly (cf. Campbell 2009). The political implications of this new economic direction can be compared with many other African countries being dependent on the extractive industry (Agnew/Grant 1996: 738): Depending almost exclusively on several thousand open pit miners, the political elite became increasingly alienated from its population and reinforced the country’s extractivist path – at the expense of agriculture, processing and services. The neoliberal turnaround in 1984, when Sékou Touré passed away and Lansana Conté took over power, only catalyzed these tendencies in Guinea.

Only a few years after the change of government, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau descended into civil wars that seriously affected Guinea and its inhabitants, especially in the Forest Region. Against the predictions of international observers,4 Guinea proved to be more stable than its neighbors during that time, providing asylum for hundreds of thousands of refugees and representing a central hub for humanitarian aid agencies. 3 These topics have been widely debated. See e.g., Kaba (1977), Goerg et al. (2010), Schmidt (2007), Shundeyev (1974). 4 Cf. the publications of the International Crisis Group on Guinea from 2003 until 2007.

Guinea: Spearhead of Change or Eternal Maverick? 3

In one way or another, Guinea had always been at the forefront of global political changes: first by declaring its independence as the second West African country (one year after Ghana)5 and thereby strongly contributing to the end of the French colonial empire; then by playing a key role in the Cold War6 and the non-aligned movement (e.g. through its role in the formation of the International Bauxite Association, see Holloway 1988: 52–54); and lately by crafting a fairly progressive mining code and by imposing relatively high transparency standards. However, this continuous pole position also frequently put its population in an exposed and vulnerable position. The last time this happened only several years ago, when the strong Guinean trade unions and other civil society activists pushed for political change that eventually led to the coming into power of a military junta, the National Council for Democracy and Development (CNDD), from 2008 to 2009. The CNDD was initially supported by the majority of the social movements and was led by the previously little-known Chief of Fuels at the Guinean army base in Kindia, Moussa Dadis Camara (Arieff/Cook 2010). Dadis Camara’s inconsistent, brutal, but nevertheless (at least temporarily) quite popular rule soon led to international isolation. On 28 September 2009, Guinean security forces opened fire on civilian demonstrators in Conakry who were protesting against the CNDD and Dadis Camara’s intentions to run for president, killing over 150, injuring many more and raping numerous women (Arieff/Cook 2009; Human Rights Watch 2009). On 3 December 2009, Dadis Camara was shot and seriously wounded by a member of his own presidential guard. He was evacuated to Morocco for medical treatment. In Dadis Camara’s absence, the CNDD defense minister, Brig. Gen. Sekouba Konaté, informally assumed the position of acting head of state (Arieff 2010; Gerdes 2009; Arieff/McGovern 2013). Only after another twelve months of transition, the country received probably its first democratically elected president, the former opposition leader and long-time expatriate Alpha Condé. Despite several violent

5 Liberia has never been colonized. 6 More than any other country, Guinea was seen by the Soviets as a bridgehead to Africa (Leimgruber 1990: 215–242).

4 Stichproben clashes, this election and the related transition to legitimate rule can be described as relatively peaceful (Union Européenne 2011). However, a political deadlock, often linked to ethnic frictions, has nonetheless blocked substantial economic, political and social reforms since then (International Crisis Group 2013; 2014). In the last couple of months, on the eve of presidential elections scheduled for September 2015, socio-political tensions increased again, because the convalescent short-time dictator Dadis Camara, dressed in a nice suit instead of his army uniform, surprisingly announced to run for presidency.7 In the end, current president Alpha Condé was reelected in the first round with a majority of 57,8% (Union Européenne 2016).

This issue addresses the recent events in Guinea and the ways its population is trying to make the best out of this seemingly permanent state of emergency. These efforts will be discussed on various scales, and against the background of different research traditions, both in terms of disciplines and in terms of the authors’ origins. In order to bridge the gap between Anglophone and Francophone academia, several articles of this edition were written in French.

In the first contribution, the historian Mohamed Saliou Camara will briefly recapitulate the turbulent period between 2005 and 2010 by focusing on the role of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and other major international stakeholders with regards to conflict-prevention and development assistance in Guinea. Before becoming a Professor of History and International Relations at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, Prof. Camara was among other things a speech writer at the Presidential Press Bureau in Conakry and was thereby able to base his analysis on numerous encounters with central political players in Guinea.

The weakening of state institutions since 2005 and the drawback against mining firms in 2013 not only challenged the rentier state and its profiteers, but also went along with critical transformations in a variety of other

7 The interested reader might find additional information on that time period in Ammann/Engeler (2013).

Guinea: Spearhead of Change or Eternal Maverick? 5

arenas. Women’s causes, for instance, have seen a clear comeback during the last decade. The largest social movement of the recent transition was led by Rabiatou Serah Diallo, a trade union leader, who became President of the National Transition Council in February 2010. But Rabiatou Diallo was the only most visible female figure. Various women’s movements and struggles have lately been noticed: from demonstrations in the capital, over revolts in the mining towns, to daily contestations of their place in a male dominated society. In order to show this day-to-day relationship of women and the Guinean state, Carole Ammann analyzes the workaday life of market women and their interaction with local government officials in Kankan, Upper Guinea.

Another glance on everyday life in the midst of political transformation processes will be presented by Michelle Engeler, focusing on members of youth associations as political entrepreneurs in the remote Guéckédou borderland. Based on recent democratization efforts, on increasing development and humanitarian assistance and also as a reaction to the continuous reduction of public sector jobs, more and more young educated Guineans have founded non-profit organizations and self-help groups enabling them to reach out to international development agencies as well as to (local) economic and political elites in Guinea.

Another phenomenon that increasingly receives attention in Guinea could be called both a comeback and a continuous presence of “traditional” political formations, if we follow the insights of Pascal Rey in our fourth article. Rey claims that Sékou Touré’s fight against (neo-)traditional actors within the framework of what the latter sometimes called “scientific socialism” actually never led to a retreat of chieftaincy in Guinea. By focusing on Maritime Guinea, Rey illustrates how – beyond the façade of presidential speeches and colorful parades – everyday political life rather adapted to a situation of “twilight” state institutions, leaving ample possibilities for brokerage by “traditional” actors.

In the two last contributions, the authors continue to observe recent developments in the mining sector. Matthieu Bolay will focus on the

6 Stichproben growing importance of full time artisanal gold mining. Having been the most conflictual economic sector in the past decades, gold mining became both more transparent and regulated since the coming to power of Alpha Condé. However, the rocketing gold prices since 2004 also prompted many part time farmers to fully concentrate on petty mining and thereby heightened tensions again. After sketching general developments in this sector, Bolay describes the scattered social networks resulting from this new form of migratory labor in detail.

In the final article, Johannes Knierzinger will recount the recent history of the bauxite town Fria, about 100 km north of the capital Conakry. From the late 1950s until 2012, Fria had been the only African producer of aluminum oxide, the middling product between bauxite and aluminum. During a strike in April 2012, the workers of Fria were locked out by the owner Rusal, a Russian aluminum company, and since then the factory has not resumed production. Knierzinger analyzes competing narratives about this lock-out and reports on the severe consequences for the population of Fria. In 2012, the company itself stated that the city was “on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe”: With the shutdown of the factory, the city lost its power generators, faces shortages of potable water and the population has to cope with a halt of most social services. As Rusal’s salaries were its almost exclusive source of income, the city is dependent on food aid since then.

Publication Bibliography Agnew, John; Grant, Richard (1996): Representing Africa: The Geography of Africa in

World Trade, 1960-1992. In: Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86/4: 729–744.

Ammann, Carole/Engeler, Michelle (2013): "Guinée is back?" Ein Land zwischen Wandel und Kontinuität. In: Afrika Bulletin 152: 3.

Arieff, Alexis (2010): Guinea's new transitional government. Emerging issues for U.S. policy. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service.

Guinea: Spearhead of Change or Eternal Maverick? 7

Arieff, Alexis/Cook, Nicolas (2009): Guinea's 2008 military coup and relations with the United States. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service.

Arieff, Alexis/Cook, Nicolas (2010): Guinea: Background and relations with the United States. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service.

Arieff, Alexis/McGovern, Michael (2013): "History is stubborn": talk about truth, justice, and national reconciliation in the Republic of Guinea. In: Comparative Studies in Society and History 55: 198-225.

Benton, Adia/Dionne, Kim Yi (2015): International political economy and the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak. In: African Studies Review 58: 223-236.

Campbell, Bonnie K. (2009): Guinea and Bauxite-Aluminium: the Challenges of Development and Poverty. In: Bonnie Campbell (ed.): Mining in Africa. Regulation & Development. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 66–119.

Engeler, Michelle (2008): Guinea in 2008: The unfinished revolution. In: Politique Africaine 112: 87-98.

Gerdes, Felix (2009): Militärputsch in Guinea. Hintergründe der aktuellen Entwicklungen. AKUF Analysen 3: 1-8.

Goerg, Odile/Pauthier, Céline/Diallo, Abdoulaye (2010) : Le non de la Guinée, 1958. Entre mythe, relecture historique et résonances contemporaines. Paris: L'Harmattan.

Holloway, Steven Kendall (1988): The Aluminium Multinationals and the Bauxite Cartel. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Human Rights Watch (2007) : Mourir pour le changement. Les forces de sécurité guinéennes répondent par la brutalité et la répression à une grève générale, http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/guinea0407frwebwcover_0.pdf (10.6.2015).

Human Rights Watch (2009): Bloody Monday. The September 28 Massacre and Rapes by Security Forces in Guinea, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2009/12/17/bloody-monday (09.06.2015).

International Crisis Group (2007): Guinea: Change or chaos. Africa Report, http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/africa/west-africa/guinea/121-guinea-change-or-chaos.aspx (10.6.2015).

International Crisis Group (2013): Guinée. Sortir du bourbier électoral. Africa Report, http://www.crisisgroup.org/fr/regions/afrique/afrique-de-louest/guinee/199-guinea-a-way-out-of-the-election-quagmire.aspx (10.6.2015).

International Crisis Group (2014): L’autre urgence guinéenne. Organiser les élections. Briefing Afrique, http://www.crisisgroup.org/fr/regions/afrique/afrique-de-louest/guinee/b106-guinea-s-other-emergency-organising-elections.aspx (10.6.2015).

Knierzinger, Johannes (2014): The socio-political implications of bauxite mining in Guinea: A commodity chain perspective. In: The Extractive Industries and Society 1: 20–27.

Lazuta, Jennifer (2015): The pain of the new normal: Guinea after Ebola. IRIN humanitarian news and analysis, http://www.irinnews.org/report/101484/the-pain-of-the-new-normal-guinea-after-ebola (10.6.2015).

Leimgruber, Walter (1990): Kalter Krieg um Afrika. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

8 Stichproben McGovern, Mike (2007): Janvier 2007 - Sékou Touré est mort. In: Politique Africaine 107:

125-145. Oxfam (2015): Global Food Index, http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/good-enough-

to-eat (17.02.2015). Rohwerder, Brigitte (2014): Impact and implications of the Ebola crisis. CSDRC Helpdesk

Research Report, http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/HDQ1177.pdf (10.6.2015). Schmidt, Elisabeth (2007): Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946-1958. Athens:

Ohio University Press. Schroven, Anita (2010): The people, the power and the public service: Political

identification during Guinea's general strikes in 2007. In: Development and Change 41: 659-677.

Schroven, Anita (2014): Ebola in Guinea. Revealing the State of the State. Cultural Anthropology Online, http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/587-ebola-in-guinea-revealing-the-state-of-the-state (01.06.2015).

Shundeyev, Vladimir (1974): The Republic of Guinea. In: The African Communist 58: 34–45.

Union Européenne (2011): Rapport Final. Mission d'observation électoral en République de Guinée. Élection présidentielle de 2010. Conakry, http://www.eeas.europa.eu/eueom/pdf/missions/rapport-final-moeue-guinee2010-25022011_fr.pdf (09.06.2015).

Union Européenne (2016): Rapport Final. Mission d'observation électoral en République de Guinée. Élection présidentielle 2015. Conakry, http://www.eueom.eu/files/pressreleases/english/Communique_Presse_Rapport_Final.pdf (13.05.2016).

WHO (2016): Ebola Data and Statistics. Situation Summary, 11 May, http://apps.who.int/gho/data/view.ebola-sitrep.ebola-summary-latest?lang=en (15.05.2016).

Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien. No. 30/2016, Vol. 16, 9-35.

Political Crisis and ECOWAS-Mediated Transition in Guinea

Mohamed Saliou Camara

Abstract Between 2005 and 2010, a political crisis besieged the Republic of Guinea, nearly rendering the country ungovernable and posing serious security risks for the already instable West African region. The initial episodes of the crisis consisted of general strikes through which a coalition of trade unions and political parties forced ailing President Lansana Conté to sack his cabinet and appoint a national-consensus prime minister. The next episode began with Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara’s coup d’état following Gen. Conté’s death and culminated in the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators by state security forces. This article explores the crisis and attempts to elucidate the contribution of ECOWAS and other major international stakeholders to the political transition that ensued.

Introduction

This article explores the crisis that marked the recent political history of the Republic of Guinea with a focus on its culmination (2005-2009) and resolution (2010) with the election of a civilian head of state under the aegis of the international community and, most specifically, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The article underscores the conflict prevention and conflict management mechanisms that ECOWAS utilized to help implement a relatively peaceful transition from a highly

An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2014 conference of the African Studies Association under the title, “The Role of ECOWAS in Averting Civil War and Managing Political Transition in Guinea” (Indianapolis, IN, November 20-23, 2014).

10 Stichproben volatile atmosphere, which put the country on the verge of a civil war, to a democratically elected civilian leadership.

The central thesis of the article is that although Guinea had shown much resilience and avoided civil war while all its neighbors experienced various types of intense intrastate conflicts, it is reasonable to argue that the country could have succumbed to the same fate had it not been for the concerted efforts of the international community with the stewardship of ECOWAS. This thesis is amply supported by my findings, a good deal of which were obtained by interviewing individuals closely associated with the events presented herein. Indeed, because the article is a historical study primary-source information is crucial. Furthermore, because it deals with recent history the accounts of persons who lived through it have the potential of being extremely insightful, provided that they are treated appropriately for the oral history material that they are. Most of the interviews were conducted face to face in Guinea during or around the time of the events chronicled here, including in 2005, 2006-2007, 2010 and 2012.1 Other sources include statements by Guinean officials and activists, as well as those of international stakeholders, and the works of scholars and journalists viewed as experts in Guinean affairs. Follow-up telephone or online communications were had in some cases either as one-on-one conversations or through call-in programs broadcast on web radio outlets owned and operated by members of the Guinean diaspora in North America. My underlying purpose in basing the article on these sources is to generate an accurate understanding of the dynamics of the crisis from the perspective of the Guinean people who lived through it and that of the international stakeholders involved in managing the crisis and the subsequent transition.

The prelude to the crisis examine here dates back to April 1984, when a military junta seized power following the death of Sékou Touré, the country’s head of state since independence in 1958. Guineans received the news of the military takeover with mixed feelings. On the one hand the

1 I conducted the field research while writing the fifth edition of Historical Dictionary of Guinea (2014) and Political History of Guinea since World War Two (2014).

Political Crisis and ECOWAS Mediation 11 bloodless ending of Touré’s oppressive rule fostered a sense of relief, especially given the junta’s promise to promote freedom and prosperity. On the other hand Africa’s experience of brutal military rule was all but reassuring. Furthermore, the regime change happened at a time when Touré was pursuing an open-door policy toward the West, and preparing to host the annual Summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Guinea’s standing in West Africa had also been improving within regional organizations like ECOWAS. Thus, while euphoria erupted in military barracks and on the streets, uncertainty grew among farsighted Guineans (Camara 2007: 49ff., 99ff. and 165ff.).2

By the end of 1985, the Comité militaire de redressement national (CMRN), the junta formed under Col. Lansana Conté, was faced with internal power struggle with ethnic undertones. Conté supporters (mostly of the Soso ethnic group) were intent on ridding the regime of what they perceived as Malinké

threats. In July 1985, the foiling of a coup attempt by Malinké officers led by former CMRN Prime Minister Col. Diarra Traoré gave them the opportunity to do so. Along with members of Touré’s family and former members of his government, numerous Malinké officers arrested in connection with the coup attempt were secretly executed. Reports by international human rights and media organizations would reveal that the death sentences that the regime publicized in May 1987 concerned people who may well have been executed in July 1985 (Vignes 1987: 28; Camara 2014).

Meanwhile, Guinean exiles, consisting of former dissidents to Sékou Touré’s regime, returned and, by 1991, began to engage the Conté regime in a struggle for political liberalization.3 Those “apostles of liberalization”

2 Former Information and Ideology Minister Louis Sénaïnon Béhanzin, former Islamic Affairs Minister and political prisoner Chérif Nabaniou, and former Justice Minister Sikhé Camara were of the view that while changes in domestic policy were long overdue by the time of Sékou Touré’s death, the overture that was taking place in the regime’s foreign policy should have been carefully implemented. Béhanzin insisted that the government’s biggest blunder was allowing a power vacuum to take place in days following Touré’s death. 3 Although the Touré regime singled out the Fulani elite in the mid-1970s in what it termed “Complot Peuhl” [Fulani Plot] and contrary to a widespread misconception, Guinean exiles consisted of persons from all ethnic entities and regions of Guinea. There were scholars and professionals like Ibrahima Baba Kaké, Alpha Condé, Lansiné Kaba and Dr. Charles Diané

12 Stichproben included former Jeune Afrique journalist Siradiou Diallo, activist and former educator Alpha Condé, former World Bank consultant Mamadou Ba, and former International Labor Organization administrator Jean Marie Doré. Since the 1990s across Africa, elected civilian leaderships were replacing entrenched military juntas and one-party regimes. In much of French-speaking Africa, sovereign national conferences were taking place and establishing multiparty politics and civil society activism. Under international pressure and in response to recurring pro-democracy mass protests, the Conté regime produced a new constitution, which was adopted by referendum in December 1990.

Multiparty politics was thus introduced against the backdrop of the Structural Adjustment Programs imposed by the World Bank and the IMF as a foundation for economic reform. Hardly free and fair elections marked the democratization process from 1993 to the end of the Conté regime in 2008. In the process, an oligarchy of Conté cronies formed, virtually taking over the country’s banking, financial, and mining industries, as the president’s health declined. As corruption and misgovernance engulfed the state an otherwise divided political opposition formed a united front with labor unions for the purpose of further pressuring the regime for meaningful reforms.

Throughout the ordeal, regional, and international organizations applied “stick-and-carrot” diplomacy in efforts to contain the situation, prevent another civil war in the region and, eventually, bring about lasting stability. The involvement of regional and international organizations would prove more vital after President Conté passed away in December 2008 and an unknown army captain by the name of Moussa Dadis Camara led a coup d’état on behalf of a junta called Conseil national pour la démocratie et le

développement (CNDD) [National Council for Democracy and Development]. (Malinké); Djibril Tamsir Niane, Boubacar Barry and Thierno Monenembo (Fulani); and Ansoumane Doré (Guerzé). There were also journalists like Aboubacar Kanté (Malinké) and Siradiou Diallo (Fulani); artists like Manfila Kanté “Doyen” (Malinké) and Sadio Bah (Fulani); diplomats and other technocrats like Nabi Youla and Aboubacar Somparé (Soso), Ba Mamadou (Fulani) and Mansour Kaba (Malinké). This list is hardly indicative of the size and diversity of the Guinean exile community who opposed the Touré regime for a variety of reasons.

Political Crisis and ECOWAS Mediation 13 Later, the CNDD became the target of travel, arms, and economic embargo on the part of the EU, the US, and the UN. Eventually, Guinea was suspended from the African Union (AU), and ECOWAS led efforts to restore constitutional order.

Historical Overview of Guinea’s Crisis

As explained in a previous publication, the earliest pro-liberalization challenge that the Conté regime faced came in 1989 in the form of student protests on the campus of the University of Conakry (Camara 2014). From 1989 onward, the hitherto seemingly isolated outbursts became a full-blown student movement and spread to other campuses across the country. Also, what used to be mainly peaceful events turned increasingly violent, even deadly on occasions, as anti-riot police intervened rather forcefully.

Charles-Pascal Tolno (2012), who was the governor of the city of Conakry during that tumultuous period, justified the forceful manner in which his police force handled the protests. According to this former college educator, the anti-riot police were ordered to restore law and order after protesters set cars on fire and nearly killed the rector and other administrators of the University of Conakry. Tolno explained that groups of protesters took the rampage beyond the campus and into Conakry neighborhoods to hunt down fellow students whom they viewed as traitors for not getting involved. Tolno believed that individuals to whom he referred as “agitators masquerading as pro-democracy leaders” were manipulating the protesters.

Former leaders of the student movement emphatically refuted Tolno’s account. Diénabou Baldé (1992), a former member of the University of Conakry Student Government Organization, recalled the zealousness with which Tolno went after student protesters: “Governor Tolno became known to students as ‘Uncle Zorro’ because he personally led the invasion of the campus by anti-riot police.” She recalled the day the first student protester was killed: “After the young man fell in the middle of Terrain Rouge, dozens of panicky students ran over him followed by anti-riot police armed to the

14 Stichproben teeth. Little did we know that over the following weeks, several more would be killed and dozens thrown in jail.”4

As the student movement grew, the nascent political opposition and the Conté regime each endeavored to coopt its leadership. In the long term, though, Fanta Oulen Bakary Camara (2012) inferred, what both sides ended up accomplishing was divide and weaken the movement by, among others things, recruiting followers from within the movement. Camara specifically cited the case of students to whom opposition leaders provided scholarships to continue their education abroad after being expelled by Guinea’s Ministry of Higher Education.

The adoption in 1990 of a new constitution reaffirming the will of the Guinean people to achieve national unity, and establish the rule of law raised expectations (IDEA 1990). Guineans anticipated a new beginning toward a bright future after decades of dictatorship. What transpired from the December 1993 presidential elections, instead, was a semi-civilianized military regime under the rule of Gen. Lansana Conté, who was subsequently kept in power through electoral parody.

The military foundation of the regime began to crumble, however, when, in February 1996, a mutiny erupted in Camp Alpha Yaya, in the capital Conakry. According to Sow, one of the leaders of the mutiny, contrary to the government’s official version, the event was not an act of treason. Sow explained that the mutineers’ only goal was to call President Conté’s attention to the demoralizing effects on the national armed forces of the neglect that war veterans faced upon returning from the Liberia and Sierra Leone fronts (Sow 2012).5 Doumbouya (2012), another leader of the mutiny,

4 The name Terrain Rouge (Red Field in the French language) refers to a grassless soccer field adjacent to the University of Conakry main campus. According to Diénabou Baldé, the name Terrain Rouge came to symbolize the blood of students killed or wounded by police in the course of those events. 5 Although the notion of treason circulated in government circles due to the humiliating treatment that Gen. Conté underwent in the hands of the mutineers, the official charges brought against them by the special Stat Security Court activated in June 1996 were murder, threatening state security, destruction of state property, and dereliction of duty. As a result, the some 40 alleged lead-mutineers were given dishonorable discharge and lengthy prison sentenced. No one was executed.

Political Crisis and ECOWAS Mediation 15 corroborated Sow’s account and recalled that by 1996, Conté and most army generals had lost touch with the rank and file. Though not involved in the February 1996 mutiny, Nafa Diallo (2007) concurred that Gen. Conté’s credibility eroded between 1995 and 2005, only to plummet thereafter with the growing interference of his family and allies in state affairs.

The last years of the Conté era have been described as some of the most chaotic years in Guinea’s recent history. Reflecting on the union-led strikes that profoundly marked the years 2006 and 2007 and the factors that triggered them, Rabiatou Sèrah Diallo (2012), then president of the CNT and former president of the labor union Confédération nationale des travailleurs de

Guinée (CNTG) [National Confederation of Guinean Workers, deploring what she viewed as the failure of international development partners to take into account one critical factor. That is, although supporting the Conté regime for the sake of regional peace was understandable, the policy contributed to the deepening of the national crisis inside Guinea. Diallo recalled that by 2005, the working conditions and purchasing power of wage earners in the public, private, and mixed sectors alike had severely declined.6 The nationwide strikes of June 2006 and January-February 2007, in which members of the Guinean labor force and civil society of all walks of life participated, epitomized the dire situation and the resolve to hold the government to account, Diallo explained.

Both she and Abdoulaye Lélouma Diallo (2009) denounced President Conté’s irresponsible interference with the national justice in high-profile cases involving two of his most despised business partners. They point out that due to these new occurrences, the January-February 2007 strike

Most of them had been released by the time of President Conté’s death. During the transition, Gen. Konaté, in his capacity as Interim President, issued a decree pardoning and rehabilitating all of them. Many were reintegrated into the military and promoted. 6 In December 2006, Conté personally demanded the release from prison of Futurelec Holding CEO and former chair of the Employers Guild Mamadou Sylla and former Central Bank Deputy Governor Fodé Soumah. Sylla was arrested for misappropriation of public funds, including by overbilling the state and Soumah was arrested for paying Sylla an excess of $8,442,985 in a transaction worth about $23 million. For more information these cases also Kamara (2008), Mas (2008) and Condé (2008).

16 Stichproben revolved around nothing short of regime change demands, a substantial escalation from the June 2006 strike, which centered on grievances related to salary, retirement, and the skyrocketing prices of fuel and foodstuff. Guinean scholars espoused the idea of a transition to a “fully democratic and fully civilian system of government,” as transpires from the writings of Bangoura et al. (2006; 2007) and Zegbélémou (2007). In both cases, however, strikers faced violent repression. Nevertheless, Gen. Conté capitulated in February 2007 by sacking his widely decried cabinet and appointing Lansana Kouyaté prime minister from a short list of technocrats drawn by the labor leadership. The outcome was short lived, for Conté dismissed Kouyaté and his cabinet in May 2008, appointed Ahmed Tidiane Souaré and presided over a decaying state until his death.7

Arieff and Cook address another facet of the chaotic characteristics of that period, writing: “The final years of Conté’s rule were marked by a decline in average living standards, the cooption of power by members of Conté’s inner circle of businessmen and politicians, and increasing signs of public dissatisfaction” (Arieff/Cook 2010: 4). The authors cited the last military mutiny of the Conté era, indicating that divisions and restiveness permeated the military, often over pay and slow rates of promotion. The Conté government ended the uprising by agreeing to pay salary arrears of $1,100 to each soldier, sack the defense minister, and grant promotions to junior officers (Arieff/Cook 2010: 5).

Anne Marie Koïvogui (2007), a person close to Claude “Coplan” Pivi, the man who took charge of suppressing a police mutiny in June 2008 and went on to become minister for Presidential Security in Capt. Camara’s CNDD, indicated that President Conté contributed to the structural segmentation of the armed forces that transpired in the last years of his regime. She claimed

7 The presidential decree through which Ahmed Tidiane Souaré was appointed prime minister in replacement of Lansana Kouyaté gave particular reason for the latter’s dismissal. It rather followed the typical Conté modus operandi of abrupt cabinet reshufflings. Analysts argued subsequently that the coalition of labor unions and opposition parties made a crucial mistake by failing to initiate a constitutional sanctioning of the process through which they would want henceforth prime ministers to be selected. Without any constitutional foundation, therefore, Kouyaté’s position and that of his cabinet were but ad hoc.

Political Crisis and ECOWAS Mediation 17 that “Coplan” believed that he was one of a few mid-level army officers (he was a lieutenant at the time) whom Conté had implicitly chosen to keep the generals in check and the rank and file in line while he prepared his son, Capt. Ousmane Conté, for the succession. Nafa Diallo (2007) and Fady Diallo (2010) refuted this account on the ground that any attempt by the ailing president at making his son his successor would have been defeated by 2008. One reason was that Ousmane Conté had no credibility within the armed forces and was widely known to be a drug kingpin. Whatever the truth about Pivi’s and Diallo’s speculations, the deepening of Guinea’s economic decline was having increasingly destabilizing social and political repercussions.

The CNDD and the Denouement of the Crisis

With the passing of President Conté on December 22, 2008, Guinea’s crisis reached new heights due to the failure of National Assembly President Aboubacar Somparé and Supreme Court President Lamine Sidimé to properly discharge their respective constitutional duties as stipulated in Article 34 of the Constitution: “In the case of vacancy of the office of the President of the Republic due to the death or resignation of the President, or any other permanent disability, the President of the National Assembly shall assume the office or, in the case of his inability to assume office, by one of the Vice-Presidents of the National Assembly by order of precedence.” (“Fundamental Law”). Under the prevailing circumstances, this stipulation meant that Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souaré’s cabinet should coordinate the logistics of the transition by ensuring that the vacancy is “constituted by the Supreme Court, convened by the President of the National Assembly.” It also meant that the leaders of the legislature and the judiciary would collaboratively expedite the process and prevent the occurrence of power vacuum.

Instead, inertia prevailed due to the passive resistance that Somparé and Sidimé allegedly adopted toward each other and Souaré’s reported attempt to exploit the impasse in hopes of staying in power. As a result, the

18 Stichproben Supreme Court never constituted the vacancy of the office of the president and the president of the National Assembly never assumed the office. Instead, a junta of mostly mid-level army officers seized power on December 24 in a bloodless coup.

On December 25, Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara, the head of the junta, told Jeune Afrique that he had no choice other than rescue the country by seizing power. He alleged that had he and his peers allowed Army Head Gen. Diarra Camara to take over, he, Dadis Camara, would have to flee the country or face a certain death, because he had enemies within the upper echelon of the army. Capt. Camara explained that as patriots, he and his peers could not allow the National Assembly, whose term expired months earlier, or the corrupt and factionalized government of Prime Minister Souaré to continue bankrupting the nation. He insisted that the army had to do its duty by ending years of aimless rule (Jeune Afrique 2009a).

It is unclear whether the young captain made the enemies mentioned earlier while serving as head of fuel supplies for the entire Guinean army or during the mutinies, when the rank and file confronted the generals, as explained previously. Also unclear is the role that this personal consideration may have played in the early actions of the junta leader. In effect, on December 28, 2008, a presidential decree announced the retirement of Gen. Diarra Camara and twenty-one more generals.

Regardless, the 2009 episode of the crisis was sparked by the controversy over Capt. Camara’s alleged intention to run for president in the elections which international pressure forced him to schedule for December 2010. Although the youth and populist rhetoric of the junta leader, coupled with his government’s campaign against corruption and drug trafficking, had earned him growing popularity among the Guinean youth and the rank and file of the armed forces, the country’s political class and powerful labor unions were losing patience with him. Impatience turned into resentment when Capt. Camara resorted to tergiversations about whether he would run for president, telling journalists that the decision “hinges exclusively on God’s will” (Jeune Afrique 2009b).

Political Crisis and ECOWAS Mediation 19 Camara’s behavior created confusion and led to the rise of a coalition of pro-Dadis fanatics. In Conakry, a group mostly composed of young Guerzé (Camara’s ethnic group) formed the Mouvement Dadis doit rester (MDDR) [Dadis Must Stay Movement] in support of a Dadis candidacy. Shortly thereafter, another group of youth comprising members of the country’s three largest ethnic groups (Fulani, Malinké, and Soso) created an equally fanatic coalition named Mouvement Dadis doit partir (MDDP) [Dadis Must Go Movement]. The two groups clashed with one another during public demonstrations, prompting security forces to arrest demonstrators, disproportionately of MDDP.

Meanwhile, political leaders stepped up their demand for the departure of the junta. Behind the scene, Dadis and CNND die-hard supporters launched a divide-and-conquer strategy by courting top opposition leaders, such as Alpha Condé of the Rassemblement du peuple guinéen (RPG) [Rally of the Guinean People], and Sidya Touré of the Union des forces républicaines (UFR) [Union of the Republican Forces]. By the same token, the pro-Dadis forces attempted to discredit other prominent opposition leaders like Cellou Dalein Diallo of the Union des forces démocratiques de Guinée (UFDG) [Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea]. Nevertheless, a group of opposition parties joined forces in a coalition called Forum des Forces Vives [Forum of the Driving Forces] and increased the pressure upon Capt. Camara, demanding that he proclaim once for all his non-candidacy to the presidency in 2010.

It was in this context that, on September 28, 2009, security forces attacked opposition members during a peaceful pro-democracy rally, killing 150 people, injuring more than 1,000 and raping an unknown number of women. Human Rights Watch later reported that members of “the Presidential Guard and some gendarmes working with the Anti-Drug and Anti-Organized Crime unit carried out a massacre that left some 150 people dead, many riddled with bullets and bayonet wounds, and others killed in the ensuing panic. The violence appeared to be premeditated and organized by senior CNDD officials” (Human Rights Watch 2010).

20 Stichproben Contrary to Capt. Camara’s speculation that the violence was the act of opposition thugs and uncontrolled security forces, Human Rights Watch reported that during the violence, “the Presidential Guard fired directly into the crowd of protesters and carried out widespread rape and sexual violence against dozens of girls and women at the stadium and in the days following the crackdown, often with such extreme brutality that their victims died from the wounds inflicted” (Human Rights Watch 2010). Security forces then removed bodies from the scene of the crime, namely the September 28 National Soccer Stadium where the atrocities were committed and hospital morgues, allegedly burying them in mass graves, in an attempt to hide the evidence, stated Human Rights Watch (Human Rights Watch 2010).

In the words of Haby Dieng (2012) and Abdourahmane Sikhé Camara (2012), this was the straw that broke the camel’s back, in that the incident prompted ECOWAS leaders to impose an arms embargo on Guinea in October. Human Rights Watch concurs, stating that the massacre “led to the imposition of arms embargos by ECOWAS and the EU, and travel bans and asset freezes of CNDD members by the EU, US, and AU, as well as the withdrawal or cancellation of economic and military assistance from the EU, US, and France” (Human Rights Watch 2010). The country had also been barred from taking part in regular ECOWAS activities.

According to the Commission of Inquiry that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed, “crimes against humanity had been committed” and “there were reasonable grounds to allege individual criminal responsibility of key members of the ruling military junta” (United Nations 2015). The UN Department of Political Affairs (UNDPA) indicated that the commission further recommended that the International Criminal Court (ICC) be seized of the cases where such crimes were committed and that an office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights be established in Guinea. As a result, the ICC Office of the Prosecutor placed the situation under preliminary examination. The Associate Press later reported that, upon completing a three-day investigation in Conakry, ICC Deputy

Political Crisis and ECOWAS Mediation 21 Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda concluded that she had the “sentiment that crimes against humanity have been committed” (The Associated Press 2010).

It was not until 2012 that legal actions were taken with the indictments by a Guinean court of Lt. Col. Moussa Tiégboro Camara, the former CNDD minister in charge of the Fight against Drug Trafficking and Organized Crime, and Col. Abdoulaye Chérif Diaby, the former Health minister. Then followed the indictment of former Conakry Governor Major Sékou Rosco Camara in February 2013. Obviously, these actions are no match for the magnitude of the crimes committed on September 28, 2009.

At any rate, as international isolation began to take its toll, junta members began to exchange accusations and counter-accusations. Four members of Prime Minister Kabiné Komara’s civilian cabinet resigned while Capt. Dadis and his closest supporters sought scapegoats. One such potential scapegoat, Presidential Security officer Lt. Aboubacar “Toumba” Diakité, shot and gravely wounded Capt. Camara during an altercation on December 3, 2009. Camara was flown to a military hospital in Morocco. Diakité told RFI in an interview, “I shot him [Camara] because at a certain point, there was a complete betrayal in my view, a total betrayal of democracy. He tried to blame me for all that went wrong during the events of September 28.” To the journalist’s question whether he was prepared to surrender to his country’s justice system or remain in hiding Diakité responded, “I will not turn myself in because they do not want the truth to be known. They’d prefer to kill me” (rougejaunevert.com 2009). In February 2010, Diakité gave another interview on RFI in which he commended Gen. Konaté for his emphasis on national reconciliation and stated that by doing so Konaté was showing integrity and leadership. “I ask General Sékouba Konaté to pardon me for the events of September 28 because we went to the stadium that day but we did so on the orders of the president of the republic [Dadis Camara]. For that I am willing to surrender to the International Criminal Court if need be.” Asked if he trusts the international justice system more than does his own country’s system Diakité stated emphatically, “As far as I am

22 Stichproben concerned the Guinean justice system has no credibility at all” (rougejaunevert.com 2010).

The ECOWAS-Mediated Political Transition

The early stages of ECOWAS’s “stick-and-carrot” approach ought to be considered in the context of the general concern for regional peace and security in West Africa. Thus, back in the 1990s, ECOWAS, the OAU and the UN all endeavored to help manage the Guinean crisis with a view to allowing the Conté government to continue playing its critical role in the search for lasting peace in the war-torn neighboring countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, and Côte d’Ivoire. As a result, Guinean opposition leaders went as far as to accuse the international community of being complacent with the Conté regime, despite its record of human rights violations and vote rigging. At the time, though, Guinea was viewed as an island of peace in a sea of conflict and was host to hundreds of thousands of refugees from the just-named countries.8

The Conté government was not exactly the benevolent player that it often claimed to be in the network of regional conflict, however. Alexis Arieff analyzes the impacts of West Africa’s civil wars on Guinean politics and explains that Conté, just like Sékou Touré before him, leveraged regional conflicts to his own benefit. On the one hand he managed to protect the central structures of the state from the destabilizing effects of “neighbourhood wars”. On the other hand the massive influx of refugees from Liberia and Sierra Leone “allowed the Conté government to increase, and co-opt, the flow of international humanitarian aid to Guinean territory and improve government presence in remote areas of the country” (Arieff 2009: 331ff.). Overall, Arieff argues, the risky strategy ultimately put Conté on the side of the winners, “leaving the Guinean president surrounded by friendly, or at least neutral, leaders in 2003,” as Arieff aptly underscores (Arieff 2009: 340). 8 For more details on the refugee issue see McGovern (2002); Milner (2005); Camara/O’Toole/Baker (2014); as well as reports by Human Rights Watch and the International Refugee Organization.

Political Crisis and ECOWAS Mediation 23 It must be emphasized, however, that this was a short-term gain with far-reaching medium- and, potentially, long-term political and security repercussions for Guinea, especially when considered in the context of the present study. One immediate cost was that Conté’s support for the United Liberation Movement for Democracy (ULIMO) and, later, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) against Charles Taylor played a role in inciting the armed attacks that pro-Taylor forces unleashed on southeastern Guinea in 2000 and 2001, as Arieff puts it. Thus, in addition to being involved in the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) and the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), the Guinean armed forces found themselves fighting rebels in the region.

A repercussion of the wars and Guinea’s involvement in them has come in the form of persistent allegations leveled at Alpha Condé according to which, as a member of the opposition leadership, he also secretly supported Guinean rebels bent on overthrowing the Conté government and operating from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire. Proponents claim that these secret activities were among the reasons for Condé’s arrest in December 1998 while attempting to flee to Côte d’Ivoire and his subsequent imprisonment (December 1998 until May 2001) on charges of attempting to recruit mercenary to overthrow or destabilize the government. Whether these allegations have any merit is open to debate. What is certain is that they came back to hunt Condé and, to a lesser extent, Blaise Compaoré when the latter was appointed ECOWAS mediator in Guinea’s crisis.

Another medium-term repercussion of Conté’s involvement in the wars was that once the wars ended, the foreign aid connected to them dried out, and the distraction that they had caused dissipated, both Guinean pro-democracy forces and the international community increased the pressure for democratic change beyond the mere cosmetic “electoralism” that had prevailed since 1993. Lastly, as explained earlier, the central structures of the state that Conté had been able to protect from the destabilizing effects of “neighbourhood wars” began to crumble from within, as the president’s health deteriorated and an oligarchy took control of state institutions.

24 Stichproben Against this background the crisis in Guinea reached its breaking point (2006-2009) at a time when ECOWAS and the AU were becoming increasingly determined to no longer allow military juntas to take roots in the region. On the domestic level, the denouement of the crisis coincided with the emergence of independent labor unions, the consecration of multiparty politics, the formation of an active civil society, and the rise of an increasingly plural press. The synergetic resolve of these nascent forces created a sociopolitical environment that was less and less amenable to undemocratic governance, least of all military rule.

Considering ECOWAS’s mediation in the 2008-2010 episode of Guinea’s crisis against the thus summarized context will help the reader better understand the organization’s accomplishments in terms of averting a civil war and managing political transition from volatile military rule to an elected civilian leadership. It will also provide a better understanding of the downside of the transition, the consequences of which have prevented the Guinean people’s expectations for true national reconciliation and democratic governance from becoming a reality under Alpha Condé’s administration.

In the wake of the September 28 massacre, the ECOWAS leadership appointed Burkina Faso`s then President Blaise Compaoré as mediator in Guinea’s crisis on October 2, 2009 (on the fifty-first anniversary of Guinea’s independence). The appointment was consistent with the organization’s approach to peace and security which emphasizes conflict prevention through mediation, whenever possible. Nevertheless, the move was received with mixed feelings among the Guinean political class and civil society, even if some political leaders praised ECOWAS in public statements. In the minds of numerous Guineans, Compaoré was the protégé of Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi, who had been allegedly supplying weapons and funding to the CNDD to keep it afloat, in violation of international sanctions and in disregard for the will of Guinea’s pro-democracy forces.

Political Crisis and ECOWAS Mediation 25 Moreover, in the collective psyche of those members of the armed forces who fought off Guinean rebels in 2000-2001 in the town of Gueckédou, Compaoré was nothing short of a super warlord behind warlords Charles Taylor of Liberia and Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone. Several Gueckédou veterans cited the military support that the enemy received from Taylor in particular as the cause of the disdain they had for Compaoré, the man whom they referred to as “maudit-ateur” (a barbarism meaning “the accursed mediator”). In addition, Compaoré’s egregious mistreatment of pro-democracy forces and journalists in his own country further tarnished his image in the eyes of numerous Guineans.

Compaoré and his Guinean interlocutors, therefore, entered the mediation with little mutual trust. No wonder, then, the mediation hit a major roadblock from the beginning, as IRIN News reported. In fact, on October 6, 2010, Guinean political and civil society leaders declined to participate in a meeting with the CNDD unless Capt. Camara stepped down. Compaoré proposed the meeting during his first visit to Conakry since being appointed ECOWAS mediator. According to IRIN News, on November 19, 2009, Compaoré submitted to the Guinean leaders a plan calling for Capt. Camara to lead a transitional council that would be tasked with organizing presidential elections within ten months from December 2009. It specified that members of the CNDD and the civilian cabinet would be barred from running in those elections. The coalition of political and civil society leaders rejected the plan, arguing that it still ignored “the fundamental concerns of the Guinean people” and resolutions by the AU, the International Contact Group on Guinea (ICG-G), the EU, ECOWAS and the UN Security Council (IRIN 2009). Among such “fundamental concerns” the coalition cited the growing call for the departure of the junta, the formation of civilian transitional national-unity government that would spearhead the political transition.

It was against this backdrop that Compaoré’s diplomatic task slowly took off while Capt. Camara convalesced in the Burkina capital, Ouagadougou, having been flown there from Morocco on January 12, 2010. As cynical as it

26 Stichproben may sound, Compaoré’s job was made easier, arguably, by Diakité’s bullet, which placed Capt. Camara at the mercy of international players, including France, Germany, the EU, and the US, whose views and policies had become increasingly unfavorable to the CNDD regime. Hence, during Camara’s hospitalization, top diplomats representing these nations and Morocco sealed his political fate, as the following excerpt from a classified US diplomatic cable later leaked by WikiLeaks shows:

“Following a series of discussions in Rabat on January 5, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson signaled explicit USG [United States Government] support to Guinean Defense Minister Sekouba Konate in his bid to lead the country’s transition to civilian rule. A/S Carson, along with French Presidential Advisor for African Affairs Andre Parant and Moroccan Foreign Minister Taieb Fassi Fihri, signed a declaration indicating their commitment to the transition process based on the plan proposed by ECOWAS facilitator Blaise Compaore, President of Burkina Faso. Under the declaration, wounded junta leader Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, who remains hospitalized in Rabat, would be prohibited from returning to Conakry as the signatories pursue his resettlement to a third country” (Wikileaks 2010).

With international sanctions still in place (“stick”) and signals of cooperation being sent (“carrots”), negotiations among the various stakeholders resulted in an important agreement, which entered history as the Ouagadougou Accords of January 15, 2010. The following are excerpts from that twelve-point document originally published under the title “Ouagadougou Joint Declaration:”

“Following consultations conducted in Ouagadougou on January 13 and 14, 2010; […] Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, President of the National Council for Democracy and Development (CNDD) and President of the Republic of Guinea, General Sékouba Konaté, Vice-President of the CNDD, Defense Minister, and Interim President of the Republic of Guinea, and His Excellency Mr. Blaise Compaoré, President of Burkina Faso and Mediator in the Republic of Guinea’s crisis have reached an agreement on the following

Political Crisis and ECOWAS Mediation 27 measures: […] (3) The reorganization and reform of the defense and security forces; (4) The creation of a National Transitional Council [Conseil national de transition—CNT], a deliberative political organ headed by a religious leader and comprising 101 members representing all the components of Guinean society; (5) The appointment of a prime minister, president of the Council of Ministers, from within the Forum of Forces Vives of Guinea; (6) The formation of a national unity government; […] (8) The organization within six months of presidential elections in which [the following persons] shall not run [:] the members of the National Transitional Council, the transitional head of state, the members of the CNDD, the prime minister, the members of the national unity government and active members of the Defense and Security Forces; (9) The use of ECOWAS civilian and military observers […]” (RFI 2010).

As indicated earlier, ECOWAS’s diplomatic activities were part and parcel of the concerted efforts of the broader international community, which was still deeply concerned about the future of peace and stability in the conflict-prone West Africa region. From that perspective, UNDPA indicated that the United Nations had been working with regional and international partners to encourage a peaceful return to constitutional order in Guinea. UNDPA explained that the United Nations Office for West Africa (UNOWA) and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Mohammed Ibn Chambas, were leading UN diplomatic efforts on the ground. Additionally, indicated the report, the UN had been supporting the efforts of ECOWAS to mediate in the crisis, in addition to being an active member of the ICG-G established in January 2009. ICG-G comprised permanent members of the UN Security Council, African states that were serving as non-permanent members of the Security Council, the EU, the Organisation internationale de la francophonie (OIF) and the Mano River Union (MRU) (United Nations 2015).

It is fair to suggest that, as the spearhead of the mediation, ECOWAS succeeded in mitigating Compaoré’s limited trust and confidence capital with the Guinean leadership and bringing the process to fruition thanks to the strong and steady support that it secured from ICG-G (Diallo 2011:

28 Stichproben 37ff.). Tolno (2015) also underscores the carefully cultivated international synergy, thanks to which Guinea was able to return to a constitutional order and transition to a civilian leadership through relatively peaceful and free presidential elections. The elections were prepared by a transitional government formed in accordance with the Ouagadougou Accords. General Sékouba Konaté, the second vice president and Defense minister of the CNDD, headed the transitional government as interim head of state. Representing the political opposition, Jean Marie Doré, the leader of the political party Union pour le progrès de la Guinée (UPG) [Union for the Progress of Guinea], served as transitional prime minister. Rabiatou Sèrah Diallo, the president of the CNTG, headed the CNT. As the transitional national legislature, the CNT adopted a new constitution and a new electoral code. ECOWAS and OIF attempted to mitigate the flaws of the Commission électorale nationale indépendante (CENI) [National Independent Electoral Commission] by having Malian retired army general Siaka Toumani Sangaré appointed as its president.9

Notwithstanding sporadic irregularities and ethnic clashes between Fulani supporters of UFDG presidential candidate Cellou Dalein Diallo and Malinké supporters of RPG candidate Alpha Condé, twenty-four candidates competed in the first round on June 27 and, on November 7, Diallo and Condé faced each other in a more agitated run off. Although Diallo was the front runner with 43.69 percent against Condé with 18.25 percent, the latter was declared winner of the run off with 52.52 percent over the former with 47.48 percent. Condé was sworn in as president on December 21, 2010. On September 9, 2013, legislative elections were held after multiple delays. As far as ECOWAS and its international partners were concerned, Guinea’s political transition was at long last complete.

9 For a summative discussion of General Konaté’s leadership of the transition see Diallo (2011).

Political Crisis and ECOWAS Mediation 29 Conclusion

The aim of the present study has been to shed light on the ways in which international diplomatic engagement helped avert civil war in the Republic of Guinea and place the country on the path to democracy and constitutional governance. The process and its outcome exemplify the strengths and weaknesses of intra-African crisis management as well as the uncertainties that often surround the involvement of global stakeholders in the management of crises in Africa.

Considered in conjunction with West Africa’s volatile political environment, the management of Guinea’s crisis by ECOWAS and the international community at large can be safely categorized as a successful case of crisis diplomacy, whereby methods of conflict resolution, conflict management, and conflict prevention were implemented conjointly or alternately as circumstances warranted. Nevertheless, one cannot help but also take into account the concerns of Guinean analysts who the fact that it took so much violence and suffering, much of which could have been prevented, for Guineans to get where they are today. Nor can one hastily dismiss the questions raised by such analysts whether the international community has been more concerned about preventing worst case scenarios and less interested in attaining best case scenarios while managing crises in Africa (Mombeya Diallo 2012).

Whatever the truth, the ECOWAS-mediated crisis management and political transition in Guinea ought to be understood as an international effort involving the African Union and the United Nations system as well as the United States, the European Union as a whole, and individual countries therein. Progress made as a result of that successful effort includes the opportunity that Guinea has had to rebuild its international standing including the reinstatement of full membership in ECOWAS and the African Union, the lifting of the arms embargo and economic sanctions imposed by the international community during the CNDD rule and, quite significantly, the ability to keep the military out of politics for the first time since 1984.

30 Stichproben To place this episode in context, it is pertinent to underscore the fact that the level of ECOWAS involvement in Guinean affairs in 2009-2010 is, arguable, unprecedented, although Guinea’s participation in ECOWAS activities had been steady until the enactment of the sanctions mentioned earlier. In fact, from its inception in 1975 until Guinea’s normalization of diplomatic relations with Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire in 1978, the country’s West Africa foreign policy was, more often than not, conducted within the framework of ECOWAS, due to the fact that Guinea was not a member of the major Francophone-centered regional organizations, such as the Communauté

économique de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (CEAO) [West African Economic Community]. Even though those relics of Guinea’s 1958 chaotic separation with France began to dissipate in the late 1970s and the Guinean government reconnected with Francophone West Africa, ties with non-Francophone ECOWAS heavyweights such as Nigeria, Ghana, and Liberia remained conspicuously strong. In fact, being the only Francophone nation-state non-member of the CFA monetary zone and its multiple institutions, Guinea’s position is occasionally viewed as a balancing act between the Francophone, Anglophone, and Lusophone spheres of ECOWAS.10

At present, the progress resulting from the ECOWAS-mediated transition notwithstanding, enormous challenges lie ahead not least making the leap from democratic transition to the consolidation of democratic governance. The leap must entail combating corruption and “political tribalism” as well as developing and implementing a regime of military-civilian relation that is favorable to the sustainment of constitutional order and rule of law. These challenges become all the more conspicuous with the first presidential elections of the post-transition period being slated for November 2015. Indeed, when one weights the degree of Guineans’ disappointment with President Alpha Condé’s administration against the struggle and sacrifice that made his election possible, one is also inclined to lend credence to the analogy that this author heard from multiple interlocutors that, all things considered, Guinea’s transition is akin to an elephant begetting a mouse.

10 On certain aspects of the relations between ECOWAS and CEAO see also Asante (1985).

Political Crisis and ECOWAS Mediation 31 Though no longer ruled by a volatile military junta, Guineans continue to struggle under a regime plagued by lack of rule of law and government accountability, widespread organized crime and dearth of public safety, the deepening of ethnic division and prevalence of nepotism, the predominance of a Mafia-like culture of corruption and mismanagement of national resources, and continued economic hardship.

The argument has been made that in discussing Guineans’ disappointment with Condé’s administration one should also consider the fact that nearly all highly anticipated political transitions suffer major drawbacks and that some of the expectations that remain unfulfilled in such situations may have been unrealistic in the first place. That may well be! Nonetheless, the cases of post-genocide Rwanda, post-civil war Angola, and post-apartheid South Africa have demonstrated that although some expectations take time to fulfill, not only do traumatized citizenries hold high expectations as a sense of self-worth and a survival mechanism, but also it is perfectly reasonable to hold post-conflict or post-trauma governments to account for the timely restoration of certain fundamental values and fulfillment of certain basic needs. Also, the question whether things would have been different had Cellou Dalein Diallo been elected president in 2010 does have some value. Obviously, due to its hypothetical nature any tentative answer to the question could only be a speculation. What can be safely said, though, is that, unlike Alpha Condé who never held a government position until taking office in December 2010, Diallo served in the Conté government as minister of Transport, Telecommunications and Tourism; minister of Infrastructure; minister of Public Works and Transport; Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture; and prime minister, successively. Would this background prove to be an asset or a liability, in the event Diallo accedes to the presidency? Only time will tell. Another thing that can be safely said is that regardless of who Guinea’s president is, for Guinea to make sustained progress toward national unity, national development, and democratic governance, Guineans must change their political culture. That must entail, among other things, putting country above ethnic group and accepting the

32 Stichproben state as an impersonal institutional system representing the collective sovereign will of the Guinean people.

In the final analysis, it is doubtful whether the international community, including ECOWAS, is to blame for the disastrous outcome of the otherwise highly anticipated political transition. For instance, whether the French government and its alleged surrogate Blaise Compaoré manipulated the process in favor of their so-called mutual protégé Alpha Condé, as widely perceived in Guinea, is debatable. Equally debatable is the allegation that France and Germany had a hand in the physical incapacitation of Capt. Camara and his subsequent political ostracizing. We have learned, though, from confidential diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks that both France and the US were involved in his banishment. If nothing else, the fact that Diakité has yet to be found after shooting Capt. Camara, despite having given interviews to RFI from his “undisclosed location,” remains puzzling, to say the least. Regardless, the Guinean people are ultimately responsible for their destiny and no international efforts can be a viable substitute for the sovereign exercise of that responsibility.

In a broader context, however, the fact that ECOWAS and other international organizations through it, have been involved in conflict prevention, conflict management and/or conflict resolution in virtually every West African country over the past two decades alone speaks to a more profound concern in the age of globalization. That is, whether African states have the ability to promote long-term human security within the framework of the existing nation-states. With human security being understood as the safety and well-being of individuals, families and communities in areas as vital as food, health, environment, political freedom and participation, cultural integrity, and education, the prevailing notion of state security has proved to constitute an obstacle to people-centered security in increasingly more cases. Such was the case in Guinea, for instance, during the CNDD regime. ECOWAS’s record of conflict prevention, conflict management, and conflict resolution lends more and

Political Crisis and ECOWAS Mediation 33 more credence to the argument that regional integration could be the best approach to West Africa’s pursuit of security and lasting peace and stability.

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McGovern, Michael (2002): “Conflit régional et rhétorique de la contreinsurrection” (translated from the French language by Roland Marchal). In: Politique Africaine 88: 84-101.

Tolno, Charles-Pascal (2015): Transition militaire et élection présidentielle 2010 en Guinée. Paris: L’Harmattan.

Vignes, Jacques (1987): “Guinée, un drôle de procès.” In: Jeune Afrique 1376: 28-29. Zegbélémou, Togba Zegbélémou (2007): Élections en Guinée. Paris: L’Harmattan. Online Sources

Condé, Abdoulaye (2008): Affaire BCRG-Ministère des Finances? Fodé Soumah-

Mamadou Sylla: Le Général Président Lansana Conté doit Trancher, http://infoguinee.net/info24/index.php/permalink/6374.html (12.05.2015).

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Jeune Afrique (2009a): Moussa Dadis Camara : « Pourquoi j’ai pris le pouvoir ». http://www.jeuneafrique.com/205995/politique/moussa-dadis-camara-pourquoi-j-ai-pris-le-pouvoir/ (02.03.2015)

Jeune Afrique (2009b): Moussa Dadis Camara : « Je suis un incompris, et j’en souffre ». http://www.jeuneafrique.com/202255/politique/moussa-dadis-camara-je-suis-un-incompris-et-j-en-souffre/ (02.03.2015)

Kamara, Tibou (2008): Elhadj Fodé Soumah victime du pouvoir de l’argent ou de l’argent du pouvoir ?, http://www.radio-kankan.com/Fode-Soumah.182.0.html (12.05.2015).

Mas, Monique (2008): 30 millions de dollars évaporés entre un ministre et un grand patron, http://www.radio-kankan.com/Fode-Soumah.182.0.html (12.05.2015).

Milner, James (2005): The Militarization and Demilitarization of Refugee Camps in Guinea, http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/D-Book-series/book-01-Armed-and-Aimless/SAS-Armed-Aimless-Part-1-Chapter-05.pdf (11.6.2015).

RFI (January 2010) : Texte intégral de la déclaration conjointe de Ouagadougou, http://www.rfi.fr/contenu/20100116-texte-integral-declaration-conjointe-ouagadougou/ (01.03.2015).

Roger, Olivier (interviewer) (December 2009): Toumba Diakité parle sur RFI, http://www.roujaunevert.com (09.03.2015).

Roujaunevert (04.02.2010) : Aboubacar Toumba Diakité de retour sur RFI de Conakry, Guinée, http://www.roujaunevert.com (9.05.2015).

Seck, Cheikh Yérim (01.05.2009): Moussa Dadis Camara: « Pourquoi j’ai pris le pouvoir », http://www.jeuneafrique.com/ (01.03.2015).

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Wikileaks (January 8, 2010): Guinea: The way forward, https://www. wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/10RABAT8_a.html (11.05.2015).

Interviews and Personal Communications

Abdoulaye Lélouma Diallo is a retired official of the International Labor Organization and

a former leader of the CNTG during the Sékou Touré regime. Personal communications with the author. I first had an interview with him in 2006 (Boston,

Political Crisis and ECOWAS Mediation 35

Massachusetts) and further personal communications in 2009 (Geneva, Switzerland).

Abdoulaye Mombeya Diallo is a Guinean journalist. Personal communications with the author, July 2012 (Conakry).

Abdourahmane Sikhé Camara was the general-secretary of the CNT at the time of our communication in July 2012 (Conakry).

Anne Marie Koïvogui is a civil servant for the Conakry Port Authority and a former member of Claude “Coplan” Pivi’s inner circle. Personal communications with the author, January 2007 (Conakry).

Charles-Pascal Tolno is a professional educator, having worked as college professor and dean of the Donka Faculty of Social Sciences in Conakry. He served as governor of Conakry from 1990 to 1992 and minister of Higher Education from 1992 to 1994. Personal communications with the author, July 2012 (Conakry).

Diénabou Baldé was a sophomore in the Department of Chemistry at the time of the second wave of student protests and a member of the Student Government Organization. Personal communications with the author, 1992 (Conakry).

Fady Diallo (Captain) was a transmission officer of the Presidential Security Services during the Conté presidency. Interview with the author, January 2007 (Conakry).

Fanta Oulen Bakary Camara is a police commissioner in Conakry. At the time of our personal communication (July 2012, Conakry) he was director of the National Agency for the Protection of Women and Children.

Haby Dieng is a justice on Guinea’s Supreme Court. At the time of our communication (July 2012, Conakry), she was also the vice president of the CNT Constitutional Commission and president of the NGO Association of Women Jurists of Guinea.

Kader Doumbouya (Lt. Col.) is a retired paratrooper who served as commandant of the Bataillon Autonome des Troupes Aéroportées (BATA). He co-led the February 1996 mutiny. Personal communications with the author, July 2012 (Conakry).

Nafa Diallo (Captain) served as an artillery officer in 2000 and 2001 during the anti-rebellion campaign in Guinea. Personal communication with the author, June 2010 (Conakry).

Rabiatou Sèrah Diallo is the former general-secretary of the CNTG labor union that co-led the nation-wide strikes of 2006 and 2007. At the time of our latest conversations (July 2012, Conakry), she was serving as president of the CNT.

Yaya Sow (Lt. Col.) is a retired army officer and an ECOMOC veteran. He also was the artillery commander of the Bataillon Spécial de Conakry (BSC) and one of the leaders of the February 1996 military mutiny. Personal communications with the author, July 2012 (Conakry).

Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien. No. 30/2016, Vol. 16, 37-62.

Everyday Politics: Market Women and the Local Government in Kankan, Guinea

Carole Ammann

Abstract The Guinean state has not only been shaped and reshaped by the political elite, but also by people’s daily actions. Women selling at Dibida market in Kankan, the stronghold of Guinea’s current President Alpha Condé, are doing politics although in interviews they often deny to do so. Thus, I propose to focus on these women’s everyday agency so as to reveal their modes of political articulation and to illustrate how they influence governmental discourses and practices. Drawing on ethnographic research, I highlight the phenomenon of everyday politics by focussing on Kankan’s market women’s interactions with the local government represented by actors such as tax collectors, members of the market office, and other administrative employees. The aim is to gain insight into modes of political articulations that are hardly visible, hence difficult to grasp and analyse. I illustrate that market women, despite not forming a strong network, are able to put pressure on the local government by their sheer number and can thus sometimes pursue their goals.

Introduction

The Guinean state has not only been shaped and reshaped by a political elite, but also by people’s daily actions “outside the male-dominated institutional sphere” (Waylen 1996: 11). By analysing individual and collective agency only in ‘formal’ politics or within ‘civil society’ organizations we easily overlook forms of political actions that emerge from

38 Stichproben everyday social practices. This article’s aim is to gain insight into modes of political articulations that are hardly visible, hence difficult to grasp and analyse. I propose to focus on the daily lives of marginalised individuals or groups, in this case market women, who do not have access to channels and means to voice their interests so as to reveal their modes of political agency. This paper highlights the phenomenon of everyday politics (Kerkvliet 2002, 2005; Kallio/Häkli 2013) in Kankan, Guinea’s second largest city. Kankan, founded in the 18th century and the stronghold of current President Alpha Condé, is situated in the Upper Guinean Region, some 650 km northeast of the capital Conakry. It is a Muslim religious centre known for its trading activities. According to the latest census, around 220,000 people actually live in the city (République de Guinée 2014: 9).

This contribution focuses on women selling at Dibida market. It analyses how market women as individuals and/or collective actors negotiate selling rights, access to market infrastructure, and tax collection. How do market women’s daily actions influence the local government’s discourses and practices and vice versa? Many of these women live from hand to mouth spending the money they earn during the day on their evening meal. This makes them especially vulnerable to governmental interventions, such as the closing of the markets or the displacement of ambulant vendors.

The data for this article was gathered during two long-term field trips in Guinea between September 2011 and February 2013 (eleven months in total). The methodology applied is that of the triangular Emic Evaluation Approach (EEA), which rests on three pillars: a) mapping of social actors, b) discourse analysis, and c) social-practice analysis (Förster et al. 2011). First, I mapped the actors, their physical and social environment (Lefebvre 1991), and how these actors relate to each other. In a next step, two social spheres where everyday and political discussions are common have been chosen, namely markets and cafés. Much information was gathered through systematic participation in and observation of these spheres. In the markets I could observe and discuss how women deal with scarcity in their everyday lives and when and how they interact with representatives of the

Everyday Politics: Market Women and the Local Government 39

local government. I therefore spent many hours sitting on hard benches besides market women listening and observing what was going on around me. Additionally, informal conversations, group discussions, and a few narrative interviews gave important insights into experiences, expectations, and practices of these vendors.1

Since the 1990s, scholars especially within (feminist) political science have started paying attention to the participation of women in African politics. Yet they narrowly focused on their access to, presence in, and impact on (Goetz 2003) the conventional political setting or the ‘civil society’ level (Waylen 2007).2 In recent scientific literature on Guinea, questions regarding women’s political articulations have largely been neglected. Steady (2011), in her book on female leadership in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, ignores political activities of women outside the institutional political sphere. However, four authors laudably treat this subject: Osborn (2011) elaborates on the influence of households on politics in the Milo River Valley between 1650 and 1890. Schmidt (2002; 2005) highlights that women’s mobilization and implication within the nationalist movement has been crucial. Pauthier (2007) and Camara (2014) draw attention to female representation, mass mobilization, and political activities during the First Republic under Sékou Touré when women constituted important pillars of the one-party regime. Both authors illustrate how market women were among the rare voices opposing the regime during protests in 1977. Furthermore, they emphasize women’s massive participation in the general strikes of 2006/07.

1 The fieldwork was financed by the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF), the Freiwillige Akademische

Gesellschaft (FAG), and the Josef und Olga Tomcsik-Stiftung. A draft of this article was presented during a meeting of the Research Group on Political Transformations at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel and at the European Association of Social Anthropologists’ (EASA) conference 2014 in Tallinn. The author thanks Michelle Engeler, Johannes Knierzinger, and two reviewers for comments on an earlier version of this article. Special thanks go to my two research assistants who translated the statements of my non-formally educated informants from Mande and Pulaar to French. All translations to English are by the author. 2 For an overview see Bauer/Britton (2006), Bauer (2012), Goetz (2009), Hassim (2006), Steady (2006), and Tripp (2001; 2013).

40 Stichproben Women selling at Dibida, Kankan’s main market, and their everyday political articulations stand at the centre of this analysis. I have structured the paper into four sections: First, I illustrate why the state cannot be regarded as a single actor with clear boundaries. I also argue that we have to look beyond advocacy politics in order to grasp and analyse various modes of political agency of marginalized individuals and groups. Secondly, I describe the state of research on women’s political activities in Guinea since World War Two. Thirdly, I take a close look at how political articulations of market women manifest in their daily interactions with employees of Kankan’s local government. Here, two instances are used as examples: In February 2012, the local government decided to banish ambulant vendors from selling their commodities on a market road. This resulted in fierce debates among Dibida’s vendors, within the offices of the local government, and on the local radio. Further, I describe the interrelation between market women and a particular tax collector, Ali Sebebilala, and analyse what this tells us about these women’s political articulations. In the last part, the results are summarized.

Looking at the state and political articulations

Guinea is divided into four administrational regions, 34 prefectures, and 335 sub-prefectures (Camara et al. 2014: 22). The city of Kankan as the administrative centre of the Upper Guinea Region has a governorate, a prefecture, and a municipality. Formally, the responsibilities of each institution are determined. In reality, however, they intermingle. Not surprisingly, the local population, in daily discourses and when not talking about a particular person does not usually differentiate between the three administrative levels; they are all referred to as “authorities”.3 The notion also includes the chefs de quartier, which closely collaborate with the local government but do not get any remuneration. This illustrates that the state is not a single actor and cannot be separated from society. A state’s boundaries are blurred, fluid, elusive, and constantly defined and redefined 3 Hereafter, I use the term local government when referring to one of these administrative levels.

Everyday Politics: Market Women and the Local Government 41

by various individuals, groups, and institutions (Kerkvliet 2001: 239f.; Greenhouse 2002: 8; Nugent 2004: 198; Blundo/Le Meur 2009: 14; Hagmann/Péclard 2010: 552). Thus, state and society constitute each other and a variety of actors are “doing the state” (Migdal/Schlichte 2005: 14f.).4

Migdal’s (2001) state-in-society model focuses precisely on the state’s paradoxical quality insofar as it is simultaneously part of and apart from society. Waylen argues similarly. For her, the state is “a site of struggle, not lying outside of society and social processes, but having, on the one hand, a degree of autonomy from these […] and on the other, being permeated by them.” (Waylen 1996: 16) Waylen also hints to the fact that many forms of inequality, based on gender, age, ethnicity, or class are “buried within the state”. (idem)

Hagmann and Péclard promote the concept of ‘negotiating statehood’ as “a way of looking at and grasping dynamic and complex dimensions of statehood.“ (Hagmann/Péclard 2010: 544) Various actors such as bureaucrats, political parties, trade unions, neighbourhood associations, NGOs, religious movements, but also warlords, businessmen/-women, regional and international institutions compete in negotiation arenas that “represent[…] the broader political space in which relations of power and authority are vested.“ (idem: 551) Ordinary practices relating to power poles reveal how statehood is negotiated (Förster 2010: 719). In the following, I use the term bargaining to grasp all encounters between women selling at Dibida market and representatives of Kankan’s local government. Bargaining occurs on a daily basis between two or more persons, groups, or institutions. It does not necessarily contain a mutual, oral agreement – on the contrary, most bargaining processes are nonverbal.

Likewise, Kerkvliet promotes the idea of arenas “in which boundaries, rights, jurisdiction and power distribution between state and societal agencies are debated, contested and resolved.“ (Kerkvliet 2001: 240) Arenas 4 Schroven (2010), for example, describes the dilemma of state employees in a small Guinean costal town during the general strikes of 2006/07. While the bureaucrats see themselves as citizens confronted with the same everyday hardship the strikers protest against, they actually represent the very state addressed by the objectors.

42 Stichproben may be institutions such as municipalities, universities, or police stations but also groups such as NGOs, councils of elders, women associations, or even families. According to Kerkvliet, ”arenas may also be problems and controversies that are not confined to a particular institution.” (idem) This article looks at the arena of Dibida market for an analysis of market women’s political articulations and their interrelation with employees of the local government. Before doing so, I first elaborate on the continuum between everyday politics and advocacy politics that helps grasping different forms of political activities.

“We women, we think that politics is a sleazy affair. So everything that is political does not interest us. We are already afraid if someone mentions politics.” (Group discussion, young female graduates, 29.01.2013) “Here, generally, women are only talking about the prices, because women are not interested in politics. Especially women who have not been to school are not really interested in politics. They say everything is expensive. The prices must be reduced.” (Interview, female radio journalist, 17.01.2013) These two quotations depict a general discomfort of women in Kankan from different educational and economic backgrounds when they talk about politics. Many of them do not want to be related to what they consider as “a dirty male business”. “Politics is for the politicians” is a typical statement in this regard.5 Especially since the presidential elections of 2010, it is regarded as a cause for the division of individuals and groups. The quotations also demonstrate that women who do not frequent one of the political parties typically do not see themselves as political actors (cf. Leftwich 2010 [1983]: 11; Waylen 1996: 18). Politics, in an emic perspective, is identified with elections, parliaments, political parties, government’s policies, trade union, protests, and so on.

I argue, however, that my interlocutors are ‘doing politics’ despite often denying so in interviews. We have to look for politics “at every level and in every sphere” (Leftwich 2010 [1983]: 12). Thus, everyone can be a political 5 The attitude of considering politics as a dirty, dishonest, immoral, and corrupt business is not specific to women in Kankan. It can be found in different places and contexts (cf. Kerkvliet 2002: 10; Spencer 2007: 32).

Everyday Politics: Market Women and the Local Government 43

actor, every form of agency can become political, and everything can be politicized (Kallio/Häkli 2013: 7-8).6 I propose to focus on everyday politics, that is, people’s daily discourses and social practices so as to finally reveal their political articulations. My understanding of everyday politics follows Kerkvliet: “Everyday politics occurs when people live and work and involves people embracing, adjusting to, or contesting norms and rules regarding authority over, production of, or allocation of resources. It includes quiet, mundane, and subtle expressions and acts that indirectly and for the most part privately endorse, modify, or resist prevailing procedures, rules, regulations, or order. Everyday politics involves little or no organization. It features the activities of individuals and small groups as they make a living, raise their families, wrestle with daily problems, deal with others like themselves who are relatively powerless and with powerful superiors and other.” (Kerkvliet 2005: 22)

To grasp various forms of political articulations I propose to place political actions on a continuum between everyday and advocacy politics. As the continuum indicates, this boundary is fluid. Further, the orientation of political articulations can shift quickly: Everyday politics can easily merge into advocacy politics and vice versa. The characteristics of everyday politics are that people do not see themselves as political actors and are usually unaware of their political articulations. This may be when someone complains about government’s mismanagement and misappropriation while listening to the radio. Conscious claim making, on the contrary, is an integral part of advocacy politics.7 This continuum is helpful in identifying and analysing marginalized individuals’ and groups’ political articulations that are mundane and thus hardly visible at first sight – such as those of women selling at Dibida market. As will be illustrated in the example on tax collection, most of the vendor’s political articulations are subtle and can be characterized as everyday politics. 6 For an overview on how anthropologists have framed the political since the 1940s see Spencer (1998: 4-6; 2007). 7 The here proposed continuum further develops Kerkvliet’s (2005) tripartition of politics into official, advocacy, and everyday politics. It is also influenced by Bayat’s concepts of “street politics” (1997) and “life as politics” (2010).

44 Stichproben Throughout Guinea’s history, women have been politically active: In her analysis on politics between the seventeenth and the nineteenth century, Osborn (2011) emphasises that household building had highly influenced state building in the Milo River Valley. On the eve of independence, women started frequenting the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain-Parti

Démocratique de Guinée (PDG-RDA). Starting by the 1950s, the next part elaborates on modes of women’s advocacy politics until the presidential elections of 2010.

A historical perspective on women’s political activities

Women started engaging within the nationalist movement after the general strikes of 1953, in which they had played an important role. From this point onward, the PDG-RDA began mobilizing women on a larger scale (Schmidt 2005: 113; Pauthier 2007: 221).8 Unlike other Guinean political parties, the PDG-RDA took women’s concerns such as health, sanitation, and education seriously and altogether, women fundamentally transformed the PDG-RDA’s mobilization tactics, communication methods, programs, and objectives (Schmidt 2005: 114). Already during his early political career, Sékou Touré made women his key followers. The party established the Union révolutionnaire des femmes de Guinée, one of four mass organizations (Barry 2002: 163). The aim of the latter and other unification policies or at least their rhetoric was to foster the Guinean identity at the expense of ethnic identity (Højbjerg et al. 2012: 5; Young 2007: 249). Women’s emancipation and youth’s empowerment went hand in hand with the PDG’s ideology of people’s enlightening. The two groups thereby became the party’s most important pillars (Rivière 1968: 406; Camara 2014: 153ff.). In addition, various laws were adopted to improve the situation of women: Marriage under the age of 17 was prohibited, the high bride-wealth was

8 This is no Guinean particularity. The support of women at the grassroots’ level was important to many (West) African political parties engaged in the struggle for independence (Denzer 2005 [1992]: 217).

Everyday Politics: Market Women and the Local Government 45

reduced and fixed (Doumbouya 2008: 174), and polygamy was officially prohibited (Steady 2011: 63).9

The effectiveness of Touré’s measures to foster female emancipation is contradictorily discussed. For Hanry (1970: 74f.) women’s emancipation was encouraged mostly through Touré’s speeches. However, in his view, not much changed in women’s daily lives. Kaba (1977: 30) reminds us that women were present at all levels of the administration and the state party. Rivière (1968: 408ff.) and Pauthier (2007: 225ff.) emphasize that even if Touré had really wanted to make women active agents of the proclaimed revolution, he still addressed them in their roles as wives, sisters, and mothers. Women took part in party politics, thus their advocacy politics were officially fostered, but their function was not to take decisions; they were only encouraged to spread the regime’s ideology. Camara (2014: 164ff.), on the contrary, is convinced that the PDG’s women policies were successful in the domains of education, employment, and political participation. Gender equality was not only the party’s goal rhetorically; it was also put into practice.10

One could describe women’s political activities during the Touré-era as being contradictory: On the one hand, women vigorously took part in the various entities of the PDG. This engagement gave them a feeling of being integrated into the nation-building process. On the other hand, this does not mean that the regime invited women to look for solutions to their problems. Instead, the party was setting the agenda that women had to follow. Moreover, the different women-committees were an effective means to control the female population. Nevertheless, as the example of the 1977 women’s protests illustrates, when an incident at Conakry’s market led to a 9 Interestingly, the articles of Guinea’s civil code have not been changed until today and, thus, polygamy is theoretically still forbidden (Code civil de la République de Guinée, articles 315-319). In reality, however, the situation looks quite different: More than half of Guinea’s women lived in a polygamous household in 2005 (République de Guinée 2006: 97). Contrary to Sékou Touré’s claim, General Lansana Conté did not foster monogamy. Officially, he himself had two wives. Conté had also a third wife who was called ‘the non-official one’. All three of them, along with their networks, strongly competed in the distribution of the country’s sinecures (Chambers 2004: 131f.; Camara 2014: 397; Engeler 2008: 92). 10 McGovern (2007: 137), too, sees the lasting effects of Touré’s gender policy.

46 Stichproben collective reaction by market women, they sometimes left the predetermined path and publicly showed their malcontent with the government’s policies (Pauthier 2007: 232). These women’s protests are vividly remembered among the Guinean population. Many contemporary witnesses consider the event as the beginning of a less repressive period of Touré’s regime (McGovern 2007: 137).

In contrast to his predecessor, gender was not a central issue for General Lansana Conté and his Parti de l’unité et du progrès (PUP).11 The political opening of many African countries in the 1990s nevertheless presented a possibility for women to reinforce their claims and consequently a multitude of new women’s organisations emerged (Tripp 2005 [2003]: 234ff.). This was also the case in Guinea. Further, the Dakar (1994) and Beijing (1995) UN Platforms for Action influenced Lansana Conté’s women policy. Along these actions the Guinean Ministry of Social Affairs and the Promotion of Women and Childhood started a women’s promotion policy in 1997. The government also adopted some legal reforms to stop women’s discrimination e.g. in the domain of inheritance and land ownership. Additionally, women’s education and health care were promoted. The Conté government also signed international treaties and thereby officially adopted regulations to enforce women’s rights, but it did so mostly to please the ‘International Community’. Nevertheless, Camara (2014: 314ff.). positively evaluates Conté’s policy of women’s liberation even though much remains to be done in the domain of gender equality. Schmidt (2005) has a different standpoint. According to her, Guinea in the early 1990s “[…] was in the midst of a reactionary backlash against women and the political, economic, and social gains they had made during the first two and one-half decades of independence.” (Schmidt 2005: 13)

Nevertheless, women’s advocacy politics became also visible during the Conté-era; the general strikes of 2006/07, where people across ethnic and class boundaries participated, were once again marked by women’s massive

11 This partly explains why there is almost no scholarly work on the topic.

Everyday Politics: Market Women and the Local Government 47

mobilisation.12 According to Pauthier, women expressing their grievances were regarded as highly legitimate: “Every person interrogated on the subject agreed upon the idea that a mobilisation of women would enjoy huge legitimacy and would prove to be more efficient than protests by other political or social actors. […] In a diffuse manner, women thus seemed considered to be best positioned to launch the mobilisation: after them, every category of the population would follow.” (Pauthier 2007: 220, author’s translation)

When Hadja Rabiatou Serah Diallo, one of the leading and identifiable figures of the trade unions, was accused of setting the country on fire, she explained her engagement in the general strikes with her role as a mother: “I am a woman and mother of six children. If I put on fire it is under the cooking pot for nourishing my children. But in Guinea the cooking pot is empty. [...] That is what heats up the country.” (Jeune Afrique 2010, author’s translation) Women who protested during these general strikes did not put forward political claims, but – like Diallo – insisted on their fight against difficult living conditions instead. However, even though their claims were ostensibly economical in nature, women’s demands obviously were political. It was their superficially apolitical character that made these claims legitimate (Pauthier 2007: 234ff.).

During the presidential elections of 2010, the political and social atmosphere in Guinea was tense (International Crisis Group 2011). In Kankan, the Association of Female Leaders helped appeasing these tensions: First, they consulted Madame Bérété and Madame Keita at the Bureau for the Promotion of Women and Children. Secondly, they went to see the senior members (doyens) of each ethnic group. The leader of the association stressed that this had not been an easy task, as women in Guinea usually do not get involved in political issues. Thirdly, they talked about peace and reconciliation to the vendors on Kankan’s markets. And finally, the Association of Female Leaders organised a peaceful march where they

12 For more details on the general strikes and the Guinean trade unions, see McGovern (2007), Jörgel/Utas (2007: 83ff.), and the report by the International Crisis Group (2007).

48 Stichproben spread their main message: Do not kill our children! When asked about their role as women in regard to conflict resolution, a member of the association answered: “If there is anything irregular, we are here to put out the fire. It is our duty as spouses, as mothers, because we are stabbed one way or the other. If it is not our husband, it is our children, our brothers. We are more involved than these men.” (Interview, 21.11.2011) Interestingly, this argumentation very much resembles the one of Hadja Rabiatou Serah Diallo: Both consider their actions as advocacy politics. However, they justify it by referring to their domestic roles.

When looking at the state of research of women’s political articulations in Guinea in a historical perspective, the focus lies on their advocacy politics, on women’s participation in political parties and NGOs, and on mass mobilisations such as general strikes. However, the variety of women’s political articulations does not become visible by only analysing women’s activities within the institutional sphere or public protests. Thus, after this more general overview on Guinea’s past regimes’ discourses and practices in regard to gender issues, I now look more specifically at women’s everyday political activities, which typically do not make headlines. The following case study on women selling at Dibida market illustrates several aspects of women’s political articulations in their interactions with employees of the local government.

Of tax collectors and ambulant vendors

Kankan’s markets are social spheres where “actors fight for access to and control over space, resources and political allegiance.” (Prag 2010: 65) Market women’s interactions with representatives of the local government are manifold. Some encounters take place on a regular basis, such as tax collection. Others are quite unpredictable, for example food inspections. For the purpose of this paper, I elaborate on two examples of interrelations between women selling at Dibida market and the local government, namely tax collection and the closing of a road next to the market.

Everyday Politics: Market Women and the Local Government 49

In general, women in Kankan spend much time on markets (Godard 2010: 211) where they do not only buy and sell different items of daily use, but also establish and foster social and commercial relationships (cf. Werner 2003: 122): On Dibida, similar to other markets, all aspects of a human life are discussed and gossip is everywhere (cf. Prus 1998: 23; Storr 2008; Clark 2010: 15ff.). Many conversations are centred around family issues and local norms such as marriage, illegitimate pregnancy, and both male and female demeanour within matrimony, followed by debates on shifting realities, religion, and the latest news. Elderly people accuse youth of taking drugs and not listening to their parents anymore. Further, many conversations centre on the rice quality. Market women complain about the costs of living, putting a special focus on the high food prices, before turning to their final subject of controversy, namely lacking governmental support. Hence, Kankan’s markets are an ideal social sphere to observe women’s political articulations and their bargaining with representatives of the local government. As Prus notes, “the marketplace is thoroughly and fundamentally social in its constitution. [It] actively reflects people’s past experiences and their anticipation of the future, but it takes its shape in the ‘here and now’ as people work out aspects of their lives in conjunction with other people […].” (Prus 1998: 21)

Dibida, Kankan’s main market, is located in the city centre. It is a closed area whose high ceiling ensures bearable temperatures. Vendors inside the market offer food on tables. Some sell vegetables from their own garden near the Milo River that crosses Kankan, others sell imported rice, fruits from the Forest Region, onions from Mali, etc. Even outside the market, people continue selling items on stands or blankets on the soil. There, the vendors not only sell food, but also other items such as cosmetics and second-hand clothes. Further, there are many ambulant vendors. Women constitute the large majority of the vendors, though men occupy some of the tables too. Contrary to their female counterparts, they usually sell non-perishable goods. The chief of the market, an elderly woman, who is a member of the governmental party and has been appointed by a former

50 Stichproben mayor, officially represents Dibida’s vendors and acts as an intermediary between them and the local government.

Market women are usually depicted as rather poor and uneducated; however, they do not constitute a homogenous category. The most prominent distinction among them is their ethnic background.13 Age is another important differentiation. Hereby, the actual age is not that important – many do not even exactly know it. Being ‘young’ or ‘elderly’ is socially constructed and has to be understood relationally (Shepler 2010: 630). Women who are considered to be elderly are associated with more experience and wisdom and have therefore more authority than younger women. If there is, for example, a quarrel in the market, elderly women are consulted. Further, a differentiation in regard to economic background has to be made: The larger a vendor’s table and the more expensive her commodities, the better is her (and usually her family’s) economic situation. Market women differentiate between items of daily use, which “give money swiftly”, and others, such as cosmetics, jewellery, or clothes, that people do not buy in economically harsh times. The religious background of the vendors is of minor importance, as, in Kankan, religion is usually not an issue of contestation. The market customers, in contrast, represent the whole range of Kankan’s (female) population.

Statehood as a practice is very present in the daily lives of Dibida’s vendors. For the latter the state’s actions are sometimes predictable, for example the routinized tax collection. Other events such as food inspection or the closing of the markets on special occasions – due to the arrival of an important governmental person – are quite unforeseeable. Market women are typical victims of harassment (cf. Prag 2010: 65): If someone disregards a regulation, or if the inspecting person decides, the commodities of the corresponding market woman are to be seized and brought to the market office. There, with the help of family members or friends, she has to bargain with members of the market office to free the seized commodities. The exact

13 The politicization of ethnicity and its impacts on Kankan’s markets have been discussed elsewhere (Ammann/Kaufmann 2014: 76ff.) and are therefore not further elaborated here.

Everyday Politics: Market Women and the Local Government 51

procedures of these instances are unclear and therefore give representatives of the local government a looming presence enhancing their authority. As Lund (2007: 24) notes, the line between taxation and bribery is often fuzzy; both enforce governmental authority.

Local authorities want to exercise control over markets “but often lack legitimacy or means of regulation” (Prag 2010: 65). One possibility of exerting authority is through tax collection. All vendors at Dibida market have to pay 100 Guinean francs (FG) a day.14 At the time of research the smallest banknote was 500FG, corresponding to 5 Euro cent. During a conversation in 2012, a shoe vendor explained that the tax she has to pay felt like a rent to her, as the place was governmental property. Members of the market office employed by the municipality collected the tax every third day. The market women appreciated the tax collector at Dibida market, calling him Ali Sebebilala, ‘the ticket giver’. My informants told me that they let Sebebilala keep the respective change of 200 FG, a practice that seemed to be accepted by all vendors I talked to. “This became somehow obligatory,” a woman said referring to the respect they had for the tax collector. “He is very sympathetic and compassionate”, the female vendor continued. She explained that if a woman happened to be absent from the market for some time because of family obligations, illness, or because she had travelled, Sebebilala would not complain about the missing taxes, nor would he confiscate her commodities or give the table to someone else, as would be the official requirement. Sebebilala’s employer, the municipality, though, had nonetheless sanctioned his ‘misbehaviour’ by cutting his salary, as it was noticed that he would not deliver the amount of money he should have according to the number of tables (informal conversation, 14.01.2012).

The blurred boundaries between the state and society are illustrated by ‘the ticket giver’ Ali Sebebilala, who, despite being an employee of the municipality, is considered by the market women to belong to their own social group, rather than to the local government. Typically, men working at 14 Officially, all vendors have to pay this tax regardless of the size of their market stands. This theoretically also holds true for ambulant vendors. In practice, however, they easily avoid the tax collectors due to their mobility. Personal relations with tax collectors can result in tax remission.

52 Stichproben the market office have a bad reputation. My informants consider it unbecoming for a head of family to wander through the market quarrelling with women all day long in order to collect taxes. Sebebilala, however, due to his behaviour, is seen differently. The relationship between him and Dibida’s vendors can be described as a reciprocal dependency: The market women give Sebebilala an additional 200FG every third day – almost twice the amount of the official tax – thus paying a part of his salary. The tax collector, in return, turns a blind eye on vendors disregarding official regulations. The municipality, too, profits from this arrangement as it can reduce its expenses for Sebebilala’s wage. The vendors do not consider their action as political and thus, it can be categorized as everyday politics. Nevertheless, it has an impact on the behaviour of the local government insofar as Sebebilala, despite ignoring official guidelines, is not replaced.

Dibida’s vendors typically complained that the local government “does nothing but eating our money. Our concerns are not taken seriously.” (Conversation, 14.01.2012) They expected the municipality to use the tax money to clean, equip, and reconstruct the market. Further, the (local) government should build up infrastructure; deliver basic services, such as education, health, and electricity; provide micro credits; and create jobs. Above all, the interviewees claimed lower food prices. The (local) government – in the eyes of Dibida’s vendors – is seen as more powerful than it actually is. As Förster (2012: 8) notes, this incorporation of “elements of reciprocity and redistribution” is a typical characteristic of the post-colonial social imaginary15 of the state.

A second example of interaction between representatives of the local government and market vendors highlights the bargaining for the control over parts of Kankan’s main market: In February 2012, the municipality decided to unblock the road around Dibida market that directly leads to the central bus station. Normally, the road is crowded with market stalls. Some women illegally sell their commodities with clothes spread on the floor and

15 By imaginary I understand collectively shared images of how things should look like, that is the shared conceptions of a society (Castoriadis 1987).

Everyday Politics: Market Women and the Local Government 53

ambulant vendors16 carry goods in pushcarts or on their heads, which makes it difficult for cars and motorcycles to get through, resulting in numerous accidents. The problem of women illegally selling on the street had been an old but still unsolved one, a member of the market office explained (conversation, 27.02.2012).

The information that the market women were to unblock the road spread through various channels: The municipality informed both the head of market and the market office’s members. They were then to pass the message to the market women. In addition, the news was announced in the local radio stations through which the women were continuously ‘sensitized’ to respect the law by not selling on the streets. Obviously, the message spread rapidly by word of mouth among the market sellers. Nevertheless, some affected women reported that they had not been informed beforehand. Whenever such problems arise at Dibida market, the vendors first discuss it with the market chief. If necessary, the latter accompanied by some vendors then goes to the municipality in order to find a solution for the difficulties at hand.

The reluctance of these market women to clean the road has widely been debated by members of the local government. Especially involved were the Mayor Lassana Fode Quatre Doumbouya, who the local population just calls Fode Quatre, as well as two municipal officials, Madame Bérété and Madame Keita, who are responsible for ‘social affairs and the promotion of women and children’ at prefectural and municipal level respectively. Fode Quatre told me that there was enough space in the market for those selling their commodities illegally outside. Some of them even had a table inside the market, but they were convinced to sell more quickly if they were placed outside the market walls, Fode Quatre lamented. Some women selling inside the market shared his view, as they told me. They even

16 A clear distinction between ambulant and non-ambulant vendors is difficult to make. Some vendors from inside the market send off their children to sell their commodities as ambulant vendors outside Dibida. Like this, they hope to acquire customers who usually do not go inside the market.

54 Stichproben congratulated the mayor for his decision as they hoped to gain an advantage and to sell more in the future.

Madame Keita complained about the police being too arrogant vis-à-vis these market women, whose situation she understood: “Most women are poor. They sell quickly during the day to buy something to eat for their family’s evening meal. We have to make these women understand that we are not their enemies; on the contrary, we are here to help them.” (Conversation, 23.02.2012)

Madame Bérété, however, emphasized that the law had to be respected. Similar to Madame Keita, she stressed that they would find a solution together with the concerned women. One viable option would be the relocation of the latter to another, almost empty market within half an hour’s walk from the city centre. After a meeting with Dibida’s market chief and some vendors, Madame Bérété underlined that the women concerned were very difficult to convince: “The problem is that they are not educated; too many of them did not go to school. It is so difficult to make them understand things. They do not know their rights and duties. The law is on our side, they are not allowed to sell on the street.” (Conversation, 23.02.2012)

As this statement illustrates, employees of the local government create boundaries between themselves and women selling at Dibida market on different levels (cf. Bierschenk/Olivier de Sardan 2014). First, they manifest through the bureaucrats’ posture: While members of the local government sit uprightly on a chair behind a desk in their offices, the women have to bring their pleas forward on a wooden bench. State employees in Kankan usually wear so-called ‘traditional’ outfits or modest suits. Female state bureaucrats demonstrate superiority and hint at wealth by having an expensive-looking hairstyle, wearing jewels, and depositing a big handbag in front of them.17 Secondly, difference is being established by the discursive formation of governmental employees; on the one hand by referring to the law that backs their position and thus gives their actions legitimacy. On the 17 On the importance of authorities’ outfit see Engeler (2012: 104f.).

Everyday Politics: Market Women and the Local Government 55

other hand, the bureaucrats promoted an image of Dibida’s vendors as a uniform group. Even though some men, too, have been affected by the municipality’s prohibition to sell commodities on the road around Dibida market, the three governmental representatives only talked of women, labelling them as uneducated, stubborn, and therefore difficult to handle. The three state employees, in contrast, presented themselves as well educated, thus conveying the image of someone knowing right from wrong. Altogether, these practices create a boundary between members of the local authorities and the market women.

The affected vendors for their part were furious, not knowing where to go. They were afraid of losing their clients if they had to change their points of sale. One of the market women explained: “Ah, you know, if you have the habit of selling something here and then they come and tell you to move to another place…it is very hard for you, because your clients will not find you. You have to tell your clients beforehand to look for you somewhere else. But will they do so? So we are all afraid of not earning enough money to buy the evening meal for our children.” (Conversation, 22.02.2012) Furthermore, the commodities of several women have been confiscated and taken to the market office.

Conclusion

On looking at women’s advocacy politics throughout Guinea’s history, it becomes obvious that they, too, shaped Guinean politics: They were active in political parties and women’s movements already before independence. The discourses and practices of Guinea’s past regimes with regard to gender issues have influenced how women acted politically. Sékou Touré integrated women into his state building project and placed much emphasis on female emancipation, gender equality, and women’s political participation. However, in Touré’s one-party state, women were only allowed to diffuse the party’s ideology. During the era of General Lansana Conté women were not put on the front stage. He mostly signed treaties concerning women’s rights to please the ‘International Community’.

56 Stichproben Nevertheless, thanks to Guinea’s political opening since the 1990s, many (women’s) movements have emerged.

Remarkable is the fact that throughout Guinea’s history, women decided to publicly put forward their claims mostly in times of political, social, and economic crisis. This has been the case during the general strikes in the early 1950s, the protest of market women in 1977, the general strike of 2006/07, and lately, during the Presidential elections of 2010 – all typical cases of advocacy politics. Further, as the example of Rabiatou Serah Diallo and the Association of Female Leaders in Kankan illustrate, women allude to their roles as mothers or wives to legitimise their public involvement.

Besides such forms of public advocacy politics, it is hardly visible how women shape state and statehood. Generally, women in Kankan do not see themselves as political actors. Their emic notion of politics solely refers to the male dominated institutional politics. I argue that in order to reveal political articulations of marginalised groups, such as Dibida’s vendors, we have to look outside the institutional public sphere that is typically identified with elections, parliaments, ministries, political parties, trade unions, and rebellions. These women’s political articulations are nuanced and manifest themselves in their everyday actions such as during interactions and bargaining with representatives of the local government.

Market women’s everyday politics manifests, among other things, their imaginary of the state: Dibida’s vendors pay a tax of 100 FG a day. They expect the local government to clean and repair the market with this money. Further, the market women want the (local) government to build up infrastructure such as roads, schools, and hospitals and to deliver basic services. Why do such normative expectations vis-a-vis the (local) government prevail, even if it has been disappointing its population for decades (cf. Jackson 2007)? The imaginary of these women hints at the success of statehood practices in self-staging an image of a strong state, so as its citizens like Dibida’s market women would still believe in its capacities. As Navaro-Yashin notes “[...] the very people who critique the state also reproduce it through their ‚fantasies’ for the state.“ (Navaro-Yashin 2002: 4)

Everyday Politics: Market Women and the Local Government 57

When asked if they did something against the misuse of public funds, my interlocutors replied in the negative. They stressed that they did not consider their position as a powerful one. This illustrates that Dibida’s vendors, in most situations, do not consider advocacy politics as a viable option. They often do not understand the ‘language of bureaucracy’ and they feel intimidated and disrespected by representatives of the local government.

Dibida’s vendors decided to give Ali Sebebilala the change of 200 FG due to his personal behaviour and proceeded doing so even after the municipality had cut his salary. Thus, Sebebilala could continue working on the market and the women still had the ticket vendor they wanted. As this example shows, these market women do not hesitate to call on local state employees to take into account their special situations – as breadwinners of their families – and help them in times of trouble without making their lives harder by confiscating their commodities or giving their selling-tables to someone else. If there is a problem in Dibida market, the vendors usually address the female chief of market. Together, they then decide whether a delegation should go and see someone at the municipality. Even if they thereafter bargain with the representatives of the local government, the market women do not consider their actions as advocacy politics.

The role of the market chief is an appropriate example which illustrates the blurred boundary between the state and the population: Even though a former mayor has made her the market chief, she does not receive any salary from the municipality. She sells her commodities in Dibida like all the other vendors, but is expected to act as an intermediary between them and the local government in times of conflict, such as during the dispute over the access and control of a public space, namely the road outside Dibida market. This was a conflict of interest: The local government, on the one hand, officially wanted to ensure free traffic circulation. Their actions, however, can also be analysed as a means of enforcing their authority. The affected vendors, on the other hand, were reluctant to move to another market far away from the city centre, as they were afraid of losing both

58 Stichproben clients and income. This contestation over regulation can be seen as a typical example of everyday politics: Even though a delegation of Dibida’s vendors and the market chief went to discuss the issue with the mayor, Madame Bérété, and Madame Keita at the municipality, they did not consider their action as political. Still, the two examples clearly illustrate that forms of everyday politics have an influence on the local government.

Market women, despite not forming a strong network18, are able to put pressure on the local government by their sheer number and can thus sometimes pursue their goals. The statements by members of the local authorities demonstrate that they were aware of market women’s economic role within their families. They feared the female vendors would publicly protest if their income were further reduced. According to my informants, Kankan’s women only march on the streets in case of high necessity such as during the contested Presidential elections of 2010. These women’s protests did not turn violent but were still seen as a bad omen for the sitting president. The fear of women’s public protest, therefore, prompted members of the local government to handle market women somehow carefully.

In the end, the measures taken by the local authorities have not resolved the problem of women selling on the market road. A few days later, the market road is as crowded as before.

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Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien. No. 30/2016, Vol. 16, 63-86.

Being Young in the Guinée Forestière: Members of Youth Associations as Political Entrepreneurs

Michelle Engeler

Abstract This paper is a contribution to a better understanding on what it means to be young and to grow up amidst political transformation processes in Guinea in the 2000s. It focuses on students and graduates in Guéckédou, a border town in the Guinée Forestière. How do these youths gain a living and participate in a complex and turbulent socio-political landscape? The qualitative research showed that they followed various economic activities in parallel; amongst others they were busy with so-called youth associations, the main focus of this paper. I argue that these youth associations can be described as self-created arenas for both economic and political participation. Thus, the members represent “political entrepreneurs” as their practices have to be situated in-between money-making, investment and political involvement. Interestingly, they thereby collaborate with various actors and institutions, including local elders, the state administration or local political parties and NGOs.

Introduction

This paper is concerned with young men and women like Albert and Anne.1 Albert and Anne knew each other from school and later continued their education at the same university in Conakry, the capital of Guinea.2 Both of 1 The author thanks Carole Ammann, Johannes Knierzinger, Kathrin Heitz and two reviewers for useful comments on an earlier version of this article. The fieldwork was funded by the KFPE (Kommission für Forschungspartnerschaften mit Entwicklungsländern). 2 All names used in this paper are pseudonyms. However, in order to showcase religious and/or ethnic affiliations, I replaced the names with corresponding religious and/or ethnic affiliations, i.e. I

64 Stichproben them originally came from the Guéckédou prefecture in the far southeast of the country bordering Sierra Leone and Liberia, the region that represents the geographic starting point of this paper. After having finished their studies in Conakry, Albert and Anne came back to their place of origin in the Guinée Forestière, the remote forest region of Guinea. In Guéckédou, the prefecture’s capital, they were confronted with an uncertain economic landscape with only a few so-called formal-sector jobs corresponding to their education, for instance within the state administration, branch banks or local sites of national or international NGOs. Moreover, the political circumstances were tense. The long-term President Lansana Conté had died in 2008 and at the time of this research, the country was ruled by the military junta CNDD (Conseil National pour la Démocratie et le Développement) and, later on, by an interim government that organized presidential elections.3 This political situation had consequences both on the economic and the social situation of these well-educated young men and women. Amongst other issues, international funding was put on hold, because most countries would not support a military rule which they perceived as an illegitimate one. Hence many planned or envisaged projects of national and international NGOs paused. Moreover, functioning of the local state administration, the deconcentrated branch units of ministries, and the local authorities such as the mayor were on standby. In other words, they were irregularly in office and above all occupied with monitoring the political situation in Conakry. Besides that, smoldering ethnic tensions complicated everyday life.

Growing up in such a context, characterized by turbulent social and political circumstances, is of course not unique to Guinean youths but forms the background of many young people around the world. Importantly, this paper understands “youth” as a social category and not as a specific age group.4 Thus, I agree with Durham who suggests that when and where

replaced the Christian first names with other Christian first names and so on. 3 The research data for this paper was collected between 2009 and 2010, further explained in the next section. 4 The United Nations for instance defines „youth“ as persons between the age of 15 and 24 years,

Being Young in the Guinée Forestière 65 someone considers himself or herself to be a youth or is regarded a youth are both situational and contested (Durham 2009: 723). If expressed differently, it means youth represents a category that is always in the process of being re-made in socio-political practice (Durham 2004). However, the topic of being young in complex socio-political and economic circumstances and youths becoming “political entrepreneurs” might resonate with people from other parts of the world, because young people often face similar challenges.5

This paper complements scientific literature focusing on youths, their economic strategies and employment background with their socio-political activities.6 I argue that the latter i.e. socio-political activities are often neglected while talking about youth unemployment or informal economic practices although they might be key factors to understand young people and their coming of age amidst complex political circumstances.7 Furthermore, I perceive it as particularly fruitful to include a closer look at well-educated young men and women who, after having finished their studies or during semester breaks, return to remote rural areas and small hometowns. Thus, this paper does not focus on youths without formal education; neither does it look at an urban space of an African megacity. Instead, it concentrates at a rather small town with rural peripheries and highlights well-educated youths. My data showed that these youths were, very similar like their friends without university degrees, engaged in various collateral activities to generate their own income and contribute to their families’ income. These activities included cash crop farming and petty trading, for instance with mobile phones or with self-made small cakes. In general, chances for formal employment were rather low. However, instead thus stresses biological not social age (UN 2015). 5 For an example with regard to Africa, see Socpa (2015). Scopa depicts four samples of political entrepreneurship in Cameroon that emerged from the professional groups of businessmen, civil servants, academic staff, and from diverse actors without a certain social standing yet (Scopa 2015: 99). 6 For references regarding youth (un)employment in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, see amongst others Gough et al. (2013), Langevang/Gough (2012). 7 The Urban Forum special issue 34 (4), introduced by Lindell/Utas (2012), represents an insightful exception and also discusses associations.

66 Stichproben of simply waiting for the arrival of political stability and a chance for a white-collar job, young men and women like Albert and Anne occupied themselves with launching and participating in what they called youth associations.8 Thus, they were part of several groups of young men and women based in Guéckédou who engaged or at least planned to engage in activities like health education campaigning, good governance, promoting vulnerable children and youth in schooling issues or organizing cultural festivities. One of the youth associations that Albert and Anne were part of was the ‘Association des Jeunes de Guéckédou’ (so the ‘Youth Association from Guéckédou’), in short the AJG. In the following I argue that youth associations like those Albert and Anne were affiliated to represent (self-created) arenas for both economic and political participation. Hence, the related youth practices and activities can be situated in-between money-making, investment and political involvement.9 Therefore, one can describe the members of such youth associations as also political entrepreneurs.For them the, political uncertainty due to the military regime and/or the upcoming presidential elections at the time of research provided a fertile ground for economic and socio-political involvement. In the midst of the political transition and campaigning, they managed to make some money, to gain work experiences and to network with important local actors and institutions – and all that in a rather remote and rural place. This perspective contradicts with other recent debates that situate youth associational life merely as part of civil society organizations. 10 Instead, I 8 My research also included qualitative research with young people who had no postsecondary education. Many of these young men and women I talked to were also affiliated with social groups, for instance related to their profession or their religious background, examples included union movements or scouts, further discussed in Engeler (2015). Of course the membership status in these different social groups was not only related to people’s education and, in addition, often blurred. However, I argue that youth associations often consisted of people with a rather good educational background that included students, young graduates and university dropouts. 9 My notion of “arena” is inspired by Kerkvliet’s writings (Kerkvliet 2001; Kerkvliet 2003). He understands arena as places, events, organizations or groups in which relations between state and society become discussed or are negotiated (Kerkvliet 2001: 240). This understanding partly also corresponds with the definitions in Hagmann/Péclard (2010), further discussed in Engeler (2015). 10 Bratton, for instance, perceives associations as civil society groups and situates them “beyond the state” (Bratton 1989: 411). Diouf, too, argues that youth associations can be situated in opposition to the state, as they often challenge state institutions (Diouf 2003: 8). Honwana argues similarly

Being Young in the Guinée Forestière 67 argue that these youth associations do not merely represent nonprofit organizations or mere social entrepreneurs instead they are also intended to generate an economic gain. Additionally, youth associations’ members actively participate in and benefit from local politics, even though they are often claiming otherwise.

To understand my argument, it is crucial to discuss youth associations, with regard to their historical and social context in a particular setting and with specific reference to the region’s history and peculiarity. Therefore, the paper at hand is structured as follows. Firstly, I introduce the reader to the history of the associations in Guinea, particularly in the Guinée Forestière. Secondly, I examine youth associations in Guéckédou through the example of the AJG and situate their discourses and activities in the context of income generation and development agencies and also with regard to local politics and intergenerational networks. The following section depicts my research background and approach in the field.

Research background and approach

The main research data for this paper was collected between 2009 and 2010 as part of a broader data set that covered a total of 14 months between 2008 and 2012.11 The city of Guéckédou was the main research site. Guéckédou center or town has a population of 67,258 (Zensus 2014) and is one of the ten sub-prefectures of Guéckédou prefecture, which together with Kissidougou, Kerouane, Beyla, Macenta, Youmou, Lola and N’Zérékoré prefectures form the geographical region Guinée Forestière, roughly corresponding to the administrative region of N’Zérékoré.12

when stating that youthful political practices in the context of associations can be described as “new ways of doing politics” (Honwana 2012: 162). 11 The Commission for Research Partnerships with Developing Countries (KFPE), based in Switzerland, financed this fieldwork. 12 Guinea has in all four geographical regions: Guinée Forestière, Guinée Maritime or Basse Côte, Moyenne-Guinée or Fouta Djallon, and Haute-Guinée. The country is furtherdivided into eight administrative regions: in addition to N’Zérékoré, the others are - Boké, Kindia, Mamou, Labé, Faranah, Kankan and the urban region Conakry.

68 Stichproben The city of Guéckédou is well-known for its weekly market, but according to most of my correspondents, it has lost much of its reputation since the civil wars of the neighboring countries Sierra Leone and Liberia, commonly referred to as Mano River War.13 During that time, many Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees inhabited the city but most of them had left the area in the meantime. In addition, Guéckédou itself was under rebel attack in the 2000s. In recent times, the region gained special attention due to the Ebola outbreak in 2014 (cf. amongst others Benton/Dionne 2015; Bianchi 2015; Lazuta 2015). I will come back to that context in my concluding remarks.

As for methods used for this research, I mainly applied qualitative research methods and strongly built my analysis on the data gathered by living with and participating in the young people’s everyday life.14 Besides participation and observation, I conducted life history interviews and semi-structured interviews, also with members of youth associations. During my research, quite a few youth associations were active in Guéckédou town and I ended up following six of them. They were as follows: the Association des

Jeunes de Tékoulo (AJT), founded in Tékoulo, a sub-prefecture of Guéckédou, but also active in Guéckédou, the Associations des Jeunes Artistes de Guéckédou (AJAG), the Jeunes Patriots15, the Club des Enfants, the Club des Jeunes and, finally, the Guides des Jeunes de Guéckédou (GJG). All six associations were based in Guéckédou town, but some of them maintained relations with rural areas. Additionally, their activities can all be subsumed under the label “community development”. Thus they got involved in or planned to involve themselves in cleaning and repairing roads, health education campaigning or good governance, promoting vulnerable children and youth in schooling issues. Their fields of activities also included organizing festivities like concerts or dancing parties.

13 Various researchers from different disciplines discuss these conflicts. For references regarding Guinea during that time cf. Arieff (2009); Jörgel/Utas (2007); Sawyer (2004) amongst others. 14 For further methodological reflections on sharing (young) people’s experiences and ethnographic fieldwork, cf. Engeler (2011). 15 They did not relate themselves to the Ivorian movement of the Jeunes Patriotes described for instance by Koné (2011).

Being Young in the Guinée Forestière 69 In order to specify some of the important aspects of young people who organize and meet in youth associations I in what follows only write about the Association des Jeunes the Guéckédou, abbreviated to AJG. Thus, I have anonymized the context by creating a fictive group and name. However, the example feeds on the data that I had collected from the six associations which I followed at the time of research.

From revolutionary youth to youth associations

Associations are generally understood as groups of people with a common purpose or interest. They are present in many countries, including the African continent. They have existed in many forms during pre-colonial and colonial times and are widely discussed within the social sciences: Early academic research on associations in (West) Africa was especially interested in the social changes implemented by the colonial authorities. They contextualized the associations (even youth associations) with regard to urbanization processes, migration from rural to urban centers, educational reforms, and the division of labor (cf. amongst others Wallerstein (1963); Wallerstein (1970); Little (1965); Little (1957); Meillassoux (1968), for an insightful contextualization cf. Englert (2011)). More recent publications about youth associations within African Studies tackle issues like urbanity, migration and/or politics – very much like early ethnographies on the topic. Most of them also perceive youth as a social category. Utas, for instance, describes youth associations in the context of urban youth in Sierra Leone and calls them “social clubs” (Utas 2012). He includes associations of car washers as well as money-saving associations and points out that the differentiation among various sub-groups is not of significance instead it is the fact that these social clubs are largely forms of social security arrangements that fill the voids in the Sierra Leonean state. “If you get ill, the social club will assist you, and if you get arrested by the police (…) they will do the same thing” (Utas 2012: 3). Most authors also agree that membership in such social clubs or youth associations can generally be described as highly political (Honwana 2012; Lentz 1995; Lentz 1999). Lentz

70 Stichproben argues for instance that youth associations in Ghana offer an important forum for political participation and discussion (Lentz 1995). Again other contributions concentrate on the economic dimension and discuss (youth) networks and associations in the context of urban informal economies (Lindell/Utas 2012; Lindell 2010).

In the context of colonial Guinea, Goerg states that while the colonial state sponsored youth associations, it often supervised and controlled the members and their activities (Goerg 1992: 23). Thus, the colonial authorities were well aware of the political power of these groups, which Meillassoux described with regard to Bamako in Mali as “excellent recruitment pools” for the newly established political parties (Meillassoux 1968: 69). Subsequently, the struggle for independence around the 1950s also built the strength of various associations. Thus, organized young people were an important driving force in these political transformation processes,not only in Guinea but also beyond (Schmidt 2005; Goerg 1989).

When Ahmed Sékou Touré, Guinea’s first president, launched various state and nation building projects to underpin the new hegemony, youth associations were included into the one-party state structure. Early on, Sékou Touré’s post-colonial state proclaimed and enforced not only its authority over people’s relations with Islam or Christian missions, but also over their cultural development, especially in the remote Guinée Forestière, which was well-known for their “backward” culture (Conrad 2010; Straker 2008). With the help of the demystification campaign and the Cultural Revolution, Sékou Touré and his cadres aimed to set the stage for Guinea’s “new citizens” and launched a vast mobilization against what they considered old-fashioned and colonial socio-political structures.16 Straker importantly notes that the demystification campaign went through several phases and its transformative processes for demystifying local practices such as Poro and Sande, often described as secret or power societies, had actually started long before Touré’s nation and state building project 16 For further information on Touré’s demystification campaign and the Cultural Revolution, cf. McGovern (2013); Rivière (1977); Sarro (2009); Straker (2007b); Straker (2007a); Sarro (2007); Højbjerg (2007) amongst others.

Being Young in the Guinée Forestière 71 (Straker 2009: 110f).17 He, accordingly concludes that demystification is only the final step in a gradual demise of traditional mechanism of gerontocratic authority in the Guinée Forestière that had reigned for centuries before colonial penetration (Straker 2009: 110). However, important for this paper is Touré’s attempt to shape a unified and embedded youth for overcoming regional-ethnic peculiarities and for enabling a revolutionary state to emerge. Hence, Touré’s one-party state proclaimed its authority not only over the political but also over the economic, religious and cultural development of its people, especially its young citizens (Straker 2007b). Accordingly, Touré embedded young people and their social organizations like associations into the emerging new political structure, which was especially shaped by the one and only political party, the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG, Parti Démocratique de Guinée). In 1959, the official youth wing of the PDG, the Youth of the African Democratic Revolution (JRDA, Jeunesse du Rassemblement Démocratique Africaine) was created, stressing the increasingly important role of youth within the revolution (Straker 2009: 85; Johnson 1970: 364). During this party structuring, young people became organized within different sub-branches dedicated to young women, to youthful socio-economic action, to culture and art, to school and university, to civil defense, and to the pioneers (Rivière 1971: 172). The numerous young members of these institutions met weekly and were assembled within various sections, federations, commissions and congresses. In this way, the Guinean state apparatus tried to keep young people’s political,

17 Different authors stress the importance of secret or power societies for past (and present) socio-political relations in the Upper Guinea Coast. These authors mostly refer to the Poro and Sande types of secret societies into which either men (Poro) or women (Sande) were initiated (Højbjerg 2007). D’Azevedo argues that these societies have a political and economic role in the entire Upper Guinea Coast, knitting together, as he sees it, culturally diverse and mobile groups in the forest-savannah transition zone (D'Azevedo 1962: 516). Interestingly, different authors suggest that the Kissi speaking people actually borrowed or appropriated the Poro and Sande societies from neighboring Loma speaking people (Fairhead/Leach 1996; Højbjerg, 2007; Schaeffner 1951). McGovern and Højbjerg are two anthropologists who describe the secret or power societies in the context of Loma-speaking people, who live just to the east of the pays Kissi. They describe the societies as associations that used to be particularly relevant to local and regional power figurations (McGovern 2004: 83ff; Højbjerg 2002; Højbjerg 2007). Accordingly, one can suggest that the same must be true for Poro and Sande at Kissi speakers living in and around Guéckédou.

72 Stichproben economic and cultural life under close supervision. The youth associations and other associations like Christian youth movements, student organizations or age-sets related to secret or power societies established by Non-state youth groups during colonial or pre-colonial times became forbidden, because the state wanted to manage the potential threat of hardly controllable youths with opportunistic or rebellious ideas. Finally, the Guinean state aimed at creating one single revolutionary youth that was organically and spiritually embedded within the party structure (Rivière 1971: 159).

As in other socialist countries, youths “were imagined by state leaders as the decisive constituency in sustaining the revolutionary momentum” (Burgess 1999: 45). Thus, the Guinean socialist state considered young people as important to realizing the formation of both the post-colonial Guinean state and its new citizens. The political elite therefore placed strategic importance on youth. Nguyen argues that many socialist or Marxist-Leninist countries considered young people as “’blank sheets of paper’ on which everything can be printed (…). Thus they do not possess any political and ideological stance and therefore are able to be molded and persuaded to work for the communist party’s objectives” (Nguyen 2005: 5). In other words, the party-state mobilized and educated its youth in order to help them find the “revolutionary truth”, in sharp contrast to the “colonial lie”. While writing about Revolutionary Zanzibar, Burgess perceives only minor spaces to negotiate and politically participate in the context of socialist youth groups, as the state did not encourage contested visions (Burgess 2005: 5).

Equally, revolutionary Guinea did not encourage dissenting world views/opinions. However, by inventing youth as an important category, the state tried not only to manage its juniors, but also gave them official status with the formation of youth groups like the JRDA or the pioneer movement attached to the PDG.18 Thus young people became both the henchmen and

18 The revolutionary state defined youth in terms of a specific age bracket: the pioneer movement for instance was said to be for youngsters between 7 and 18, the civil defense or people’s militia for

Being Young in the Guinée Forestière 73 the key actors of Guinea’s self-designated revolutionary era. In 1970, Johnson assumed that Sékou Touré “has written off the present generation of office holders and civil servants as irredeemably corrupted by colonialist ideology; hope lies with the younger generation who have come to maturity in the twelve years since independence” (Johnson 1970: 363). In other words, Sékou Touré’s nation building programs exploited youths, but the latter could also disassociate themselves from their parents’ generation, could gain power and managed to participate in the socio-political and economic landscape.

The post-revolutionary state, which was established after Sékou Touré’s death in 1984, promised society and youths more space and more significance vis-à-vis the state. In other words, post-revolutionary socio-political changes and the related ideological shifts and reforms allowed Guinean citizens to enjoy more autonomy to organize themselves in social groups, to articulate alternative ideas and to outline new political imaginations beyond formal politics, i.e. beyond the state and political parties. My data shows that many young students and graduates living in present-day Guéckédou came together in self-organized youth associations, because the state was not based on young people anymore and could also not guarantee formal and lifelong employment. As the example illustrates, the youths I talked to nevertheless made strong references to state institutions and formal politics in order to wrest some agency from an uncertain economic and political landscape. Hence, present-day youth associations in Guinea neither represent a new phenomenon nor can they be described as completely different from socialist youth groups. Instead, the members of youth associations integrate different practices that are adjusted to the post-revolutionary/neoliberal time and can be outlined as political entrepreneurship.

youths between the age of 20 and 30, and the JRDA included all of them (Mignon 1988).

74 Stichproben The Association des Jeunes de Guéckédou (AJG)

To comprehend these young political entrepreneurs better, I would like to take a closer look at the AJG a representative example as described earlier. I do not claim that the following interpretations can be generalized to all youth associations in Guinea. After conversations with a lot of young people busy with youth associations in Guéckédou and beyond, I can nonetheless assert that some aspects can be taken as illustrative of youthful associational life in Guinea today.

Self-created development agents

The AJG was founded in 2008 and had 30 members - amongst them were Albert and Anne, who stated two main reasons for being part of or launching an association like the AJG. Firstly, they explained that by becoming a member of a youth association they created an additional working environment for themselves. Secondly, they saw their work within the association as a contribution to the country’s development, which they generally linked to economic progress. They linked both arguments to the state, because they saw the state as the main employer and as the key development actor. But as the state could not fulfill these tasks, they got together to foster development and at the same time create jobs and therewith ideally an income for themselves. This attitude and thinking is in conjunction with the contemporary neoliberal understanding in which the responsibility for development is moved from the state to individuals. Anne told me thus: “After finishing university you should look for employment, you should make a traineeship. As we know, the state is the largest employer. The state hires a lot of people. However, our country has problems hiring everybody at state level. But as young people, you cannot sit back and do nothing. You have to get together with others, you have to affiliate and unite with others, you have to create an association that helps

Being Young in the Guinée Forestière 75 the state in its process for development.”19 And Albert explained, “You know, we the young, we are the motor of this country’s progress and development.”20 None of my interview partners questioned or unmasked that neoliberal perspective, though.

I participated several times in the AJG’s weekly reunions, which were usually held at the office of a local NGO that allowed them to use their premises on Saturdays. I got to know fifteen active members, most of them males. Only three of the active members were female and none of them held a leading position. However, the President of the group complained about this gender imbalance. Almost all of the AJG-members were born in the Guéckédou prefecture, i.e. either in the town of Guéckédou or in villages of the sub-prefectures, and were of Kissi origin, which represents the dominant ethnic group in the region. Like Albert and Anne most of the followers left the region to attend higher education institutions elsewhere in the country, as there was no such school in Guéckédou at the time of research. Some of them were still students and a few were recent graduates. Thus, most of them studied in distant towns (in part at the same universities) but came back during semester breaks or when they had finished university.

In Guéckédou, they were (re-)united with their friends and former schoolfellows. They often labeled themselves “intellectuals” because of their education – and “sons and daughters of Guéckédou” due to their regional affiliation. I asked different members of the AJG if ethnic affiliation is mandatory to become part of their association. They said that ethnic affiliation was not a requisite. However, I also realized that almost all members were born in the Guéckédou prefecture and were from the same

19 “Après avoir terminé les études, tu dois chercher de l’emploi, tu dois faire des stages. Nous savons que

l’Etat, l’Etat c’est le plus grand employeur. Il emploie beaucoup de personnes, l’Etat. Mais dans notre pays, il

y a des difficultés au niveau de l’Etat pour employer tout le monde. Alors nous en tant que jeunes, on peut

pas rester bras croisés. Il faut qu’on soit ensemble, qu’on se réunit pour mettre en place une association qui

va aider l’Etat dans son processus de développement”, 14.09.2010, communication with Anne, member of the AJG. 20 “Tu sais, nous, les jeunes, nous sommes le moteur du progrès et du développement dans ce pays“, 06.09.2010, communication with Albert, member of the AJG.

76 Stichproben ethnic background. I would argue that this was not because of an implied sense of exclusion on behalf of the association but rather due to the fact that most members were students and therefore they were often re-united while studying abroad, which often creates a stronger sense of belonging between people coming from the same region and/or ethnic group.21 Moreover, they described themselves as youths and identified with this social status, also as political strategy as I would argue.22 Of those who had already finished university, only two were able to find formal employment with an NGO branch or the state administration. All the others, including the students, did not have any regular source of income. Like Albert and Anne, most were busy with different activities besides their studies and commitments for youth associations: the young men for instance worked as motorbike taxi drivers, in small businesses such as DVD rental stores and seasonally in the local rice fields. Several young women tried to realize traineeships at one of the local branches of national or international NGOs, financial institutions or the state administration and, depending on their family situation, kept house and went to the fields and gardens in the urban peripheries. All in all, both young men and women of this association can be described as creative improvisers busy with various income generating activities. Jones (2010) or Jeffrey/Dyson (2013) appropriately describe this economic navigation in the context of youth and entrepreneurship as “zigzag capitalism”: “Young people feel they have to constantly move about, hustle and find novel lines of approach to get things done” (Jeffrey/Dyson 2013: R2). This perspective goes in line with my own, more general reflections on being young and growing up in Guéckédou: the life histories of young (in this case also well-educated) men and women often trace meandering life trajectories rather than linear life courses with clear cut transitions from youth to adult status and accordingly related economic

21 Actually, they were often also united in corresponding youth associations at the universities (with regard to that cf. Lentz (1999); Lentz (1995)). However, during the time of research I could not undertake in-depth fieldwork at the universities or in these other towns respectively. 22 This militates for understanding “youth” as social and relational category situated in a dynamic social and political context (Durham 2000; Whyte et al. 2008).

Being Young in the Guinée Forestière 77 positions (Engeler 2015) – or, with Jeffrey/Dyson (2013: R2), “life has become an exercise in ‘zigzagging’.”

When asked about their initial idea of forming an association, two of the founding members of the AJG, Richard and Charles, told me that “first, it is about you. You need to have a source of inspiration. If your idea is good, your friends will support and follow you.”23 However, they did not expound more on what that source of inspiration could be. Interestingly, another member, Alphonse, stressed on outside influences as their motivation for finally creating the youth association: “You know, we once got a journal distributed by the NGO Plan. The journal is called ‘Planète

Jeunes’. It portrayed a youth association in Senegal. So we thought, we want to have a youth association too.”24 It can thus be identified that both the founders’ creativity and inspiration related to international NGOs and development aid are important. The latter aspect was not only relevant while explaining the reasons to fund youth associations but also informed the group’s way of talking, organizing and representing: Many of the youth association’s discourses, planned activities and projects were closely related to the language, ideas and dominant imagery of NGOs and international donors present in Guéckédou and entire Guinée Forestière since the 1990s, thus since Guinea’s entanglement with the Mano River War.

This became visible in the youth association’s discourses and practices. Amongst other things, the AJG planned a theatre piece for local school children. The play which was organized on World Aids Day indirectly informed the kids about the danger of unprotected sexual intercourse. The event, which took place at the community hall, was supported by the local authorities and financed by a branch of Médecins sans Frontières.25 Other activities were related to the education of “underprivileged” or

23 „D’abord, c’est toi. Il faut avoir une source d’inspiration. Si ton idée, c’est bon, les amis vont te supporter,

ils vont te suivre“, 01.12.2009, communication with Richard and Charles, members of the AJG. 24 “Tu sais, un jour, Plan nous a donné un journal, ‘Planète Jeunes’. Là, on a parlé d’une association de

jeunes au Sénégal. Donc, nous, on pensait que nous aussi on veux avoir une association“, 05.12.2009, communication with Alphonse, member of the AJG. 25 Médecins sans Frontières was at the time of research one of the few international NGOs that stayed in the region after the takeover by the CNDD.

78 Stichproben “vulnerable” parts of thesociety, including young children from rural areas or illiterate mothers. Further projects especially addressed “peace-building” and “good governance”. Altogether, their fields of activities and their modes of expression were in unison with the donors’ funding strategies, thus they also attracted potential donors. .

Besides informing about their talks and projects, the development aid background also shaped the AJG’s way of representing themselves: They tried to project images of their group, either through flyers, signboards or hand-written posters at their home or through labeled T-shirts. Like local branches of NGOs or international development agencies, which very often named their headquarters and offices, cars and clothes after their parent organizations, the youth associations tried to become visible in the public space of Guéckédou – through specific activities and also through logos, group names and emblems.

In general, the international NGO and donor background was very formative for youth associations like the AJG. The young members’ everyday practices were aimed at getting a piece of the cake from the development economy and they showed their readiness to be included in development agencies’ and related activities/work respectively. Green labels social groups like the AJG as “development agents in waiting”, because they occupy a position close to development agencies (Green 2012: 310). This description interestingly relates to Honwana’s reflections on being young in Africa, which she describes as a prolonged adolescence, in which young people are unable to find employment, get married and establish their own families (Honwana 2012). She labels the phase as a “liminal, neither-here-nor-there state”, indicated as a period of suspension between childhood and adulthood as “waithood” (Honwana 2012: 3).

Intergenerational networkers

Remarkably, and a key point for my argument is the fact that the members of the AJG were not only waiting “in the shadows” of international NGOs

Being Young in the Guinée Forestière 79 to foster their country’s development and earn some money but also following other ideas and related projects. These activities were particularly intermingled with local state institutions, political parties and power brokers. At the time of research, the AJG was for instance in the middle of a planning phase for a “cultural week”, which was to take place in Guéckédou town. To this end, the members of the AJG tried to mobilize a variety of musicians and artists from the entire Guéckédou prefecture and therefore contacted different actors and institutions who could promote their ideas and lend them support.

Amongst them were several elders, mostly from the towns’ founding families and members of the local council of elders.26 I could participate at a couple of these encounters and learnt that besides telling their intention the members of the AJG also listened carefully to the elders’ responses. They would often narrate from memory the musical performances and dances of the revolutionary times, taking place as part of the the JRDA or the pioneer movement. It was common for the elders to participate in them. In some cases, they also travelled and performed in Cuba and many of the then socialist countries. The elders were also very keen to learn about contemporary youth activities. They explained to me that they appreciate the meetings with young people not merely because they learn about ongoing activities, rumors or problems in town but because they regard the local youth as being “their arms, legs and eyes”. 27 The encounters with the members of the AJG usually concluded with speeches of support for the project of a cultural week, sometimes also with indications of still active musicians or dancers.

The members of the AJG also contacted the head of the local youth department to garner support. Immediately after the creation of their association, they registered it at the youth department of the local state administration, at the time of research based within the Maison des Jeunes. The Maison des Jeunes was built during the presidency of Sékou Touré as one 26 Rey provides us with further details on the role of the elders in Guinea (Rey 2007). 27 “Les jeunes sont nos pieds, nos bras, nos yeux”, 08.10.2010, communication with Mr. Komano, president of the council of the elders at the time of research.

80 Stichproben of the several monumental construction projects during the socialist state era. It was commonly said to be the biggest party headquarters and youth club in the whole of Guinea. It served as “permanence”, referring to the office and headquarters of the local PDG branch and its associated youth groupings and cultural institutions. Hence, the monumental building mirrors the socialist state era and the close connection between the state, the party and local youth during these times.28 Interestingly, it still serves as the seat for the local youth department. In one of the corridors of the Maison des

Jeunes, one could find the DPJ’s two offices reserved for the Monsieur le

Directeur, the head of the DPJ, and his staff and aides. However, the most impressive and, at times, the most vivid part of the Maison des Jeunes was the huge community hall with its large stage. There, the prefect welcomed central state representatives, international NGOs, celebrated World AIDS Day, political parties carried out their election meetings and campaigns, and, lastly, youth groups like the AJG tried to organize cultural or musical events. Hence, the members of the AJG explained their project also vis-à-vis the DPJ and tried to negotiate access to the community hall. While they explained the project, the members of the AJG also stressed the idea of promoting “Kissi culture” and strengthening “Kissi values and traditions” in the urban space of Guéckédou. The Monsieur le Directeur, not only a civil servant but also a member of a locally based political party, sympathized with the idea and suggested to contact other party members to coordinate their activities with regard to the presidential campaign. The AJG representatives did not reject that idea.

All in all, by planning events such as the cultural week, young people like the members of the AJG gradually built up a network with diverse local actors. Thereby, international donors were not the most important ones.

28 Similar institutions or party headquarters existed all over Guinea. By the end of the socialist regime in 1984 all of them were transferred to the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture and thereafter redecorated as Maison des Jeunes. The Conté regime established a national youth policy in 1993, but cuts in resources and on-going reorganizations of the ministries together with shifting regimes and power relations complicated an effective youth-centered work in the past years. The reorganization, management and re-equipment of the numerous Maison des Jeunes – also in Guéckédou – were often entrusted to international donors and their development agencies.

Being Young in the Guinée Forestière 81 Instead, institutions and actors with local roots, and hailing from different generations or with relations to the state or a political party were regarded as similarly relevant. The latter is surprising because members of the AJG usually claimed that their association is “apolitical”, by which most of them meant, it had no relations to political parties. I would argue that these associations and their members can nevertheless be described as politically active, because they actively entered local networks of decision-makers and organized a cultural week during a period of ethnically-oriented political campaigning.

Political entrepreneurs

The example of the AJG shows that youth associations in Guinea can neither be described as mere civil society groups or social entrepreneurs situated beside the state or the political realm, nor are they just formed for profit. Instead, they represent important arenas for both political participation and entrepreneurship. Accordingly, members of youth associations like the AJG can be described as self-created political entrepreneurs, acting within the continuum of political parties, local authorities and development projects. They may be sponsored by an international NGO to perform a theatre piece for local school children to inform them about the danger of unprotected sexual intercourse. But they could also organize a cultural week in the midst of presidential elections and therewith relate to several important local political actors and institutions to, for instance, boost their chances to work for the future state administration. Thus, by referring to data related to both discourses and practices of youth associations such as the AJG this paper argues that the combination of economic and political practices is one of the most promising strategies for young people living in rather uncertain socio-political contexts. Actually, political entrepreneurship was one of the key niches for young well-educated men and women living in Guéckédou.

Very similar to socialist times, when young people mainly got organized within the state and the party structure, the members of youth associations I talked to related themselves quite closely to state and party institutions and

82 Stichproben activists, although they refused to admit the proximity. Moreover, young political entrepreneurs do not necessarily act against long-established power brokers but rather try to connect to various different actors, including older generations like the local elders, and national or international NGOs.

Conclusion

Guinea went through a challenging time between 2009 and 2010. In Guéckédou, young well-educated men and women, often returnees from the capital or other main Guinean towns with higher education institutions, did not simply wait for stability, instead by means of cash crop farming, petty trading, unpaid internships or creating youth associations, they managed the complex socio-political landscape. Thereby, they could not only earn a small income but also work for the country and their personal future. Importantly, neither NGOs nor the council of elders or the state administration and political parties were excluded as potential partners. Hence, the young people within these groupings creatively imagined their communities’ future in tandem with local power brokers and institutions, and, most importantly, also stayed in close collaboration with representatives of older generations.

Unlike during socialist times, the post-revolutionary Guinean state no longer perceives young people as the nation’s “new citizens” and therefore career paths related to state institutions, central to the first post-independence generation, are no longer easily available. Hence, contemporary youths combine political and economic activities related to well-financed domains such as national or international NGOs.

The combination of being development agents, civil society activists and political actors, of being and becoming political entrepreneurs, also proved to be a fertile ground for income generating activities and political participation during the Ebola outbreak in the Guéckédou prefecture. When I contacted Albert in early 2014, he proudly mentioned that he got the

Being Young in the Guinée Forestière 83 chance to work for Médecins sans Frontières because they knew him since the aforementioned theatre play. They respected him as representative of local youth. He was made part of their information campaign in the Guéckédou prefecture and he was also invited to the local round table of decision-makers to discuss the disease and local responses. He knew many of the participants as friendly supporters of the cultural week that he had organized as a member of the AJG. .Thus, Albert successfully did “business” as he called his activities in the fairway of NGOs, political parties and the presidential elections in autumn 2015. He was not the only one. Many of my former informants contacted between 2014 and 2015 were involved in one or the other activities related to the Ebola prevention or the presidential elections. In other words, political entrepreneurship seemed again especially fruitful for some of the well-educated youths in Guéckédou.

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Une gouvernance locale à l’épreuve du temps. Politiques nationales, pouvoirs locaux et

stratégies des miniers en Guinée

Pascal Rey

Abstract L’affirmation selon laquelle les pouvoirs « traditionnels» auraient disparu sous Sékou Touré est symptomatique des rapports entre l’exercice du pouvoir central et les réalités locales en Guinée. L’entremêlement des pouvoirs déconcentrés, décentralisés et locaux depuis la période coloniale reflète la situation politique, économique et organisationnelle au niveau local. Dans le cadre de l’exercice des normes et droits aux échelles locales et nationales, l’arrivée de nombreuses multinationales minières vient superposer un nouveau niveau de normes. Entre respect du droit local, de la législation nationale et des normes internationales, les compagnies minières doivent composer avec une situation politique qui s’est forgée tout au long des différentes configurations de gouvernance en place en Guinée depuis la colonisation. Cet article propose une analyse de l’évolution de la gouvernance locale grâce à la compréhension des modes d’organisation et des rapports de force au niveau local et sa mise en perspective diachronique.

Introduction

« Les pouvoirs coutumiers ont disparu sous Sékou Touré ». Cette affirmation souvent entendue de la part de fonctionnaires en exercice depuis une trentaine d’années est symptomatique des rapports entre l’exercice du pouvoir, dit moderne1, et les réalités locales, sous l’emprise de

1 Nous utilisons le terme moderne en référence à l’Etat moderne post colonial.

88 Stichproben l’autorité des fondateurs et des Sages. Avec presque la totalité du territoire rural occupé sous le droit coutumier2, la question de l’entremêlement des pouvoirs déconcentrés, décentralisés et locaux depuis la période coloniale reflète la situation politique, économique et organisationnelle au niveau local en Guinée et son évolution à travers les différents gouvernements.

En effet, le pouvoir local, ou pouvoir coutumier, garde de nos jours une très forte prégnance sur l’organisation sociale à l’échelle villageoise, qu’il s’agisse de l’accès à la terre, aux ressources naturelles et à la main d’œuvre, des alliances matrimoniales, des principes d’entraide, etc. Pour y parvenir, les pouvoirs locaux ont dû perpétuellement évoluer et s’adapter aux nouvelles configurations politiques au niveau national. Cela passe notamment par la capacité à absorber les nouveaux modes de gouvernance locaux et pénétrer les nouveaux organes de pouvoirs apparus au fil du temps.

Plus récemment, le nouveau boom minier depuis une vingtaine d’années ajoute aux échelles locales et nationales, une nouvelle dimension internationale aux superpositions de l’exercice du droit et des normes. Nous chercherons à comprendre les jeux d’acteurs et les référentiels auxquels ont recours ces firmes transnationales : entre respect du droit local, de la législation nationale et des normes internationales, les compagnies minières doivent composer avec une situation politique qui s’est forgée tout au long des différentes configurations de gouvernance en place en Guinée depuis la colonisation.

Cet article est basé sur un ensemble de travaux réalisés en Guinée entre 2003 et 2015 : des travaux des recherche entre 2003 et 2008 sur la côte guinéenne3

2 Nous utilisons ici le terme « coutumier » en toute connaissance de son ambivalence, notamment à propos de la capacité de mutation de l’organisation sociale au niveau local. A l’instar de Lavigne-Delville (2009), Colin, Le Meur et Léonard (2009), Chauveau (1998) et Le Roy (2003), nous utiliserons ainsi le terme « coutumier », au même titre que le terme « local », pour désigner les autorités et les modalités de gestion locaux, fruits d’une évolution empirique lente des modes de régulations en fonction notamment de normes sociales locales et régis par les pouvoirs locaux, sans présager de leur capacité à s’adapter à des facteurs exogènes aux communautés concernées. 3 Il s’agit de travaux de recherche réalisés dans le cadre de l’Observatoire de la Guinée Maritime (CNRS/IRD/Muséum d’histoire naturelle de Paris) entre 2003 et 2008. Ce programme de recherche-

Une gouvernance locale à l’épreuve du temps 89 entre Boffa et la frontière bissau-guinéenne et une vingtaine d’études de base sociales réalisées entre 2008 et 2015, en Guinée Forestière et en Haute Guinée4. L’article propose une analyse de l’évolution de la gouvernance au niveau local grâce à une mise en perspective diachronique et le décryptage des stratégies à cette échelle. Il s’agira de comprendre les modes d’organisation mais surtout les stratégies mises en place par les pouvoirs locaux pour assurer leur survie.

Les pouvoirs locaux dans l’histoire contemporaine de la Guinée

Les pouvoirs locaux ont toujours fait montre de stratégies pour garantir le maintien de leur autorité à travers les différentes configurations des pouvoirs et systèmes en place au niveau national depuis la colonisation. Ceci s’est exprimé dès la nomination d’individus assurant l’interface avec l’administration coloniale, jusqu’à l’intégration du système politique contemporain. Avant de décrire ces modalités de résistance à travers

action a été financé par l'Agence française de développement, la Banque mondiale et le Fonds pour l’environnement mondial et exécuté pour le compte du ministère guinéen du Plan. Le terrain d’étude était composé d’une cinquantaine de villages, dispersés dans cinq sous-préfectures, elles-mêmes situées dans les préfectures de Boffa et Boké. Le choix des villages était raisonné, basé sur une série de facteurs sociaux et géographiques. L’analyse repose sur un terrain de 4 ans et sur un ensemble d’outils qualitatif (entretiens dirigés, relevés de terroirs, généalogies, études sur les conflits…) et quantitatifs (recensements, enquêtes ménages (847 ménages enquêtés), relevés de marché…). La démarche globale est restée empirique et l’approche « méthodologique » ; en d’autres terme, nous avons porté un intérêt particulier à l’ « enchevêtrement des logiques sociales » et à l’ « hétérogénéité des acteurs » (Olivier de Sardan 2001). Les nombreuses observations terrain, pratiquées de façon systématique pour nous rapprocher de l’exhaustivité, ont toujours précédé les traitements quantitatifs. Loin de nous l’objectif de traiter à outrance les données à notre disposition jusqu’à obtenir des facteurs corrélés à des groupes homogènes et tenter ensuite de les expliquer. Nous nous sommes exclusivement basés sur nos observations qualitatives afin d’émettre des hypothèses, le traitement quantitatif intervenant pour les confirmer ou les infirmer. 4 Il s’agit d’un ensemble d’études réalisées pour le compte d’entreprise privées ou d’organismes publics avec des états références sociaux très poussés qui allient approches qualitatives (études sur le foncier, sur l’historique des villages, sur le patrimoine culturel, sur les pouvoirs locaux, sur les organisations sociales…) et quantitatives (recensements exhaustifs, enquêtes ménages, études de marchés…). Elles ont couvertes une dizaine de Préfectures pour une population enquêtée d’environ 500.000 individus. Egalement deux Préfectures de Moyenne Guinée ont été couvertes (Mamou et Gaoual) mais elles peuvent difficilement être considérées comme représentatives des situations sociales rencontrées dans l’ensemble de la Moyenne Guinée (du fait de leurs positions aux extrémités de la Région Naturelle en question : Nord ou Sud).

90 Stichproben l’analyse de l’imbrication des différents pôles de pouvoir à l’échelle locale en Guinée Maritime, nous allons décrire la situation actuelle et les différentes étapes clés de la Guinée contemporaine qui ont vu la construction de la configuration actuelle.

De la Seconde République à nos jours

Le système coutumier reste la référence sur la quasi-totalité du territoire national, en particulier dans les zones rurales. A partir d’avril 1984, les districts ont remplacé les Pouvoirs Révolutionnaires Locaux, unité de base du régime défunt de Sékou Touré. Jusqu’en 1990, année de l’élaboration des principes définissant les Communes Rurales de Développement, les districts représentaient les collectivités de base de la décentralisation (Condé 2003). Ces Communes Rurales de développement sont devenues les Communes Rurales avec l’arrivée de Alpha Condé à la présidence de la République en 2010. Une Commune Rurale voit ses frontières calquées sur les Sous-préfectures (unité de la déconcentration). Si dès d’avril 1984, les districts ont remplacé les Pouvoirs Révolutionnaires Locaux, ils ne sont reconnus comme la plus petite échelle administrative que depuis le référendum de 2001.5 Un district est administré par un Président de district entouré de son « Conseil de district »6. Le district regroupe plusieurs secteurs. Le secteur est une unité qui intègre le plus souvent un village et ses hameaux mais parfois, bien que rarement, il peut ne comprendre que des quartiers d’un village si celui-ci est de taille importante. Si le secteur est fortement présent dans les discours de l’administration et dans l’acceptation collective, il n’est pas

5 La Commune Rurale est le fruit du découpage du pays en Collectivités Locales qui équivalent aux Communes Urbaines pour le monde rural. L’article de la Loi Fondamentale portant sur ce découpage a été modifié lors du référendum du 11 novembre 2001. Cette modification de l’article 88 du titre X portant sur l’organisation territoriale a permis de clarifier la séparation entre les Circonscriptions Territoriales (pouvoir déconcentré de l’Etat) et les Collectivités Locales (pouvoir décentralisé) en précisant le découpage des Circonscriptions reconnu par l’Etat. Toutefois, les conditions de création et de fonctionnement de la CRD ont été établies en 1990 par l’ordonnance 092/PRG/SGG/90 du 22 octobre. 6 Ils sont normalement élus mais l’article L101, titre II, du code électoral reste flou quant aux modalités de ces élections : « Un acte du Ministre chargé de l’Intérieur fixe les modalités d’élection des Conseils de District et de Quartier [l’équivalent du district dans les villes] et le nombre de conseillers ». La majorité des Conseils de district étudiés sur la Côte et en Forêt est nommée par le Conseil des Sages et validée par la Sous-préfecture.

Une gouvernance locale à l’épreuve du temps 91 reconnu par la Loi Fondamentale. Toutefois, il existe des chefs secteur et des chefs secteur adjoints qui ont véritablement un rôle au niveau des circonscriptions territoriales.

Un changement notable s’est opéré avec la présidence de Lansana Conté quant à la reconnaissance des pouvoirs coutumiers. Les lois promulguées ont tenté de renouer avec le système local, avec plus ou moins de réussite. Dès 1985, l’ordonnance 093/PRG/85 du 17 avril 1985 institutionnalise un instrument du pouvoir traditionnel qu’est le Conseil des Sages. L’ordonnance stipule que « leurs attributions sont celles exercées habituellement par les anciens du village » ; d’où une véritable reconnaissance du pouvoir traditionnel. Le Conseil des Sages tel que défini dans l’ordonnance est constitué à l’échelle du district et intervient essentiellement dans la gestion des conflits. L’ordonnance précise qu’une collaboration étroite doit se construire entre le Conseil des Sages et le Conseil des districts, ce qui est effectif sur le terrain et a pu être observé sur toutes les zones que nous avons étudiées.

Selon nos études sur la Guinée Maritime, mais aussi en Haute Guinée, l’hégémonie du Conseil des Sages à l’échelle du district semble incontestable. Il apparaît que ses membres cumulent souvent plusieurs fonctions : religieuses (imam), administratives (chef secteur, président de district…) ou traditionnelles (aînés). Le président de ce Conseil est donc généralement un personnage jouissant d’une certaine autorité. Le Conseil des Sages puise véritablement ses origines dans les formes de pouvoir traditionnel. Bien qu’il soit institutionnalisé, son autorité est basée sur le poids de ses membres dans les sphères décisionnaires coutumières. Rares sont les Conseils des Sages qui ne sont pas occupés par les lignages fondateurs du district. Dans la majorité des cas, les Conseils des Sages sont donc organisés de manière collégiale, à l’échelle du district, des détenteurs du pouvoir traditionnel dans les secteurs/villages. L’institutionnalisation a permis d’élever ces conseils, qui étaient présents traditionnellement dans les villages, à une unité territoriale plus importante. Ils jouissent également d’une certaine autorité sur les bureaux de district qui est symptomatique de

92 Stichproben l’emprise du pouvoir traditionnel non seulement sur cet espace mais aussi sur les organes de la décentralisation et de la déconcentration.

D’un autre côté, il est également intéressant de noter que les frontières des districts son généralement légitimées par la reconnaissance des fondements du pouvoir coutumier : des critères historiques, sociaux et culturels sont en particulier pris en compte pour les délimiter. En effet, si dans l’ordonnance 093/PRG/85 du 17 avril 1985 qui décrit les principes de constitution d’un district, on retrouve quatre critères – « le contexte géographique et notamment la topographie des lieux et le réseau des voies de communication ; le contexte économique et notamment la répartition des ressources naturelles et des activités de production ; le contexte historique et culturel ; le nombre d’habitants et la distance maximale au chef-lieu du district » – ils ne sont pas tous respectés. En premier lieu, nous pouvons noter que l’argument historique et culturel est inscrit dans l’ordonnance et, surtout, qu’il prévaut sur les autres principes. En effet, les deux premiers critères évoqués par l’ordonnance restent assez flous et difficilement applicables ; le dernier n’est pas toujours respecté puisque les chiffres avancés dans l’ordonnance (un minimum de mille habitants pour peupler un district ; tous les villages d’un district doivent être distants de moins de dix kilomètres) ne sont pas observés pour de nombreux districts étudiés en Guinée Maritime (Rey 2007).

Un autre élément important de l’ère Lansana Conté est l’élaboration du Code Domanial et Foncier, validé par l’ordonnance n° 92/019 du 30 mars 1992. S’il a été tenté d’y inclure le système coutumier, avec notamment la reconnaissance des ayants droits, l’article 39, souvent cité dans ce cadre, n’a pas vraiment réussi à inscrire les réalités locales dans le Code. Le foncier est pourtant le principal enjeu de la reconnaissance du droit local et du système qui prévaut sur la majorité du territoire national. En effet, dans le titre 1 (« La propriété foncière »), les propriétaires reconnus légalement et, donc, protégés par les lois et les juridictions compétentes, sont énumérés (art. 39) : il s’agit des détenteurs d’un titre foncier, des occupants titulaires de livret foncier, de permis d’habiter ou d’autorisation d’occuper, en vigueur sous

Une gouvernance locale à l’épreuve du temps 93 l’ancienne loi foncière et les occupants justifiant d’une occupation paisible, personnelle, continue et de bonne foi. Le dernier cas (art. 39, al. 3) pourrait être interprété comme une reconnaissance, ou du moins une ouverture, du Code Foncier vers le droit coutumier. Un détenteur sous un droit coutumier pourrait effectivement invoquer à son profit la condition de l’occupation prolongée de terres car sont également considérés comme propriétaires « les occupants justifiant d’une occupation paisible personnelle et continue de bonne foi ». Or, le droit foncier traditionnel accorde principalement des droits aux lignages. « Personnelle » exclut déjà de très nombreux droits d’administration (Colin 2008) coutumiers. Pour les droits coutumiers individuels, leur majorité concerne des espaces cultivés annuellement avec peu de chance de retour de l’exploitant sur la même parcelle : le terme « continue » l’exclut donc. De plus, la considération d’occupation prolongée renvoie au Code Civil, dans lequel elle n’est reconnue qu’à partir de trente ans (Ouedraogo 2002). Les droit d’usage consolidé, accordé à l’individu par les autorités coutumières dans le but de constituer une plantation, ne peuvent rentrer dans ce cadre car ce type d’évolution du droit coutumier est très récent et donc inférieur à trente ans. Enfin, le Code Foncier prévoit que la bonne foi peut être rapportée par la mise en valeur des terres par le possesseur. Celle-ci ne devrait pas être reconnue comme une présomption de bonne foi, puisque cela reviendrait à accepter toute demande venant d’un exploitant. Or, dans de nombreux cas du système local, l’exploitant n’est pas décideur sur sa parcelle.

La première République

La première République a pu marquer un véritable frein à l’emprise des pouvoirs coutumiers à l’échelle locale, il est donc intéressant de s’intéresser à cette période. La suppression de la chefferie fut l’un des premiers objectifs de Sekou Touré à son arrivée au pouvoir, lors de l’indépendance de la Guinée (Lewin 2010). L’arrêté du 31 décembre 1957 pris par le Conseil de gouvernement7 et qui met officiellement fin à l'existence de la chefferie

7 Sékou Touré a été appelé dès 1956 à former le premier Conseil de gouvernement de la Guinée en vertu de la loi-cadre.

94 Stichproben illustre cette volonté. Les différents organes déconcentrés de l’Etat avaient ainsi pour vocation de remettre en question, voire d’anéantir, les principes assurant l’assise des autorités traditionnelles. Si la littérature est pauvre sur ce sujet (McGovern 2012), les discours tenus encore aujourd’hui par les contemporains de cette période, en particulier ceux qui ont travaillé dans les services publics, sont symptomatiques d’une époque où la volonté de l’Etat était de suppléer l’emprise du droit coutumier par le droit moderne et de lever l’autorité des chefferies locales. Les pouvoirs locaux ont pourtant su se maintenir à l’échelle villageoise mais les superstructures qui assuraient le lien entre les différents villages se sont vu amoindries, voire ont disparu. Les deux exemples les plus probants sont les différentes royautés sur le territoire national et les confréries initiatiques de la Forêt.

L’occupation des Pouvoirs Révolutionnaires Locaux par les autorités coutumières semble avoir été peu effective. Les pouvoirs traditionnels n’ont certainement pas pu aussi facilement occuper et contrôler les autorités déconcentrées que lors de la Seconde République. Cependant, si la littérature n’est pas assez abondante sur ce sujet pour pouvoir dessiner les traits d’une stratégie observée avant et après la Première République, l’emprise encore importante des autorités coutumières à l’échelle villageoise après le décès de Sékou Touré permet de penser que des processus de résistance similaires ont pu être mis en œuvre. Si Lewin (2010), à propos de la Moyenne Guinée, parle d’effondrement du système social stratifié traditionnel, phénomène qui mérite d’être relativisé, il évoque également l’infiltration des structures d’encadrement idéologique et administratif de la Première République par les chefs coutumiers peulhs. Nous nous contenterons donc, pour cette période, d’évoquer le véritable impact qu’a pu avoir la « guerre » contre le pouvoir traditionnel menée par Sékou Touré : l’affaiblissement, voire la disparition, des « superstructures » traditionnelles mais également une forme de déstructuration des hiérarchies sociales avec une place importante donnée à la jeunesse en Guinée Forestière (Straker 2009).

Une gouvernance locale à l’épreuve du temps 95 Cela s’est traduit en Moyenne Guinée et en Haute Guinée par l’anéantissement (ou la diminution importante de leur portée) des royautés et systèmes féodaux (Perrot/Fauvelle-Aymar 2003). En Guinée Forestière, cette « superstructure » concerne une organisation très spécifique, le poro. Dans la période précoloniale et une partie de la période coloniale, le contrôle social était surtout assuré par des associations initiatiques, appelées également sociétés de masques. Le poro développait une société hiérarchisée : les positions les plus élevées étaient généralement dévolues au lignage fondateur mais on accédait aux dignités des masques par un système d'initiations successives et de dons faits aux dignitaires de rang plus élevés. Le poro aboutissait au contrôle de la société villageoise par la chefferie. Le chef était naturellement son protecteur et de fortes connections existaient entre le poro et l'organisation politique locale. Le grand masque intervenait dans les circonstances importantes : funérailles, intronisation d'un chef ou guerres, par exemple. Le poro réglait les différends entre villageois mais aussi entre villages.

La Première République, lors d’une longue campagne de « démystification », a lutté contre les sociétés de masques (McGovern 2012). Il est assez difficile de connaître de nos jours l’influence et le rôle que joue encore le poro puisqu’il s’agit d’une société initiatique relativement secrète. Cependant, la difficulté des institutions coutumières à résoudre les querelles inter-villageoises, en comparaison avec la période précoloniale, pourrait être le signe d’un profond affaiblissement (Bidou/Fauroux/Favrot/Rey 2006).

La Colonisation

De nos jours, le chef secteur est le plus souvent considéré comme le chef du village. Cette fonction revêt davantage un rôle de représentation qu’un rôle décisionnaire car le chef n’est pas systématiquement membre du lignage « fort » (fondateur, le plus souvent). Il a la charge d’accueillir les acteurs extérieurs ou de représenter son village au niveau administratif supérieur. On peut voir dans cet attribut un vestige des médiateurs entre les villageois et les colons de la période coloniale : il n’est pas rare que les chefs de village/secteur actuels soient des descendants de ces interlocuteurs

96 Stichproben privilégiés de la colonisation. A cette époque, en effet, les colons étaient persuadés de traiter avec les chefs8, au niveau décisionnaire, alors qu’ils étaient en présence, le plus souvent, d’individus désignés comme tel par les autorités coutumières, et sans autre rôle que d’assurer un lien entre le village et l’extérieur (Rey 2012). C’était certainement un moyen de préserver la réelle chefferie qui tirait les ficelles sans se découvrir. Dès la colonisation, les pouvoirs locaux ont donc su se protéger et placer des lignages étrangers en avant pour rester dans l’ombre et continuer à exercer leurs pouvoirs au niveau local sans prendre le risque de se découvrir.

Pouvoirs locaux et stratégies de survie

Il devient ainsi intéressant de comprendre les fondements des rapports de force en place de nos jours au niveau local, ainsi que leur légitimité et leurs stratégies pour se maintenir au cœur des processus décisionnaires à l’échelle villageoise mais également du district. Si les modes d’organisation locaux perdurent encore de nos jours, c’est que le pouvoir coutumier a su intégrer les évolutions politiques et sociales au niveau national et faire évoluer le système de gestion du territoire villageois. Le pouvoir traditionnel récupère les pôles de pouvoir apparus au cours du dernier siècle et qui pourraient faire ombre à son autorité en se les appropriant : que ce soit les responsables de l’islam ou les élus locaux, les pouvoirs coutumiers occupent et manipulent ces nouveaux organes du paysage politique, dans un jeu complexe de contrôles et de rapports de force. Pour illustrer cette situation, nous proposons de décrire les stratégies au niveau local dans le Nord de la Guinée Maritime après être revenu sur les fondements des pouvoirs qui peuvent s’observer dans toute la Guinée.

Les fondements du pouvoir

Sur tout le territoire national, au niveau local, la hiérarchie sociale et les rapports de force sont conditionnés par l’appartenance lignagère. Le lignage

8 La circulaire ministérielle (Ministère des Colonies) du 9 octobre 1929 invitait les populations autochtones à choisir des chefs en respectant les « coutumes » (Suret-Canale 1964).

Une gouvernance locale à l’épreuve du temps 97 d’origine d’un individu détermine sa place, au-delà du lignage, dans la communauté villageoise (Kopytoff 1987; Doevenspeck 2004). Au sein de son lignage, la filiation décide les modalités d’entraide mais également de regroupement dans la gestion des activités. Elle régit donc la mobilisation de la force de travail et aussi la distribution des espaces à cultiver. De plus, que ce soit au sein du lignage ou du village, elle détermine les choix matrimoniaux.

Tous les lignages connaissent leurs différentes étapes migratoires jusqu’à leur lieu de résidence actuel et, outre leurs histoires migratoires, tous les lignages ont également une parfaite connaissance des différentes vagues de migration qui ont constitué leur village. Ceci est capital dans les relations entre les lignages au sein d’un village. Chacun connaît l’ordre d’arrivée de chaque lignage et surtout le premier arrivé, ou lignage fondateur. Les variabilités de la cosmogonie d’un village, suivant les individus qui cherchent majoritairement à construire l’histoire du village à leur profit, mettent bien en avant l’importance de cet individu : il est le fondateur. Tous les autres lignages arrivés par la suite sont les « étrangers » d’un lignage arrivé antérieurement et considéré alors comme leur lignage « tuteur ».

Le lignage fondateur, arrivé en premier sur le site, établit un « acte fondateur » (contrat avec le ou les génie(s) vivant à l’endroit où ce lignage souhaite fonder un village, contrat avec les ancêtres, etc.). Cet acte, qui est, en d’autres termes, une autorisation accordée par des entités magico-religieuses au lignage désireux de s’installer (principe d’hétéronomie (Zempléni 1996)), confère au lignage fondateur un droit éminent sur les espaces concernés. Les premiers arrivants et leurs descendants ont ainsi le devoir de veiller au respect du contrat. L’aîné du lignage fondateur contrôle concrètement l’application de ce contrat. Ce pouvoir lui permet, au nom du lignage, de céder ou non des droits d’usage sur une partie du territoire à des lignages qui viennent s’installer dans le village. On comprend aisément que cela permet au lignage fondateur de contrôler les lignages qui sont arrivés après lui et, éventuellement, d’imposer de nouvelles conditions à son avantage. Un refus des néo-villageois serait synonyme d’expulsion.

98 Stichproben Toutefois, la stratégie des fondateurs reste le développement démographique du village. Il leur faut donc doser savamment les interdits et les libertés afin d’assurer la pérennisation de l’installation de leurs étrangers.

Les lignages étrangers peuvent à leur tour accueillir d’autres lignages. On peut ainsi entendre des villageois dire : « ce sont nos étrangers et nous [mon lignage et moi] sommes les étrangers de tel lignage ». Toutefois, ils doivent s’assurer de l’accord des fondateurs. En d’autres termes, les « étrangers d’étrangers » ne traitent pas avec un lignage qui a les pleins pouvoirs sur le territoire, ce qui peut influer sur leurs libertés d’action. Il existe donc clairement plusieurs couches de dépendance et plus on s’éloigne de la couche du lignage des primo arrivants (les fondateurs), moins le lignage est impliqué dans les sphères décisionnaires du village. Les répercussions ne s’arrêtent donc pas au foncier mais à tous les niveaux de la vie sociale du village.

Stratégies d’occupation des pôles de pouvoirs actuels par les lignages fondateurs en Guinée Maritime

Intéressons nous maintenant au cas de la Guinée Maritime Nord. Les conclusions présentées ici sont issues des travaux réalisés entre 2003 et 2008 dans le cadre de l’Observatoire de la Guinée Maritime évoqués en introduction. La typologie des stades d’évolution des villages proposée ci-dessous repose sur l’étude de 44 villages pendant trois ans, sélectionnés sur la base de critère ethnolinguistiques, géographiques et socio-économiques9 (Rey 2007).

Nous l’avons dit, tout village a son fondateur à qui est prêtée une série de pouvoirs surnaturels particuliers. C’est lui qui a pactisé avec une entité

9 Les groupes ethnolinguistiques concernés par cette étude sont les Baga Mandori, les Baga Sitému, les Soussou, les Ballante, les Landouma et les Nalou (également quelques Peulhs dans des hameaux). Les facteurs géographiques concernent essentiellement l’enclavement et l’éloignement à la mer. Les facteurs socio-économiques sont liés en particulier aux potentialités du territoire villageois en terme d’activités.

Une gouvernance locale à l’épreuve du temps 99 magico-religieuse et assume la responsabilité du respect des accords conclus. Il est le seul en mesure de décider ce qui est autorisé ou non. Tout individu voulant s’installer sur son territoire devra s’adresser à lui. La stratégie de tout fondateur est l’accroissement de son village pour assurer, d’une part, la sécurité et, d’autre part, l’occupation des espaces exploitables afin de marquer leur appartenance. Il doit donc établir un certain équilibre entre sa volonté d’asseoir son autorité sur les lieux et la nécessité d’accorder une marge de manœuvre suffisante aux nouveaux arrivants pour veiller à leur stabilité au sein du néo-village.

Ainsi, dans un village jeune, l’accession aux postes administratifs n’est pas une préoccupation primordiale pour le lignage fondateur. Son objectif est véritablement de promouvoir l’expansion démographique du village, gage de pérennité et de sécurité. Tout est donc mis en œuvre pour à la fois garantir le maintien de l’autorité et offrir des concessions attractives aux étrangers en vue d’assurer leur installation définitive. La stratégie est la même pour la répartition des pôles administratifs. Dans les villages récents, nous avons observé fréquemment l’occupation par des membres de lignages étrangers de postes comme ceux de chef secteur ou membre du bureau du district, voire membre du Comité des Sages. Le lignage fondateur, après quelques générations, accapare progressivement les différents postes. L’attribution de la fonction de premier imam à un lignage étranger s’inscrit clairement dans cette stratégie. Contrairement aux autres pôles de pouvoir, cette fonction reste le plus souvent dans le même lignage et ne sera donc pas récupérée par le lignage fondateur.

Une fois l’accroissement démographique du village amorcé, un phénomène se produit : l’émergence des lignées. Le lignage devient une unité trop imprécise pour définir le grand nombre d’individus qu’il regroupe et on peut alors distinguer, au sein d’un même lignage, l’émergence de lignées.

L’émergence des lignées dépend du nombre d’individus qu’elles regroupent et les lignages les plus sujets à ce type de division (dans le sens de détermination) sont donc les plus anciens des villages, c’est-à-dire les lignages fondateurs. De plus, c’est véritablement au sein de ces lignages que

100 Stichproben les enjeux du pouvoir sont les plus forts. Si les codes inter-lignagers sont clairement établis, les relations entre lignées, quant à elles, demeurent plus floues. Emergent alors de nombreuses dissensions qui divisent le lignage. Le pouvoir inhérent au lignage fondateur est revendiqué par chacune des lignées, chacun des aînés de lignée étant convaincu d’être le descendant légitime du patriarche. Des rancœurs se font jour et aboutissent, le plus souvent, à des conflits ouverts. Ces rivalités évoluent jusqu’à l’éclatement du village et la migration de certaines lignées en dehors du village pour fonder un hameau qui deviendra un village ou s’intégrer comme étrangers dans des villages proches déjà existants

Chacune des lignées a ses étrangers qui ne sont plus considérés comme des étrangers de lignage mais réellement de lignée. On remonte alors jusqu’à celui qui a accueilli ces étrangers ; ses descendants, membres de sa lignée, sont les tuteurs des descendants de l’étranger. Cette scission a donc un impact sur tout le village. Dans ces villages, on assiste à une véritable course au pouvoir ; chaque lignée essaie d’occuper un maximum de postes administratifs, du Comité des Sages au bureau de district en passant par la tête du secteur. Tous les moyens sont bons pour accumuler les postes au sein de la lignée. Les étrangers y accèdent rarement, exception faite de la fonction de premier imam qui peut rester l’apanage d’un lignage étranger. Chaque lignée s’arrangera pour occuper tout de même, au Conseil de mosquée, les fonctions de deuxième ou troisième imam. La collaboration entre les différents organes administratifs est donc moins évidente.

La logique de la répartition des pôles de pouvoir dans les villages anciens est complexe. Des lignages, autres que le lignage fondateur, se sont imposés dans les sphères décisionnaires. Il s’agit généralement des premiers étrangers, établis dans le village depuis longtemps et qui ont donc eu le temps de pénétrer les pôles dirigeants du village. Cela ne signifie aucunement une diminution significative du pouvoir du lignage fondateur qui reste déterminant mais un partage partiel du pouvoir entre les plus anciens lignages du village. Nous pourrons alors parler parfois de plusieurs fondateurs. Les postes administratifs ne sont pas occupés directement par

Une gouvernance locale à l’épreuve du temps 101 des membres des lignages forts (lignage fondateur ou étrangers des premières vagues d’immigration au sein du village) : on place le plus souvent des étrangers de « deuxième ordre » que l’on manipule dans l’ombre. Certains pôles comme le bureau de district peuvent être pénétrés par quelques membres de lignages forts qui n’occupent que rarement les postes de président ou président adjoint : ils sont surtout là pour contrôler le bon déroulement des prises de décision. Ceci évite, entre autre, aux aînés des lignages prépondérants d’avoir à passer du temps dans la représentation et la réception des autorités exogènes au village qui peuvent être coûteuses, tout en gardant le contrôle décisionnaire. Ces « observateurs » issus des lignages forts sont généralement des jeunes et très rarement des aînés : ils ont peu de poids à l’intérieur de leur lignage d’origine. Ils restent véritablement sous l’autorité de leurs aînés qui renforcent ainsi leur emprise sur le bureau du district. Cette emprise ne s’arrête pas là. En effet, dans les villages anciens, le Conseil des Sages est souvent constitué par des aînés des lignages forts. Il existe de nombreux points de collaboration entre le bureau de district et le Conseil des Sages (dans le cadre de la résolution de conflits essentiellement) et, dans ce cas, l’inféodation du premier envers le second est d’autant plus forte.

Avec une présence limitée et une intégration difficile du pouvoir déconcentré et avec une décentralisation fortement contrôlée par le pouvoir déconcentré, et donc peu représentative, le pouvoir coutumier apparaît comme seul maître au niveau local. C’est véritablement les rapports de force en place dans les villages qui priment. Les élus locaux sont fortement intégrés dans ces rapports de force coutumiers.

En effet, le nombre de représentants administratifs dans une Sous-préfecture dépend du nombre de districts. Si on se base sur un nombre de 15 districts pour une Sous-préfecture, avec un minimum de 9 membres du bureau de district, cela signifie au moins 135 représentants. On doit y ajouter les membres des Conseils des Sages qui sont fonction, en général, du nombre de secteurs. Selon l’ordonnance portant sur leur constitution (093/PRG/85 du 17 avril 1985), ils sont au moins quatre, soit un total de 60

102 Stichproben pour l’ensemble de la Sous-préfecture. Le président, le vice-président, le trésorier et le secrétaire communautaire sont également à additionner, les autres membres du bureau du Conseil communautaire étant, jusqu’en décembre 2005, membres des bureaux de district. Nous ne devons pas oublier non plus le sous-préfet et son adjoint. Cela porte à 201, au minimum, le nombre de représentants administratifs dans une Sous-préfecture de 15 districts. Seulement trois fonctionnaires sont inclus dans ces chiffres : le sous-préfet, le sous-préfet adjoint et le secrétaire communautaire. Ils sont les seuls représentants administratifs à ne pas être originaires de la Sous-préfecture : tous les autres sont des natifs de la zone où ils ont été nommés ou élus.

Ainsi, tous ces élus locaux sont sous l’autorité de leurs aînés et prennent que très rarement seuls les décisions. L’omniprésence du pouvoir coutumier s’impose dès qu’on entre dans le district. Des élus locaux qui occupent des postes comme la présidence du district n’osent pas répondre à des sollicitations exogènes sans recourir à l’avis des aînés ou des Sages. Ainsi, un lignage qui n’occupe pas un poste administratif n’est pas forcément éloigné de ce pôle de pouvoir : il tire peut-être les ficelles dans l’ombre (Rey 2010). De même, nous avons pu relever des cas de nomination de présidents de district, pour lesquels il s’est avéré que les Sages du district avaient été consultés par le Sous-préfet avant leur nomination. De nombreuses décisions administratives au niveau local sont également prises conjointement avec les représentants des pouvoirs traditionnels. Il n’est donc pas permis de croire que tous ces individus sont dissociés du pouvoir coutumier. Penser que le pouvoir traditionnel s’est éteint sous l’action de la Première République, voire de la colonisation (Suret-Canale 1980), semble éloigné de la réalité.

Quelles perspectives pour le pouvoir local en Guinée avec l’arrivée des miniers ?

La réforme du Code Foncier est un chantier évoqué depuis la fin de la présidence de Lansana Conté. Elle est un enjeu important de la conciliation

Une gouvernance locale à l’épreuve du temps 103 de la « Loi nationale » et du droit local. Le gouvernement actuel s’est saisi du dossier et il est à espérer que l’un des leitmotive de cette réforme sera l’élaboration d’un cadre qui permet de reconnaître les pratiques locales. Dans ce sens, un nouveau processus va peut-être marquer un tournant sur l’évolution de la relation entre l’Etat et les pouvoirs coutumiers : l’arrivée massive de compagnies minières internationales.

Avec un sous-sol riche sous-exploité, la République de Guinée voit le nombre des investisseurs miniers internationaux se multiplier depuis une vingtaine d’années avec la seconde vague de libéralisation des codes miniers promue par la Banque Mondiale (Belem 2005). L’arrivée de ces multinationales dans un contexte où l’État a une faible représentativité dans les zones d’extraction et a peu de capacité de contrôle des pratiques pose un nouveau niveau dans le cadre réglementaire en Guinée : celui des normes internationales. En effet, en République de Guinée, les obligations sociétales des entreprises minières sont contractualisées et légiférées. En plus du Code Minier, elles sont précisées dans la convention qui lie l’État guinéen à la société minière qui s’engage ainsi à « mitiger » les impacts de ses activités sur les communautés riveraines. Elle doit proposer des politiques de compensation et de mitigation auprès des groupes d’individus impactés de façon négative. L’entreprise elle-même obéit à un code de déontologie environnementale et sociale qu’elle a adopté et qui la caractérise, souvent commun à tous ses sites d’exploitation dans le monde (Rey/de Saint Simon 2011). Mais surtout, la société minière se doit le plus souvent de respecter les normes internationales, en particulier celles dictées par la Société Financière Internationale (SFI), dans la mesure où la recherche d’investissements passe par des structures bancaires qui s’alignent dans le secteur sur les principes de l’Equateur (qui reprennent les normes de performance de la SFI).

Les normes de performance de la SFI constituent une forme de réglementation et oblige à une veille des impacts environnementaux mais aussi des impacts sociaux liés aux activités de la société privée (Godard/Hommel 2005). Les études de préfaisabilité et les options choisies

104 Stichproben pour les phases de construction doivent répondre à un cahier des charges complexe. La SFI assure un contrôle régulier du respect des procédures qu’elle a définies en fonction de critères qui se veulent respectueux du contexte social et environnemental, et ce, pour les grands groupes miniers.

Afin de comprendre les enjeux de cette problématique pour les pouvoirs locaux, nous allons nous intéresser en particulier à la norme de performance relative aux compensations dans le cadre de déplacements de populations pour libérer l’espace avant la construction d’infrastructures minières et, en particulier, les questions relatives au droit foncier : la norme de performance 5 portant sur l’acquisition de terres et la réinstallation involontaire.

Cette norme précise notamment que « le gouvernement joue souvent un rôle central dans le processus d’acquisition de terres et de réinstallation, notamment dans la fixation des indemnisations, et est par conséquent une tierce partie importante dans bien des situations. L’expérience prouve que la participation directe du client aux activités de réinstallation peut entraîner une mise en œuvre économique, efficace et rapide de ces activités, ainsi que des approches innovatrices pour améliorer les moyens d’existence des personnes affectées » (SFI 2012: 1). Cependant, en plus des propriétaires qui ont un « droit légal » sur les terres, cette norme de performance met l’accent également sur l’importance de compenser les communautés ou individus qui « ont des droits d’utilisation coutumiers ou traditionnels » (SFI 2012: 2). On comprend ainsi que dans un tel contexte, la compagnie minière est dans l’obligation de reconnaître les deux systèmes : à la fois celui du Code Foncier et celui sous l’égide du droit coutumier.

Le droit foncier au niveau villageois, nous l’avons vu, est géré par les autorités coutumières. De fait la compagnie minière devra traiter aussi bien avec l’Etat, avec qui elle est engagée contractuellement, qu’avec les chefferies traditionnelles. La concertation avec celles-ci va d’ailleurs bien au-delà du cadre des compensations des terres : elles sont impliquées dans toutes les consultations publiques lors des études d’impact et leurs doléances doivent être prises en compte par la compagnie minière à travers une documentation (l’Etude d’Impact Environnementale et Sociale), qui est

Une gouvernance locale à l’épreuve du temps 105 à valider par l’Etat. On comprend ainsi que si dans la Loi, l’Etat ne reconnaît pas véritablement les formes de détention de terre locales, dans les faits, il les considère. Il est en effet difficilement recevable de ne pas compenser les ayants droits locaux sur la base qu’ils n’ont pas de titre de propriété alors qu’ils occupent ces espaces impactés depuis plusieurs siècles.

Ce phénomène nous amène à réfléchir sur le processus en cours en Guinée dans le cadre du développement de projets miniers majeurs. Tout d’abord, pour comprendre l’étendue et l’impact qu’ils vont avoir sur la Guinée, nous pouvons rappeler que toutes les régions de Guinée sont concernées, plus particulièrement la Guinée Maritime, la Haute Guinée et la Guinée Forestière. A cela s’ajoutent les infrastructures, notamment le transguinéen qui traversera dix Préfectures entre Beyla et Forécariah. Les déplacements des populations liés à la construction d’infrastructure (voies ferrées, sites miniers, logements, routes, ports, etc.) vont donc avoir un impact sur une large étendue du territoire national. La méthodologie préconisée par les miniers, soutenue par la SFI et promue par l’Etat consiste à une reconnaissance des ayants droits sur la base du droit coutumier et à assurer une titrisation des déplacés pour sécuriser leurs droits sur les nouveaux espaces occupés. En effet, la norme de performance 5 prévoit également que les personnes déplacées doivent être accompagnées pour trouver un nouveau site de réinstallation. On parle alors de compensation de la terre par la terre. Toujours dans cette norme de performance, il est précisé que les personnes physiquement déplacées doivent être « réinstallées dans un lieu qu’elles peuvent occuper en toute légalité et dont elles ne peuvent être légalement expulsées » (SFI 2012: 2). On comprend donc que cette sécurité foncière ne peut être obtenue que par l’obtention de titres fonciers sur les nouveaux espaces d’installation des communautés délocalisées.

La stratégie de l’Etat dans ce contexte semble assez claire. Il s’agit de s’appuyer sur les déplacements de populations pour permettre au droit moderne de pénétrer les zones rurales où il n’a quasiment aucune emprise. On assiste alors à un paradoxe de taille : l’Etat, pour asseoir la légitimité de « son » droit, s’appuie sur la reconnaissance du droit local puisque

106 Stichproben l’identification des ayants droit passe inévitablement par une compréhension du droit coutumier. Si théoriquement, cette approche a du sens dans le cadre du respect des normes de performance internationale, elle reste à relativiser et surtout à mettre en perspective avec la future réforme du Code Foncier. Actuellement en cours, avec une première étape lancée par le gouvernement en place (les Etats Généraux du Foncier), la réussite de la conciliation des réalités locales avec le « droit national » passe par une reconnaissance des pratiques locales dans les textes (Rey 2011a). La norme de performance 5, à ce propos, est quelque peu ambiguë par rapport au cas guinéen car si elle prône la reconnaissance du droit local, celui-ci doit être d’abord reconnu par l’Etat. Or nous avons vu que cette reconnaissance n’est pas évidente dans le Code Foncier et Domanial. C’est ainsi la considération des ayants droits, recommandées par les représentants de l’Etat auprès des compagnies minières qui fait office de légitimité et permet d’être dans le respect de cette norme de performance. Encore une fois, le lien entre les autorités administratives et les pouvoirs locaux est ténu.

Conclusion

Les pouvoirs locaux (ou coutumiers) restent la référence au niveau local. Qu’il s’agisse de la colonisation, de l’islamisation du milieu du XXe siècle, de la Première République ou des années de Lansana Conté jusqu’à Alpha Condé, les autorités coutumières sont toujours parvenues à s’adapter à ces nouvelles configurations politiques, même lorsqu’elles ont pu être mises en péril, avec notamment l’application d’une règle : placer des interfaces dans les nouveaux organes du pouvoir et les contrôler dans l’ombre.

Les pouvoirs locaux sont connectés en permanence au niveau national mais aussi au niveau international : l’évolution des pratiques et du droit local répond le plus souvent à des opportunités de marché qui sont elles-mêmes dépendantes du contexte national et international (Rey 2011b). Si le pouvoir répond à des obligations d’organisation interne, qui se révèlent indispensables à toute société, il se construit également par rapport à des nécessités externes. Les facteurs intangibles – mythes, dogmes, croyances

Une gouvernance locale à l’épreuve du temps 107 rituelles… – participent au maintien de l’ordre social, puisque les fondateurs et les aînés sont les médiateurs privilégiés avec les entités magico-religieuses, mais ce sont aussi les garanties de stabilité et la recherche de l’optimisation du système social qui assurent le bien-fondé du pouvoir traditionnel et son acceptation par la communauté : les instruments qui assoient le pouvoir localement sont acceptés car ils participent à une certaine paix sociale. L’optimisation du système est rendue possible par sa capacité d’adaptation. L’islamisation aurait pu mettre en péril le socle du pouvoir coutumier mais celui-ci, par le syncrétisme des croyances, a su absorber ce nouvel élément et se l’approprier. De même, son adaptation aux nouveaux contextes de gouvernance, au niveau national, qu’il s’agisse de politique administrative ou économique, a su perdurer car, plus que sa capacité à absorber les nouveaux pôles de pouvoir, il a su faire évoluer le système traditionnel pour offrir à la communauté villageoise les outils pour optimiser leurs revenus (par exemple l’individualisation du droit foncier coutumier sur certains espaces pour permettre à la communauté villageoise de répondre aux nouvelles opportunité de marché sous Lansana Conté).

Aujourd’hui, c’est l’arrivée en nombre de compagnies internationales qui pourraient présenter un risque pour les pouvoirs locaux, en particulier du fait des migrations qu’engendrent ces projets avec l’arrivée massive de migrants qui ne sont pas inclus dans les hiérarchies sociales en place. Ces entreprises privées ont toutefois l’obligation de prendre en compte les parties prenantes locales et donc les autorités coutumières. L’Etat, de son côté, voit dans ce nouveau processus, un outil pour diffuser « son droit ». Paradoxalement, c’est la considération du pouvoir local par les miniers et le lien entre le minier et l’Etat qui peut participer à fixer le droit national à l’intérieur des communautés locales. Peut-on pour autant parler d’une reconquête future du territoire national par le droit moderne via ce processus ? Rien n’est moins sûr. Cependant, la titrisation des personnes qui sont déplacés dans le cadre du développement d’infrastructures minières représente un phénomène nouveau en Guinée. Le fait que des communautés villageoises jouissent d’une reconnaissance légale de leurs détentions foncières est inédit et on peut y voir les prémisses d’une

108 Stichproben pénétration du droit moderne dans les zones rurales. Pour autant, le pouvoir coutumier reste et restera au cœur de tous les processus décisionnaires locaux en Guinée et il saura certainement s’adapter à ce nouveau phénomène pour en faire un nouvel outil de son pouvoir.

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«Il faut être là où l’or sort !» De l’itinérance temporaire au maintien d’un mode de vie mobile

chez les orpailleurs de Haute Guinée.

Matthieu Bolay

Abstract Ce chapitre aborde l'extraction minière en Afrique de l'Ouest sous l'angle de la mobilité des chercheurs d'or. Il s'intéresse en particulier à l'émergence de modes de vies itinérants dans le secteur des mines d'or artisanales. Je défends l'idée que malgré les risques encourus et l'incertitude des revenus des mines, lors des premières années, les orpailleurs considèrent leur mode de vie itinérant comme une alternative viable aux moyens d'existence conventionnels, ainsi que comme une échappatoire aux trajectoires prescrites dans leurs contextes familiaux. Cependant, l'injonction à se maintenir en mobilité devient aussi une contrainte qui entre alors en contradiction avec les aspirations à se re-sédentariser. Je propose finalement trois types d'arrangements de mobilité au sein de la sphère domestique visant chacun à résoudre ces ambiguïtés en privilégiant soit la mobilité pour ne pas migrer, ou au contraire la migration pour limiter les déplacements.

112 Stichproben Introduction

L’exploitation artisanale de l’or constitue de longue date une source de subsistance, souvent vue comme complémentaire, pour une part importante des populations de Haute Guinée. Certaines régions proches de Siguiri, telles que le Bouré et le Séké, sont exploitées depuis plusieurs siècles et reposent sur l’exploitation aurifère comme principale activité économique en lieu et place de l’agriculture comme c’est traditionnellement le cas dans les zones rurales. Alors que ce modèle faisait figure d’exception jusqu’il y a peu, l’orpaillage1 a connu une recrudescence sans précédent depuis 2008, entrainant des dizaines de milliers de personnes dans ce mouvement2. L’explosion de l’activité au-delà des ces régions historiquement exploitées s’est faite sur le fond de la hausse du prix de l’or3, de l’accès à de nouvelles technologies de production et a ainsi donné lieu à une diversification des profils des travailleurs dont une part toujours plus importante s’y consacre en continu. La prolongation de la période dite de traite tout au long de l’année va de pair avec une augmentation générale des déplacements des orpailleurs ainsi qu’avec l’émergence de nouvelles formes de mobilités, tant en termes de destinations que de durée des voyages. Alors qu’elle était historiquement saisonnière en saison sèche et complémentaire à l’agriculture, l’exploitation artisanale de l’or tend à se généraliser comme occupation à plein temps. Dans ce contexte, cet article vise à faire comprendre quelles formes de mobilités spatiales – entendues comme le déplacement physique, parfois transnational des orpailleurs – émergent de cette activité, et par quels arrangements le mode de vie mobile qu’elle implique est maintenu au long des parcours de vie.

1 L’orpaillage est l’exploitation non mécanisée des gisements et placers aurifères. 2 Il ne s’agit ici pas d’une spécificité guinéenne mais d’un phénomène global particulièrement marqué en Afrique où les estimations du nombre de personnes impliquées dans l’artisanat minier ont été multipliée par quatre ou cinq en vingt ans, et concerne près de 300 000 personnes dans le cas de la Guinée (Hilson 2014). 3 En prix réels, les pics atteints en 2011 suite à la crise financière internationale sont les deuxièmes plus importants après ceux de 1980 qui avaient déjà conduit à une recrudescence des phénomènes de ruées.

«Il faut être là où l’or sort !» 113 Dans les débats sur le rôle de l’orpaillage dans l’économie des populations impliquées, c’est souvent le caractère temporaire de l’engagement dans les mines qui prédomine. L’orpaillage est conçu comme un complément saisonnier aux activités agricoles (Hilson/Garforth 2012), ou comme une source de revenu transitoire pour des jeunes sans emploi (Banchirigah 2006), ou encore en quête d’aventure en période de jeunesse (Dessertine 2013); dans tous les cas, une activité au temps court, dont la mobilité s’exprime sous forme d’aller-retours. En suivant les parcours d’orpailleurs itinérants « à plein temps », je cherche à compléter cette vision en m’intéressant au développement de plus en plus fréquent de l’orpaillage comme principale activité de subsistance sur le long terme. J’aborde ce mode de vie sous l’angle de la mobilité qui constitue un impératif pour accéder aux ressources en or, mais requiert aussi des arrangements au sein de la sphère domestique afin de concilier l’absence des hommes hors de celle-ci avec les obligations morales à contribuer aux ressources de la concession. Je défends l’idée qu’il se trouve, au cours des « carrières » de mineurs, un moment de tension entre l’idéal du « coup à tenter » – imaginé comme une incursion temporaire dans la « loterie »4 du travail des mines, et l’installation progressive de l’activité comme « moyen d’existence mobile » (Sorensen/Fog Olwig 2002) sur le long terme – alors portée par la nécessité de se subvenir et de contribuer à la production de la concession.

Il s’agit donc d’appréhender la mobilité des orpailleurs hors du cadre conceptuel de la migration qui ne rend pas justice à la conception qu’ils en ont. En effet, dans de nombreux contextes africains, la mobilité spatiale – qu’elle soit liée au commerce, à l’éducation, aux pratiques religieuses, au travail saisonnier, ou encore à l’élevage ou l’agriculture – constitue la norme plutôt que l’exception (Bilger/Kraler 2005; De Bruijn et al. 2001; Hahn/Klute

4 L’exploitation en puits et galeries (« damankurunis », petites mines) n’est pas basée sur une prospection systématique et comprend une part très importante de hasard quant aux quantités et à la teneur du minerai accessible dans les rangées de puits. Il arrive donc que certaines équipes atteignent directement la veine du gisement alors que celles des puits voisins restent bredouilles. Les orpailleurs utilisent d’ailleurs communément le terme de « loterie » en référence à leur activité (pour une discussion critique sur les notions de chance et de pari dans les contextes d’extraction minière artisanale, voir D’Angelo 2015).

114 Stichproben 2007). Cependant, les déplacements au sein des mines d’or diffèrent des schémas de mobilité conventionnels, essentiellement pendulaires, saisonniers, ou associés à des formes d’aventurisme de jeunesse. Comme les orpailleurs l’affirment d’ailleurs à propos de leur activité, leurs itinérances s’apparentent à une forme de « nomadisme » où les points de travail et de résidence sont toujours temporaires et les nouvelles destinations redéfinies au gré des opportunités potentielles. Je m’interroge sur les apports du mouvement dans la mise en œuvre des moyens d’existence au cours de la vie, en faisant écho aux études sur les « circulations migratoires » (p. exm. Dahinden 2010; Schmoll 2005; Tarrius 2002) ; notion appliquée ici au cas de circulations intra-africaines. Il s’agit donc d’identifier les stratégies mises en œuvre pour soutenir des déplacements continus à travers l’Afrique de l’Ouest tout en maintenant, ou en réinstaurant, une centralité de résidence nécessaire à la réalisation des étapes de vie socialement prescrites.

Les sections suivantes abordent tour à tour certaines spécificités matérielles et sociales de la production aurifère faisant notamment de la mobilité une condition pour accéder à l’or. Après un court éclairage sur les méthodes employées, je discute les temporalités des voyages - temporaires et continues – en référence aux aspirations et à l’âge des orpailleurs. L’article se construit ensuite en retraçant les étapes types des mineurs au travers de leur engagement dans le secteur des mines, puis des stratégies qu’ils développent pour se maintenir en mobilité sur le long terme.

La mobilité comme condition d’accès aux ressources du sous-sol

Dès le IXème siècle, les récits des voyageurs attestent de l’exploitation des mines de l’actuelle Haute Guinée, en particulier dans le Bouré et le Séké. Ensuite, sous la domination des mansas (« rois » en mandenka) de l’empire du Mali, l’exploitation était régulée par le calendrier agricole et constituait une activité saisonnière, tant pour les populations résidentes que pour celles composées de travailleurs temporaires, bien souvent des bambaras, venus des autres régions de l’empire (Ki-zerbo/Niane 1991: 195). Ce modèle d’exploitation saisonnier s’est progressivement institutionnalisé (Herbert

«Il faut être là où l’or sort !» 115 2012), donnant lieu à des routes régulières reliant les régions exclusivement agricoles aux zones minières et s’est reproduit jusqu’à récemment, notamment au travers de l’institution du tutorat5 régulant l’accueil des travailleurs temporaires. Jusqu’aux pics successifs des prix de l’or dans les années 1980, puis à nouveau à partir de 2008, conduisant à l’afflux massif de nouveaux travailleurs, ce système saisonnier d’exploitation pouvait être considéré comme la norme.

Sur le plan foncier, le système de production s’est construit sur une acception particulière de la propriété dans les zones minières où sol et sous-sol sont régulés par des normes foncières distinctes exprimant le degré d’autochtonie reconnu des travailleurs. Comme le montre Arnaldi (2013) avec force détails, le sol est dans une situation d’accès libre suggérant des conditions de citoyenneté locale relativement souple, tandis que l’accès aux ressources du sous-sol est régulé de façon stricte par les institutions coutumières villageoises. L’appartenance au lignage majeur du village ou à l’un de ses segments (clan) garantit la responsabilité du clan sur le domaine exploitable – soit l’obligation de conduire les activités rituelles, et le droit de percevoir une part des taxes d’exploitation – et la possibilité d’officier en tant que nyado, soit en tant que propriétaire et responsable de l’extraction d’un puits. Ce régime favorise ainsi une économie de rente pour les clans du lignage central, par le patronage de puits d’extraction ou la location de matériel, et une économie de captation pour les kalayantigilu6, les orpailleurs itinérants indépendants, chargés d’extraire le minerai dans les souterrains, et dont la force de travail est rétribuée en mesures fixes de minerai brut (Bolay 2014). Le système de rétribution implique des gains proportionnels à la teneur en or des mesures extraites et pose par conséquent comme impératif de chercher à travailler dans les puits les plus riches. C’est précisément le leitmotiv des orpailleurs lors de leurs pérégrinations : « Il faut être là où l’or sort ! », car la même quantité de travail génère des gains

5 Le tutorat est une convention permettant aux non natifs d’accéder à la terre, et par extension au logement, par l’entremise d’un membre du lignage central. 6 En langue malinké, les « détenteurs des longues pioches » spécifiques du travail en galerie.

116 Stichproben largement supérieurs si le minerai du puits exploité contient une forte teneur en or, et plus encore si le carat y est élevé.

Les femmes constituent près de 50% de la force de travail sur les sites d’orpaillage (Hentschel 2003: 31) et sont principalement en charge du concassage et du traitement du minerai, en sus des autres tâches domestiques. Elles travaillent exclusivement en surface et de préférence dans les zones minières adjacentes à leurs villages. Dans la division genrée des tâches qui reproduit en bonne partie celle de l’économie familiale (Panella 2007), elles sont généralement associées à la sphère domestique et donc moins susceptibles de se déplacer sur de longues périodes. Dans cette étude, je me concentre donc sur les parcours de travailleurs hommes qui se singularisent par des pratiques d’intense mobilité. Au vu de la nécessité d’être apte à la mobilité et du caractère informel de l’activité, il va sans dire que les frontières étatiques jouent un rôle secondaire dans les choix de destinations. Les orpailleurs guinéens sont amenés à se déplacer aussi bien en Guinée qu’au-delà des frontières nationales selon les opportunités qui s’y présentent. Durant la recherche, ces constats m’ont amené à adopter une posture d’ethnographe itinérant concrètement opérationnalisée par le suivi « multisitué », en Guinée et dans les pays voisins, de plusieurs orpailleurs lors des différentes phases d’enquête de terrain entre 2011 et 2014.

Contexte de la recherche et méthodologie employée

Le terrain de recherche s’est progressivement construit à partir des zones minières de Haute Guinée ; plus précisément de la région du Bouré à l’Ouest de la ville de Siguiri, et du Wassoulou guinéen proche de la frontière malienne dans la préfecture de Mandiana. Dans le souci d’adopter une approche méthodologique cohérente avec l’objet de la recherche, l’enquête s’est développée en suivant les personnes au travers de leurs réseaux de relations sociales et lors de leurs voyages. Le terrain d’enquête s’est donc rapidement étendu au gré des rencontres, des saisons plus ou moins propices à l’orpaillage, des changements de contextes politiques locaux et nationaux, ainsi que des ponctuels phénomènes de « ruée ». Entre

«Il faut être là où l’or sort !» 117 2011 et 2014, j’ai accompagné ou rejoint plusieurs orpailleurs, majoritairement guinéens, parfois lors de simples virées dans des sites miniers voisins, et parfois dans des régions plus éloignées de Guinée, du Sénégal, du Mali ou de Côte d’Ivoire ; leurs itinérances se poursuivant parfois sur plusieurs années, je les ai aussi ponctuellement retrouvés sur les sites miniers où ils opéraient. Les difficultés inhérentes à cette approche méthodologique se sont manifestées à plusieurs reprises, notamment lorsqu’il s’est agi de retrouver, d’une fois à l’autre, les informateurs dont la plupart se déplacent constamment, qui plus est dans des régions relativement enclavées et dans plusieurs pays. L’avantage en a par contre été d’avoir une ouverture sur les différents contextes traversés en plus des espaces de travail, à savoir les contextes familiaux, certains épisodes de voyages, ou les lieux de séjour dans les camps miniers temporaires.

Figure 1 Principaux lieux de la recherche

Cette approche ethnographique a été complétée par des entretiens approfondis avec les participants afin de reconstituer leurs parcours, ainsi qu’avec vingt autres mineurs rencontrés durant la recherche, auxquels s’ajoutent aussi des entretiens ciblés sur les supports sociaux à la mobilité. Pour une meilleure compréhension des enjeux qui sous-tendent la mobilité des orpailleurs, je me concentrerai d’abord sur les différentes formes que ce mode de vie peut prendre en fonction notamment des aspirations des

118 Stichproben orpailleurs, ainsi que des soutiens qu’ils mobilisent. Les récits d’Alhassane, Oussmane et Sidiki7 présentés en fin d’article mettent en lumière des parcours de vie prenant source dans des contextes très distincts mais dont les protagonistes ont en commun d’avoir maintenu leurs déplacements dans les mines comme principale occupation. Les stratégies de mobilité qu’ils mettent en place illustrent les compromis entre les déplacements liés à leur activité et la sédentarité de leur ménage8. Celles-ci étant largement définies par certaines étapes de vie, je m’inspire de Gardner (2009) pour distinguer à des fins conceptuelles, d’une part, les «étapes» prescrites au cours des trajectoires, et dans ce cas fortement liées au système Mandenka de classes d’âge, et, d’autre part, les « parcours de vie » effectivement vécus et comprenant d’ailleurs toutes sortes d’arrangements découlant desdites prescriptions.

La temporalité de l’engagement : Coup à tenter ou véritable occupation ?

L’entrée dans les mines participe souvent de la construction d’un soi adulte9 chez les jeunes hommes, et s’apparente ainsi à d’autres formes historiques d’aventurisme (i.e. Cissé 1964: 184; Doumbia 2001: 59) qui demandent donc de considérer l’orpaillage à l’aune des parcours de vie de ceux qui s’y engagent à plus ou moins long terme. Au-delà des motifs économiques, les jeunes hommes guinéens quittent fréquemment leurs villages pour fuir l’inactivité et le sentiment d’inutilité qui l’accompagne pour d’autres destinations que les mines (p. ex. dans les centres urbains comme c’est le cas notamment à Dakar), (Fioratta 2015) et expliquent leurs départs surtout comme une façon de se maintenir en mouvement et de rendre visible à leurs proches qu’ils s’efforcent d’améliorer leur condition. Quoique leur contribution économique s’avère minime, leur départ, même s’il n’est pas 7 Les prénoms ont été modifiés 8 Le ménage est compris au sens de Meillassoux ([1975] 1992) comme le groupe de commensalité et de production commune. Dans l’organisation sociale malinké, il faut alors entendre par cela la concession familiale, le lu, elle-même composée de sous entités familiale restreintes, dembaya, sous l’autorité commune du chef de la concession 9 Dans le système de classes d’âge malinké, on entend par Makôrôya l’âge adulte défini par le mariage et la maternité ou paternité.

«Il faut être là où l’or sort !» 119 soutenu par le chef de famille, semble ouvrir de nouvelles aspirations, rares du reste, et la possibilité de reproduire l’imaginaire de « l’aventure » (Bredeloup 2014). Inspirés par des amis « partis à pieds mais revenus propriétaire d’une moto », les mines d’or font entrevoir une voie « plus rapide » et non conventionnelle de se constituer un capital en vue d’un mariage, de constructions dans leur village, ou d’investissements commerciaux. Les motifs sont innombrables mais ont en commun d’ouvrir un espace de projection se distinguant des trajectoires et étapes plus ou moins prescrites au sein des familles.

A ces jeunes aventuriers s’ajoutent d’autres hommes aux profils variés, aussi bien travailleurs venus des villes avec l’espoir de mieux gagner dans les mines, que d’autres ayant perdu leur emploi, de jeunes diplômés, ou encore des travailleurs issus des régions aurifères et ayant de longue date combiné cette activité à d’autres. Pour ceux-ci, l’entrée dans les mines est envisagée comme une contribution temporaire à l’économie du ménage en période de forte pression, et implique généralement une décision conjointe sur la diversification des sources d’avoir. Dans la grande majorité des cas, la genèse de leurs départs fait référence au « hasard » ou aux « opportunités » saisies de façon temporaire; ce qu’il faut lier à l’imaginaire du « coup de chance » que les orpailleurs réaffirment constamment en définissant la mine comme une « loterie ». Par opposition au métier conduit au cours de la vie, la mine est imaginée comme un espace où l’on peut tenter sa chance pour justement revenir et changer le cours de sa vie.

Malgré son pouvoir d’attraction, l’imaginaire du « coup de chance » reflète peu le quotidien des travailleurs des mines. Pratiquement, les gains sont relativement réguliers mais de faible quantité10, mais c’est l’espoir d’abondance – en opérant sur un riche placer aurifère ou par la découverte d’une veine de filon – qui est évoqué comme moteur. En acceptant les conditions de vie rudimentaires des camps miniers ainsi que les conditions de travail dangereuses et physiquement exigeantes dans les galeries, les

10 Même en l’absence de gains, le relavage d’ancien minerai permet généralement au minimum d’assurer la consommation quotidienne.

120 Stichproben orpailleurs parviennent habituellement à éviter de s’endetter, à obtenir quotidiennement quelques décigrammes d’or assurant leur subsistance, et éventuellement, lors de bonnes opérations, à constituer des économies. Ainsi, pour autant qu’ils puissent se déplacer vers les nouveaux lieux convoités, la plupart parviennent juste à sécuriser des gains suffisants à la reproduction de ce mode de vie. Une fois insérés dans le secteur, leur recherche d’or tient finalement plus de l’activité de subsistance à moyen terme que du « coup » à tenter.

Dans la suite de cet article, j’explore l’écart qu’expérimentent de nombreux orpailleurs entre l’imaginaire du « coup de chance » au cours de l’aventure individuelle en période de jeunesse, et l’installation, à défaut, de l’orpaillage comme moyen d’existence sur le long terme.

Disparaître dans les mines, gagner en indépendance

Considérant leur départ comme une étape transitoire pour accélérer d’autres projets à plus long terme, les orpailleurs guinéens confirment l’hypothèse de l’orpaillage comme potentielle source de revenus à d’autres fins (Cartier/Bürge 2011; Hilson 2010). Cependant, les gains se révèlent généralement bien en deçà de ceux escomptés et rares sont les orpailleurs qui parviennent à réaliser les investissements projetés. Les mines d’or maintiennent malgré cela une forte attraction sur les nouveaux travailleurs par la relative indépendance qu’elles rendent possible et qui est opposée dans les discours à l’absence de perspective dans les villages, ainsi qu’aux contraintes de l’autorité du lignage et des ainés. Par l’attrait de « l’indépendance », on retrouve donc la même justification que Sylvie Bredeloup place d’ailleurs au centre de la représentation de l’aventure (Bredeloup 2014: 55). Cette « liberté », malgré les risques physiques et sanitaires qu’elle implique, pousse certains orpailleurs, à l’image d’Alhassane, à prolonger l’aventure :

« D’abord c’est mon père qui m’a envoyé à Kangaba (Mali). Je suis parti avec deux frères du village et quand on est rentré je ne pouvais

«Il faut être là où l’or sort !» 121

plus rester assis à rien faire dans la concession. Tout ce que je voulais c’était repartir mais mon père ne me laissait plus. J’étais là dans la cour, je n’avais pas de travail, je devais simplement rester et attendre que mon père me dise d’aller cultiver, et je ne pensais qu’à repartir aux mines. L’année d’après, j’ai vu un ami de Gbonko (site minier) au marché qui me dit que, vraiment, là-bas on sortait beaucoup d’or. Ça m’a donné le courage et je suis reparti avec lui. (…) Maintenant, je ne suis pas encore riche, mais j’aime ça la mine. C’est dur, mais personne ne vient me dire ce que je dois faire et je gagne toujours un peu. Si j’ai de la chance, j’aurai assez pour construire et faire du commerce.»

On retrouve dans les mots d’Alhassane, un appel presque irrésistible vers les mines qui rappelle la fameuse « fièvre de l’or » ; ce même lexique est aussi utilisé par les parents restés au village lorsqu’ils évoquent leurs fils ou leurs frères « ne pouvant plus faire autre chose que la mine ». Il faut cependant rappeler que la plupart d’entre eux se projettent dans un futur « après-mine » – plus conventionnel – dans leur lieu d’origine, répondant ainsi aux trajectoires sociales prescrites en matière de mariage et de succession. Alors même qu’ils valorisent au sein des mines leur mode de vie marginal et la relative indépendance qu’ils acquièrent, les orpailleurs peinent souvent à justifier leur absence hors de la concession en matière de participation à l’économie familiale.

Vu la difficulté à économiser, et plus encore à renvoyer une part des gains à leur famille, les jeunes orpailleurs ont souvent tendance à prolonger leurs voyages, avec l’espoir d’acquérir finalement des montants importants. Les contacts avec la famille s’amoindrissent jusqu’à devenir parfois inexistants ; et dans les familles, les départs des fils ou des frères, sont assimilés à des « disparitions ». Dans les récits, cette rupture plus ou moins durable des liens est vécue comme une étape décisive marquant l’insertion dans le monde des mines. Il s’agit d’adopter pour un temps incertain le mode de vie mobile que cela suppose. Malgré l’image souvent négative dont est

122 Stichproben empreint le secteur minier11, les jeunes hommes qui s’y engagent relatent positivement cette expérience, généralement nouvelle, de ce qu’ils considèrent comme une certaine indépendance. Ils y acquièrent des revenus indépendamment de l’organisation du travail au sein de la concession familiale ; ils s’affirment en tant que kalayantigi en adhérant aux codes de la mine par le biais de la consommation et de la mise en récit des épreuves traversées en route ou de prises de risque dans les galeries.

Sans nécessairement trouver leur « chance » comme ils l’espèrent à leur départ, la régularité des gains les conduit par contre souvent à faire progressivement de l’orpaillage leur principale, voir seule, activité de subsistance, sans nécessairement retourner régulièrement vers leur lieu de départ. L’orpaillage remodèle ainsi le réseau de relations attaché à la sphère domestique ainsi que les apports à la production commune. La section suivante se penche spécifiquement sur les recompositions du réseau social chez les mineurs dont l’activité se poursuit sur le long terme ; la suspension de certaines relations proches révèle une tension entre les obligations vis-à-vis de la famille et le mode de vie itinérant des orpailleurs.

Le réseau social: soutien ou entrave à la mobilité ?

L’orpaillage ne requiert pas de capital économique de départ et se présente donc comme une opportunité de gain particulièrement accessible. Cependant, étant donné la nécessité de se maintenir en mobilité, les orpailleurs sont amenés à mobiliser un large éventail de relations sociales que ce soit pour se tenir informés et savoir où se déplacer, pour se loger, ou pour intégrer des équipes de travail. Une attention particulière portée à ces relations permet d’illustrer (figure 2) la coupure qui s’opère avec le groupe domestique lorsque l’orpaillage se professionnalise.

11 Les mines d’or sont aussi un espace de remise en question des normes sociales dominantes en contexte rural. Katja Werthmann (2010) en fait une lecture détaillée en utilisant le concept d’hétérotopie. Plus généralement, les conflits liés à l’accès au sous-sol entre les orpailleurs et la population locale (Grätz 2004), ou avec les sociétés d’exploitation (Bolay 2016) ternissent passablement l’image des orpailleurs.

«Il faut être là où l’or sort !» 123

Relations mobilisées lors du premier

départ

Relations mobilisées lors de la recherche

Figure 2. Relations de support à la mobilité dans les mines (noir=groupe domestique et famille ;

gris= autres)

Les supports sociaux mobilisés par 54 orpailleurs lors de leur première insertion dans le secteur minier, puis au moment de l’enquête, montrent que chez ces orpailleurs ayant maintenu une mobilité continue, les relations proches (notamment celles du groupe domestique – liens noirs) sont abandonnées au profit de relations sociales développées au sein des mines d’or (liens gris). Les réseaux sociaux mobilisés pour soutenir leur mode de vie mobile en matière de logement, de déplacements, de prêts financiers, ou d’information afférente aux nouveaux lieux d’exploitation sont ainsi progressivement constitués de relations sociales issues du domaine des mines au détriment des membres de la famille qui assistent pourtant les orpailleurs à leurs débuts. Ce que l’on pourrait assimiler à un simple effet de carrière est aussi le fruit d’un « travail » sur leurs réseaux de soutien par la sélection et le maintien de relations jugées bénéfiques au sein des espaces miniers, et au contraire, la suspension plus ou moins durable de relations proches mais jugées trop contraignantes.

Ces situations peuvent alors être vécues comme de véritables dilemmes de loyauté, comme le raconte Issa qui, après s’être installé temporairement

124 Stichproben dans un camp minier à l’est du Mali, reçut à plusieurs reprises la visite impromptue de l’un de ses frères envoyé pour le ramener au sein de la concession familiale :

« Mon frère est venu deux fois jusqu’à Sikasso (au Mali) pour me ramener au village. Il a su où je me trouvais par un autre frère et mon père l’a envoyé pour me faire rentrer. (…) Mon père veut que je vienne cultiver avec eux mais pour moi ce n’est même pas la peine. Je lui ai donné le prix de la kola pour mon père et je l’ai ensuite envoyé au village. Maintenant je ne veux même plus les appeler. S’il arrive quelque chose là-bas et que je suis à la mine, je ne pourrai de toute façon rien faire pour eux. Alors je préfère ne pas savoir et que eux non plus ne sachent pas ce que je fais ici. »

Face à la difficulté de renvoyer une part de leurs gains généralement maigres et donc à justifier leur éloignement, la plupart des orpailleurs préfèrent limiter les contacts avec leurs parents. A cela s’ajoute aussi une certaine retenue à révéler les tâches qu’ils effectuent dans les mines et les conditions de vie extrêmement précaires inhérentes à leur mode de vie. Au contraire des relations du cercle proche, les relations avec d’autres orpailleurs itinérants sont maintenues ; elles permettent non seulement de se maintenir informés, mais aussi d’obtenir du soutien durant les voyages. Ces relations de soutien réciproque fondent des équipes de travail ponctuelles, à l’image de Sidiki et Namori, installés au Sénégal en 2014 :

« On est ensemble depuis 2010. On n’a pas toujours partagé la maison mais on a souvent travaillé ensemble et quand Namori a eu la chance à Misseni (il opérait comme creuseur sur un puits particulièrement riche), c’est lui qui m’a fait venir sur son daman

(puits). Maintenant que c’est bon pour moi, c’est moi qui l’ai fait venir ici ».

Le développement d’un réseau faisant office de support au mode de vie itinérant des kalayantigilu va ainsi de pair avec la suspension plus ou moins durable des contacts familiaux; ceux-là même qui confèrent le sentiment de réussite sociale des hommes au sein du lignage.

«Il faut être là où l’or sort !» 125 Lorsque l’orpaillage se prolonge jusqu’à devenir la seule activité, l’état de mobilité est souvent vécu comme une contrainte, car il entre en contradiction avec les aspirations des orpailleurs à réaliser certaines étapes de leurs trajectoires de vie exigeant une relative sédentarité. Il s’agit alors de mettre en œuvre des arrangements permettant de maintenir un mode d’existence mobile tout en réinstaurant la centralité d’une concession familiale. En effet, comme l’a montré Dessertine (2013), la pérennité de la résidence est primordiale puisqu’elle assure notamment la succession entre les collatéraux. En se basant sur les parcours de vie d’orpailleurs itinérants dont l’activité s’est maintenue sur le long terme, la section suivante propose, sous forme de vignettes, trois stratégies visant à concilier un mode de vie mobile à la sédentarité de la concession familiale.

Activité mobile et sédentarité du ménage: quels arrangements ?

Dans la société patrilinéaire et patrilocale malinké, le mariage implique traditionnellement un recentrement des activités au sein du village du mari afin, notamment, de soutenir les aînés et d’assurer la succession. Même si cet idéal de permanence est dans la pratique constamment remis en question – par exemple lorsque certains orpailleurs arrangent leur mariage et la dote sans passer par leurs aînés – il n’en demeure pas moins vecteur de fortes obligations morales. A travers les exemples d’Alhassane, Sidiki et Oussmane, je présenterai brièvement trois stratégies visant à concilier les impératifs de mobilité à ceux de la centralité de résidence. Ces trois orpailleurs ont en commun d’avoir débuté en période de jeunesse et d’avoir poursuivi cette activité à plein temps par la suite. Leurs trajectoires sont de ce point de vue représentatives d’une forme relativement professionnalisée d’orpaillage dans laquelle les mines se sont progressivement imposées comme unique source de subsistance ; ceci parfois au détriment, pour un temps, de l’engagement social dans le village et de certaines obligations filiales. Lesdites trajectoires mettent en lumière tour à tour la réinstauration de la centralité de la concession familiale, puis la diversification des centres

126 Stichproben de résidence, et finalement l’instauration d’un nouveau centre en migrant dans les zones minières.

Centralité de la concession familiale : rayonnement par «à coups »

Alhassane a commencé à travailler dans les mines de Bouré avec des amis, aussi originaires d’un village de la préfecture de Mandiana, lorsqu’il avait vingt ans. Suite à cela, il effectue sur demande de son père un voyage plus lointain chez un parent actif dans les mines au Mali. Rapidement, il s’éloigne de son groupe d’amis initial et préfère poursuivre le travail dans les mines d’or plutôt que de rentrer au village pour les travaux d’agriculture. Dès lors, Alhassane n’est plus revenu dans son village durant plus de quatre ans au cours desquels il a « fait l’aventure » dans les mines d’or et de diamant en Guinée, au Mali, au Libéria et en Sierra Leone. A son retour, il dit avoir eu le sentiment de risquer de « prendre du retard » sur ses frères qui commençaient, pour leur part, à entreprendre des préparatifs de mariage. Pourtant, après ces années d’aventure, un retour à l’agriculture au sein de la concession familiale ne lui paraît pas être une option viable. En accord avec le chef de famille, il s’arrange avec ses frères pour prendre part à son exploitation agricole par voie de financement qu’il génère dans les mines ainsi que par sa participation ponctuelle aux travaux des champs. Alhassane réinstaure ainsi le centre de sa résidence dans son village natal en y maintenant un ancrage fort par le biais notamment de sa participation aux cultures de la famille étendue et sa présence ponctuelle lorsqu’il n’est pas chez l’un de ses nombreux tuteurs dans les zones minières.

Ayant par la suite étendu la concession grâce aux gains générés dans les mines et s’étant marié successivement à deux épouses, il se déplace par «à coups », selon son expression, en étant accueillis par des amis faisant office de tuteurs dans des zones minières de Haute Guinée ou du Mali. Sa mobilité s’organise en « étoile », pour reprendre une expression de Moret (2015), avec un centre clairement défini par la concession familiale. Les va-et-vient réguliers dans les régions aurifères de Guinée et du Mali sont rendus possibles grâce au maintien des relations développées lors des

«Il faut être là où l’or sort !» 127 années d’itinérance. Le produit de l’orpaillage intègre donc la palette des moyens d’existence de la concession et confirme ici le caractère complémentaire de l’activité.

Un pied dans chaque région: multiplication des ancrages dans les zones minières

Oussmane, quant à lui, est né et a passé son enfance dans la région de Kouroussa, qui, à l’époque, n’était pas l’important centre minier que c’est maintenant. Oscillant entre le souhait de devenir mécanicien, la pression familiale à ne pas quitter le village du fait de sa position d’aîné, et quelques expériences dans les mines environnantes, il part finalement « en aventure » en Côte d’Ivoire où il ambitionne d’abord de réaliser son apprentissage de mécanicien. Toutefois, il se réoriente rapidement vers les mines, car, à ses dires, il « voyait les autres revenir de Séguela avec les habits neufs et les motos ; et comme (il) connaissait déjà la mine chez (lui) c’était facile ». Après avoir renoncé à l’apprentissage et poursuivi sa route au Mali puis à nouveau en Guinée dans la région de Bouré, il décide finalement de s’installer à Fatoya (Bouré) où il investit peu à peu ses gains pour « construire en dur. »

N’étant pas « natif » de Fatoya, il ne peut accéder à certaines prérogatives réservées aux autochtones, mais parvient, en s’engageant dans les opérations de secours lors d’accidents au près du comité local de la Croix rouge, à accéder à certains droits normalement réservés aux résidents considérés autochtones ; notamment le patronage de certains puits par le biais de son tuteur. Ayant aussi accès à des terres cultivables, il maintient un double ancrage territorial et relationnel à Fatoya et dans son village natal, ce qui facilite des déplacements réguliers en fonction des opportunités présentes dans l’une ou l’autre des régions. Cette bi-résidence lui permet aussi de limiter les déplacements normalement imposés aux kalayantigilu. En adoptant progressivement une position de damantigi (propriétaire de puits), les déplacements hors des deux centres de résidence ne sont pas exclus chez lui mais ne sont entrepris que s’ils sont jugés très opportuns.

128 Stichproben Cette mobilité pendulaire facilite donc une économie de rente en lui permettant de financer l’exploitation de puits qui s’avère moins incertaine que l’économie de captation propre à l’orpaillage itinérant.

Itinérance continue : le paradoxe de la « réussite »

Sidiki est issu d’une famille de Haute Guinée installée à Conakry et s’est orienté tardivement vers les sites miniers après avoir eu plusieurs expériences infructueuses de petit commerce. Depuis plus de 10 ans, il a sillonné la plupart des zones d’exploitation minière artisanales d’Afrique de l’Ouest et Centrale et peut se targuer d’avoir accumulé plusieurs milliers d’euros au travers d’opérations, parfois risquées, de réfaction de galeries endommagées, ainsi que par des déplacements continus au gré de l’apparition de nouveaux sites d’orpaillage.

Cette mobilité extrêmement soutenue est rendue possible par un vaste réseau de connaissances en Guinée, mais aussi au Mali, en Côte d’Ivoire et au Nigéria, ainsi que par le maintien de contacts réguliers avec d’autres orpailleurs partageant le même mode de vie itinérant. De plus, il capitalise sur sa réputation en s’adjoignant les services d’orpailleurs novices qu’il forme et entretient en contrepartie de leur force de travail. Sidiki perpétue ce mode de vie qui s’apparente à une forme de nomadisme par des « savoirs circuler », pour reprendre les mots d’Alain Tarrius (2002). Ceux-ci consistent par exemple à multiplier les documents d’identité nationaux pour ne pas être « fatigués » aux passages de frontières ou par les « corps habillés » parfois présents sur les sites miniers ; à acheter puis revendre des motos dans les camps miniers afin de se faciliter les déplacements courts ; ou, plus généralement, à composer avec la précarité des conditions sanitaires et de vie dans les camps.

Malgré des gains importants, Sidiki souligne aussi le revers de cette existence mobile lorsqu’il aborde la difficulté qu’il entrevoit à se « sédentariser » à nouveau. Sa réussite économique est selon lui indissociable de sa mobilité permanente et la principale difficulté qu’il

«Il faut être là où l’or sort !» 129 observe, au même titre que d’autres orpailleurs, est celle de la conversion des capitaux acquis en itinérance alors qu’il avance en âge. Les tentatives d’investissement des gains issus des mines dans le commerce ou l’agriculture se sont généralement révélées infructueuses, selon lui, par manque de connaissance de ces domaines d’une part et d’autre part du simple fait de ne pas être présent sur place. En ce qui concerne le savoir-faire acquis dans le domaine des mines de même que l’important réseau social transnational dont il dispose dans le domaine des mines, ceux-ci lui sont peu utiles en dehors de ce milieu, à plus forte raison à Conakry où réside l’essentiel de sa famille. Face à cette difficulté, c’est finalement pour une migration proche des zones minières qu’a opté Sidiki. En installant une nouvelle concession à Doko, au nord de Siguiri, il reste relativement proche de zones où il a l’habitude d’opérer en Guinée et au Mali. Il passe concrètement l’immense majorité de son temps dans des camps miniers en Guinée, au Mali, ou au Sénégal, mais gagne néanmoins une proximité géographique avec son épouse et ses deux enfants qui vivent depuis à Doko. L’émigration au cœur des zones minières, plutôt que la circulation, devient finalement une option viable sur le long terme puisqu’elle est la seule à lui permettre de maintenir son activité dans les mines, et à terme de limiter ses déplacements en capitalisant sur son expérience.

Sans prétention d’exhaustivité, ces trois exemples montrent que l’entrée dans l’âge adulte s’accompagne d’une réorganisation des pratiques de mobilité ; autrement dit, il s’agit de passer du nomadisme des camps miniers à des déplacements structurés autour d’un centre de résidence. Par ce biais, il redevient possible de conjuguer mobilité et ancrage local, même si celui-ci est souvent virtuel – à l’image des arrangements familiaux

transnationaux (Mazzucato/Schans 2011). L’ancrage au sein de la concession – ancienne ou nouvelle – est par exemple négocié par une monétarisation des apports à la production commune ou par le maintien d’une maison (bo) au sein de la concession (lu) sans pour autant y consacrer du temps physiquement. Les trois stratégies présentées montrent aussi qu’en

130 Stichproben réorganisant leurs pratiques de mobilité, ces orpailleurs à plein temps préparent aussi leur avenir au sein du secteur minier lorsque l’âge limitera leur participation au processus d’extraction ; ceci en mettant notamment à profit leur expérience ou leur accès à la citoyenneté locale.

Conclusions : Se sédentariser pour rester mobile ou migrer pour ne plus se déplacer ?

En suivant les itinérances d’orpailleurs guinéens, cet article a montré que, malgré l’idéal de l’engagement à court terme dans les mines d’or, l’activité se transforme souvent en véritable occupation sur le long terme, assurant la majorité des besoins de consommation d’individus ou de familles restreintes. Cet état de fait est indubitablement lié au prix de l’or qui, malgré une baisse depuis les pics atteints en 2011 et 2012, est resté relativement stable depuis et rend l’orpaillage compétitif en termes de revenus cash (Gamu et al. 2014) ; ceci, au détriment de la volonté politique de faire alterner orpaillage et agriculture (Tran 2013). Etant fondé sur une économie de captation des ressources dans des lieux nécessairement évanescents, ce n’est qu’au travers d’une intense mobilité que les orpailleurs parviennent à tirer profit de leur activité. Durant ces périodes de mobilité, l’incertitude en matière de gains et le mode de vie précaire propres au secteur minier artisanal les poussent souvent à suspendre leurs relations sociales proches. Les parcours de vie de plusieurs orpailleurs itinérants ont ainsi montré que la mobilité spatiale, pourtant condition de leur mode d’existence, pouvait entrer en contradiction avec la mobilité sociale à travers les étapes de vie que les jeunes hommes cherchent justement à accomplir. C’est dans le but de résoudre cette tension qu’ils sont amenés à développer des stratégies de mobilité leur permettant de concilier leurs vies d’hommes adultes à leur engagement mobile dans les mines.

La résolution de ces injonctions contradictoires donne lieu à différentes formes d’arrangements visant à rétablir une centralité de résidence, par opposition au mode de vie temporaire dans les camps miniers. Faisant écho au constat selon lequel toute forme de mobilité s’appuie sur un certain

«Il faut être là où l’or sort !» 131 degré d’ancrage local pour se perpétuer (Dahinden 2010b), ces arrangements oscillent entre l’attribution d’une place centrale ou, au contraire, périphérique à la concession familiale. En replaçant la concession familiale comme centre, les orpailleurs réintègrent d’une certaine façon le mode de production commun du groupe domestique. Ils convertissent ainsi plus aisément les capitaux acquis dans le domaine des mines en investissements économiques et statutaires, et élargissent la palette des moyens d’existence de la concession. Au contraire, en ne laissant qu’une place périphérique, voire nulle, à la concession familiale comme centre de résidence, ils favorisent le maintien d’une mobilité plus soutenue débouchant parfois sur une migration définitive dans les zones minières par l’établissement de leur propre concession. La migration est donc finalement un moyen de limiter les déplacements et de faire valoir sur place les savoirs-faire acquis dans le secteur des mines. On résumera donc les options à moyen terme des orpailleurs itinérants comme celle de la « sédentarité » nécessitant alors de rayonner à partir de la concession, ou, au contraire, celle de l’émigration dans les zones minières pour limiter les déplacements.

La spécificité de l’or en tant que ressource, ainsi que celle des institutions sociales qui en régulent l’accès conduisent donc à des configurations de mobilité dynamiques et inédites à plusieurs titres. Elles participent entre autres de la hausse de mouvements urbains-ruraux que l’enquête REMUAO pointait déjà en 2004 (Beauchemin/Bocquier 2004). Quant à leurs formes, les circulations dans les mines se distinguent aussi des schémas traditionnels de migrations circulaires de travail ou de commerce (i.e. Arthur 1991; Bakewell/De Haas 2007) par l’absence - au moins pour un temps – de points d’ancrage fixes. Chez les jeunes hommes, la mobilité des points d’ancrages temporaires s’apparente à une forme de nomadisme qui les amène à continuellement naviguer d’un camp minier à l’autre, sans véritable centre résidentiel. Finalement, plutôt qu’un décalquage sur les réseaux familiaux, c’est l’opposé qui se produit dans le contexte des mines artisanales où ces relations sont rapidement délaissées ; ceci pouvant aller jusqu’à une suspension prolongée des relations familiales dans l’attente du « coup de chance ». En leur pourvoyant un revenu régulier, l’orpaillage maintient son

132 Stichproben attraction sur les mineurs de sorte que ce n’est qu’avec l’entrée dans l’âge adulte que ce mode de vie devient problématique. Un recalage sur des formes plus conventionnelles de mobilité s’impose alors autour d’une, voire plusieurs, résidences fixes – qu’il s’agisse de celle d’origine ou de l’installation d’une nouvelle concession par voie de migration. Alors que d’autres études ont déjà identifié l’importance de l’âge dans l’ils entretiennent lors de leurss mineurs itinérants guinéens au coeur rs des carrières" les sociétés d'évolution des pratiques de mobilité (Jonsson/Brycesson 2009; Panella 2007), la présente recherche a complété la vision selon laquelle la mobilité serait essentiellement temporaire et le fait des jeunes. En replaçant les expériences des mineurs itinérants guinéens au cœur des différentes relations qu’ils entretiennent au cours de leurs « carrières », cet article a montré qu’avec des arrangements spécifiques au sein de la famille, l’orpaillage se maintient souvent comme principale source de revenu malgré son exigence de mobilité.

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Remerciements

Mes remerciements vont tout d'abord à M. Sandaly Kourouma qui a participé à la majorité des enquêtes, a officié comme traducteur lors de nombreux entretiens, et m'a patiemment éclairé au gré des questions suscitée par la recherche. Je remercie aussi la Prof. Janine Dahinden pour sa relecture d'une précédente version de cet article, ainsi que

«Il faut être là où l’or sort !» 135 l'équipe éditoriale de ce numéro de Stichproben. L'article a été écrit durant un séjour scientifique au Department of Anthropology à la LSE à Londres au cours duquel j'ai bénéficié d'une bourse Doc.Mobility du Fonds National Suisse de la Recherche Scientifique.

Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien. No. 30/2016, Vol. 16, 137-160.

Fria in Guinea: A Dismissed Bauxite Town

Johannes Knierzinger

Abstract The article recounts the recent history of the bauxite town Fria, about 100 km north of the capital Conakry. From the late 1950s until 2012, Fria had been the only African producer of aluminum oxide, an intermediate product in the production of aluminum out of bauxite. During a strike in April 2012, the workers of Fria were locked out by the owner, Rusal, a Russian aluminum company, and since then the factory has not resumed production. The article discusses possible reasons for this lock-out and reports on the severe consequences for the population of Fria. It concludes that Rusal’s mode of operation is different from that of Western companies, but the long-term outcomes are not. This concerns the ongoing export of unprocessed bauxite (despite numerous promises to build refineries and smelters), the degradation of working and living conditions and the increased misuse of measures of corporate social responsibility.

Introduction

In this article, I will assess the reasons for the shutdown of an alumina factory in Fria, about 100 km north of the Guinean capital Conakry, which pushed the whole sub-prefecture of 70-80,000 inhabitants (République de Guinée 2014: 7) into hardship and hunger. Fria is a showcase for recent developments in the bauxite/aluminum sector and for resource exploitation in the Global South in general. After a global resource boom in the 2000s that had been compared to the Scramble of Africa of the 19th century by several analysts (e.g. Southall/Melber 2009), most resource prices plunged again with the financial crisis and the subsequent cooling of the world economy. The majority of the announced mining projects of the 2000s were put on hold and many old ones were closed down. In Guinea, this typical cycle of bust and boom currently leads to situations comparable to

138 Stichproben Ferguson’s (1999) famous description of the Zambian copper industry. However, Fria is at the same time quite a special case of an abandoned African mining town, firstly because the dependency of the population on the private company is especially high and, secondly, because this company forms part of a new group of investors from non-Western countries whose methods have been severely criticized by Western observers (for a comparable study on a Chinese mining company in Zambia see Lee 2009). While the methods of Rusal in Guinea as in other countries seem to be rather harsh compared to Western companies, it will be shown in this article that Rusal mainly continued to administer the social decline of a city that already started in the 1970s under European leadership. Another particularity of Fria is the weak Guinean government. While Guinea is certainly no "failed state" (in general it remains questionable when and whom a state fails), its controversy with Rusal shows that in this case it makes sense to speak about deterritorialized sovereignty regimes (Agnew 2005)1 or about imperialism (Southall/Melber 2009: XXI) instead of a clearly demarcated national sovereignty. One of the most important "threads" that link Guineans with these wider networks of control is aluminum ore or, in other words, bauxite.

Until today, primary aluminum production is almost exclusively based on bauxite. The Guinean mining town Fria produced the intermediate product between bauxite and aluminum, aluminum oxide (Al2O3) or alumina. After a highly energy intensive smelting process, the resulting aluminum is mostly used in transport (cars, airplanes, trains, etc.), construction and packaging. A good part of the Russian production is most likely used for Russian car production. Two-thirds of Rusal is owned by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska who also possesses the Russian car manufacturer Gaz Group and has stakes in many companies from other sectors, for

1 Agnew (2005: 445) discerns four different ideal types of sovereignty regimes – classic (e.g. China when he published his article), globalist (e.g. the US during the Cold War), integrative (the EU when he published his article) and imperialist – that can be distinguished regarding their grade of territorialization.

Fria in Guinea 139 instance the Austrian Strabag. Gaz Group cooperates with companies like General Motors and Mercedes (cf. Brüggmann 2007; Khrennikov 2012).

As I have not managed to establish contact with the company, my view on the crisis in Fria is certainly biased. Besides the fieldwork conducted in 2012 and 2014 (consisting mainly of about 150 open interviews in Guinean mining towns and in Conakry), I was able to draw on the following resources: the unpublished documentation and the pamphlets of the Guinean intellectual Ibrahima Diallo, official documents of governments and companies and articles in the press.

Russian companies in Africa have not received much academic attention up to now. I therefore decided to use this special issue on Guinea to provide a fairly detailed account on the current situation in Fria. After presenting my theoretical background and a short history of Fria, I will attempt to reconstruct the reasons and triggers for the crisis and the reactions of the Guinean government.

Theoretical aspects: The global commodity chain of aluminum

The article is the outcome of a larger research project on bauxite mining and processing in Africa mainly based on global commodity chain (GCC) theory (see Bair 2009) which enables a combined analysis of global politico-economic structures and the concrete local struggle in Fria and Guinea. Deripaska’s network of companies, ranging from bauxite mining to car production, is an extreme case of a producer-driven commodity chain where one company owns a comparatively large transnational network of production facilities. This leads to a different power structure than a so-called buyer-driven commodity chain where the dominant companies rely mostly on research and marketing to control outsourced production capacities (Gereffi/Korzeniewicz 1994).

This results not only in an especially powerful position of the involved companies and investors but also in a quite unique position of the workers in the bauxite mines. Currently, each of the globally about 25 bauxite mines

140 Stichproben in operation provides ore on an average to about 3 refineries and about 8 smelters. (cf. United States Geological Survey 2013; Committee on foreign affairs 2007: 41). The workforce in the processing industry is at least ten times larger than the one needed to produce primary aluminum (cf. Kerkow et al. 2012: 26). This means that contrary to buyer-driven sectors like the garment industry whose supply chain is structured in the form of pyramids – making it easy to replace suppliers from the lower tiers – capital intensive mining like bauxite mining has a trumpet shape. If one bauxite mine stops producing, hundreds of aluminum processors are concerned. Additionally, the construction of a mine is very capital intensive and time-consuming. It takes 10 to 15 years before a mine becomes profitable.

Guinean bauxite mining was responsible for most of the governmental revenue until the 1980s and remained the almost exclusive source of foreign currency until the late 2000s (Campbell 1991; Moore Stephens 2013: 10). This means that both from the perspective of corporate governance and from the point of view of the Guinean government, the bauxite mines with their currently about 2500 direct employees are "bottlenecks" of global commodity chains (cf. Knierzinger 2014). If properly organized, these miners will wield considerable power, not only with regard to resource dependent governments like Guinea, but also in relation to transnational mining giants like Rusal whose annual revenues can easily dwarf the whole Guinean GDP. However, the analysis of recent events in Fria will show that the power of this bottleneck position largely depends on global cycles of boom and bust or, in other words, on historically changing global power relations.

The technical aspects of aluminum production as well as the geopolitical implications of geographically concentrated minerals like bauxite lead to a highly interwoven structure of the industry: Both the relation of governments and companies and the relation between companies remain unclear. While Northern states always built up and supported their own aluminum champions, either as parastatals or as highly subsidized private companies, these companies themselves became more and more

Fria in Guinea 141 interdependent during the 1960s and 1970s, when many mining facilities in the Global South were nationalized. Western aluminum companies reacted to this "resource nationalism" by forming joint ventures with Southern governments and other companies (mainly from Europe and the US) in order to minimize the risk of losing control over raw materials. This means that there are no clear conflict lines or camps. There is neither a clear separation of the old geopolitical camps between East and West – although this rupture zone has become more discernible since the last mining boom – nor a clear conflict of interests between Northern companies and Southern governments (Knierzinger 2015: 42-45).

A brief history of Fria: The slow decline of "Little Paris"

The history of the company town of Fria can be divided into three periods: The establishment of the city and a following "golden age" of the so-called "Little Paris" from the 1950s until the 1970s which corresponds with a strong growth of global aluminum production; a period of secular decline from the 1970s until the 1990s, again parallel to a less dynamic aluminum market that also led to the retreat of the French founding company Pechiney; and the developments since the turn of the millennium under the leadership of the private Russian aluminum firm Rusal.

Fria was established in the 1950s as part of extensive industrial plans of the late French colonial empire that even included the production of airplanes in the Guinean highlands of the Fouta Djallon. Due to risk reduction strategies of the French aluminum company Pechiney and due to the early Guinean independence followed by an abrupt disassociation from France, these extensive projects resulted in a rather small alumina refinery, which nonetheless remained the only of its kind on African soil until today. Built from scratch in the 1950s, Guinea’s "Little Paris" offered comparatively high standards of living, mostly because the involved companies from Europe and the US had to attract over 500 expatriate workers when production started (ibid: 50, 151).

142 Stichproben Pechiney operated on the basis of a longstanding corporatist tradition of catholic coinage with roots in the 19th century that was reinforced by the shift of the late French colonial policies. In the mid-1950s, the company Fria was formed and the Mission d'aménagement de Guinée (MARG), mostly financed by the French government, began with the construction of the needed infrastructure (Pauthier 2002: 74-75). MARG built a whole city, with electricity and water supply that was directly linked with the factory; sports infrastructure like football, handball and tennis playgrounds, an Olympic swimming pool, a judo hall, athletics facilities; two schools, one for the expatriates and one that it "borrowed" to the public administration; religious buildings like mosques and churches; as well as a range of other services needed for a functioning city like waste disposal, waste water treatment and not to forget a comparably sound health infrastructure with the best hospital in Guinea. Electricity was practically given for free to the whole population of Fria. From its inception until 2013, the city’s electricity has been generated by small thermal power plants installed on the refinery site. Ibrahima Diallo, an influential activist in Fria, also emphasizes the symbolic importance of the factory sirens that ordered city life by marking the beginning and the end of work and signalizing accidents and dangers (Diallo 2014a). When the sirens were tested in January 2013 – eight months after the halt of the factory – market (wo)men began to dance on the streets shouting "The whites are back!". However, for good or bad, they had not come back at the time of writing (Knierzinger 2015: 150).

Due to good relations between the Guinean independence movement and the French communist party since the 1940s (Touré 1967: 51–53) and due to the presence of French trade unions since Fria’s construction in the 1950s, the workers of Fria soon became aware of their unique position – up to the point when even the allegedly revolutionary government of Sékou Touré felt increasingly threatened by them. Shortly after the government became a shareholder of the newly formed joint venture Friguia in 1973, it cracked down heavily on its Guinean management and its trade union leaders, denouncing them as "counter-revolutionaries" and deporting many of them

Fria in Guinea 143 to the infamous Camp Boiro (Knierzinger 2015: 193).2 The trigger for this repression were demands for higher salaries and better living standards. However, as the enterprise had not declared profits by that time and as the government did not pay for any input, higher gains for workers in Fria would not have affected the national finances in any way (cf. Campbell/ Clapp 1995: 429). The danger was therefore purely discursive: The "labor aristocracy" of Fria seemed to live quite well of its capitalist masters and therefore constituted a danger for the Guinean "revolution" (Knierzinger 2015: 193).

Due to more tangible reasons, these attempts to bring down the living standards in Fria were repeated in the 1980s and 1990s under the leadership of the IWF, the World Bank and the European Community, for instance via Sysmin aid (Ralph Spencer Associates 2000). The decline of "Little Paris" therefore began already in the 1970s and was deepened in throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s, when Pechiney (France) and Reynolds (US) cut expenditures during their own – unsuccessful – crisis management: Both companies were bought up by competitors shortly thereafter, Reynolds in 2000 and Pechiney in 2003 (ibid.; cf. Larrue 1997: 183, 201).

In 1997, shortly after the departure of its joint venture partners, Pechiney handed over the company to the government, which started a process of reprivatization under the auspices of the World Bank. Following a short intermezzo with the US company Reynolds, the Russian company Rusal took over its management in 2003 and finally bought it in 2006. Like almost all bauxite companies operating in Guinea until today, Rusal won the bid (against a Chinese company) by promising an extension project that would have led to the duplication of alumina production in Fria. None of this has been established to date, with Rusal claiming that the Guinean mining department has failed to approve Rusal’s plans as provided by Guinean law (Storozhenko 30/04/2009). Many workers of Fria do not agree with this interpretation: for them, the company always had the intention to reduce

2 According to the consultant Herschelle Challenor over 5000 people died from starvation and torture in this concentration camp in Conakry (US Congress 2007: 31).

144 Stichproben Fria to a bauxite mine, owing to both the poor condition of the factory and because it preferred to refine the bauxite in Ukraine (see below). The resulting strikes and violent clashes went along with a deterioration of the relations between the Guinean government and Rusal, which was itself more and more openly backed by the Russian government. In the following paragraph, these changing relations between the companies of Fria and the respective governments will be recounted.

Changing relations between companies and Guinean governments

After Sékou Touré’s death in 1984, the government was taken over by Lansana Conté, a military leader who immediately resumed negotiations on structural adjustment with the IMF and the World Bank, which had already been started in 1982. In 2008, Conté was replaced by the previously barely known army captain Moussa Dadis Camara. Under Camara, official relations with Rusal worsened considerably. The self-proclaimed president accused the company of fraudulently acquiring assets in Fria and of not honoring its contract. He also forced Rusal’s representative in Guinea, Anatoly Patchenko, to appear on his television broadcast "Dadis’ Show". After several minutes of meaningless shouting followed by periods of silence in front of armed soldiers and a paralyzed talk show audience, Dadis demanded Patchenko to promise that Rusal would not close down the factory. Patchenko promised, only to leave the country shortly after the show (cf. Saada 2009).3 Two successive court rulings on 10th August and on 10th September 2009 nullified the privatization of 2006 and ordered an audit to estimate the losses of the Guinean state since 2006.

Rusal reacted on 30th April by publishing an "Aide-mémoire sur la privatisation de Friguia", where it tried to rectify information on the privatization and its course of action, arguing again that the production price in Fria was far above the price of sale. Further, the company listed all "social projects" that had been realized until 2009. This comprised the

3 This episode of Dadis’ Show can still be watched on YouTube.

Fria in Guinea 145 maintenance of water and electricity infrastructure, the renovation of two stadiums, several religious places and the Monument aux martyrs de la

République, the construction of a center for industrial training, the installation of several well drillings and the granting of 100 stipends for schooling in Russia (Storozhenko 30/04/2009). Several interview partners criticized this list by pointing out that many of these "social projects" were part of Rusal's obligations, many projects did not work out, or were never finished or were part of corrupt deals (Knierzinger 2015: 172).

The audit which was published in January 2010, shortly after Dadis Camara’s fall (he luckily survived an assassination attempt and left the country for medical treatment), suggested that Rusal must pay up to one billion USD as compensation for the losses to the Guinean state which were caused by the privatization of Fria in 2006. The audit estimated that 830 million USD worth of minerals were mined out since 2006 and environmental damage worth 170 million USD was inflicted. Several sources claim that the audit was funded by a Chinese competitor of Rusal (Burgis et al. 2010; Diallo 2010: 30, 38; Diallo 2012c). Rusal however, did not accept the ruling, pointing to clauses in its mining contract that indicated the Chambre de Commerce International (CIC) of Paris as the valid arbitrator in case of disagreements (cf. Diallo 2010: 36). In addition, it stopped tax payments and threatened that it could replace any loss of Guinean alumina production "with its own production from other facilities or through market purchases" (Burgis et al. 2010).

In November 2010, Alpha Condé, a professor for public law at the Sorbonne, was declared the winner of a more or less democratic election process that had taken almost half a year. Condé had already been a leftist resistance leader during the dictatorship of Sékou Touré and initially held on to the claims of the regime of Camara (Diallo 2014b). After his rise to power, he capitalized on the last months of the global mining boom to increase Guinea’s royalties by revising all mining contracts and by enacting a fairly progressive mining code. Shortly after its publication, the government had to revise the mining code due to pressure from the IMF

146 Stichproben and the World Bank. While the Western companies declared themselves pleased with this turnaround, Rusal complained that the revision went not far enough (Lassourd 2013; Madsen 2013).

From the takeover of Rusal to the lockout

From a paternalist neocolonialist mining enterprise that managed to cope both with powerful trade unions and with an increasingly despotic (yet cooperative) government, the management of Fria thereby transformed into a more and more alienated actor that had to face the "labor aristocracy" and the government at the same time.

With the takeover of Rusal, the fall of living standards accelerated, real wages dropped further and the technical condition of the factory worsened. This went along with a change in personal relations between the expatriates and the locals. Ibrahima Diallo underlined the openness of European and American employees versus Guinean culture in comparison with Rusal, which erected a "Berlin Wall" (Diallo 2014c) after its arrival:

"They had heard that the French whites lived in the same habitat with the Guineans and shared their meals and that the Americans did almost the same. But they did not want to do that. Thus, they erected a cité right in city center that had privileged access to all the existing infrastructure and an extension of the initial cité. The principal characteristics of these two entities were the fact that they were closed (three meter walls with barbwire) and that they could only be entered by Russian personnel" (ibid.).

Such descriptions by the interview partners went along with the idealization of the situation under French tutelage. This corresponds with the existing literature up to a certain point. Pauthier holds that in comparison with the company town of Edéa, which had been built at the same time and by the same company, Fria was a "social and humanitarian success story" (Pauthier: 27). The former mining minister Ibrahima Soumah showed that the Guinean bauxite town of Sangaredi was still highly segregated in the late 1970s and underlined the attractiveness of Fria for

Fria in Guinea 147 Guinean hipsters and revelers (Soumah 2008: 143). Racial discrimination nevertheless existed in various forms throughout the Pechiney era, for instance in the form of accommodation, remuneration and by means of other social conventions. However as a consequence of these rather successful social policies, Rusal faced a profound local patriotism and a well-educated and well-organized work force when it took over the management in 2003:

"Corporate life where they come from is totally different to here. Here syndicalism has enabled the workers to make demands. When there is a problem, syndicalism enables to address the problem. But my acquaintances have made me believe that this is a new element where they come from. The worker does not have the right to make demands. This friction, I think that this was very difficult for them." (Mayor of Fria in Knierzinger 2015: 163)

Based on its short capitalist history, Rusal’s own expatriate workforce – as well as its leaders in Moscow – were not prepared for such an encounter in the middle of the West African savanna. Rusal’s most effective method to lower wages and to cut fringe benefits was the creation of Russian-led subcontracting firms. Most employees of subcontracting firms were not given free accommodation and had to pay more for medical treatment and for staple food. By dividing the workforce, the company also reduced the power of the trade unions and created a parallel hierarchy within the factory replacing Guinean superiors more and more with Russian nationals (Knierzinger 2015: 182). These issues were combined with disciplinary measures concerning punctuality and productivity. In December 2009, the company dismissed a group of 132 "retirees" who did not receive pensions due to quarrels between the government and the company over a decision of the national assembly in 2006 to raise the age of retirement. All these measures resulted in a group of "radicalized" workers consisting mainly of the involuntary "retirees" and a group of trade union activists who were threatened with dismissal by Rusal. In April 2010, labor strikes led to senior officers of the company being taken as hostage (ibid: 175-181).

148 Stichproben The degradation of working and living standards went hand in hand with a decline of the technical condition of the factory. In a report called "La politique de après moi le déluge pratiquée par Rusal à Friguia" (The politics of "after me, the deluge" practiced by Rusal in Friguia) trade unionists claimed in August 2009 that damaged vehicles had not been replaced and replacement parts for machines had to be obtained by dismantling other machines or were replaced by worn out material bought in Eastern Europe (Knierzinger 2015: 174). This also led to a fall of security standards, the frequent shut down of parts of the factory and to environmental damage such as the leakage of big quantities of sodium hydroxide into the nearby rivers. To contain this leaked sodium hydroxide, Rusal erected a dam that broke again a few months later, leading to another instance of a series of local ecological accidents since the erection of the factory (Diallo 2012b). In May 2009, Rusal admitted to a shortfall in replacement parts and explained this with the allegedly empty pockets of the company since the financial crisis (Kadyrov 2010: 3).

According to most Guinean interview partners, this was part of a well-calculated strategy of Rusal aiming at the replacement of alumina production in Fria with a Ukrainian refinery. Contrary to Rusal’s initial announcements to double Fria’s alumina production, the company stripped Guinea of its only existing processing facility. While all its predecessors had promised huge industrial projects that only resulted in the export of bauxite – this concerned for instance Pechiney (France) in the 1950s, Alcan (Canada) in the 1960s and 70s, Reynolds (US) in the 1990s and several junior mining companies like the US company GAC since the 2000s4 – Rusal tackled the actual destruction of the only existing processing facility (Knierzinger 2015: 174). The overall aim was nonetheless the same: A scattered production network that minimizes the infrastructural power (Mann 1984; cf. Agnew 2005) of the respective governments and leaves the reins in the hands of the global aluminum oligopoly.5 In spite of suitable conditions for integrated 4 Larrue 1997: 91,114; Campbell 1991: 34; Diallo 2014b; Holloway 1988: 33–36; Soumah 2008: 124–125. 5 Currently, four companies – Rusal, Alcoa, Rio Tinto and Chinalco – control about half of

Fria in Guinea 149 production in Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea and Mozambique, the first country only has a smelter that received alumina from Guinea until 2012 (Pechiney Ugine Kuhlmann 1972: 2), Ghana and Mozambique possess small bauxite mines and smelters but no refinery (Lanning/Mueller 1979: 429–435; Wiederstein 1994: 37) and Guinea is left with two bauxite mines since 2012, in spite of possessing by far the biggest bauxite reserves in the world and favorable conditions for hydropower that could provide the necessary energy for several aluminum smelters (cf. Husband et al. 2009; Campbell 1991).

The lock out in Fria in April 2012

In December 2011, negotiations between the trade unions and Rusal got stalled. The worker’s demands consisted of wages (300 USD base salary), better living conditions, better medical treatment and the technical situation of the factory. During the negotiations, a Russian executive showed two pictures of his home town, before and after the close-down of a factory, and succinctly commented that this was going to happen if the trade unions went on with their demands (Knierzinger 2015: 179). The negotiations failed and the trade unions threatened to strike. After one more meeting between the conflict parties and the prime minister at the end of December, the unionist took back their strike warning and confirmed that they would not strike until June 2012, while Rusal promised not to take any measures that would further reduce the workers' income during this time. However, the workers finally went on strike on 4th April 2012, against a ruling of the national labor tribunal, accusing Rusal of failing its promise of December 2011 (ibid: 179ff).

Rusal used this strike to recall its Russian personnel and to lock the factory. Since then, the employees of Rusal in Fria have neither been licensed nor put on leave, nor have they received regular salaries. Only in January 2014,

worldwide production. If we add up the production capacity of all Chinese state owned aluminum companies, the global market is more concentrated than ever (cf. United States Geological Survey 2013).

150 Stichproben the company began to pay a small monthly assistance of about USD 150 to the employees of Friguia and a part of the subcontractors. It refuses to pay this assistance to around 50 unionists and activists on the grounds that they are "trouble-makers" (Knierzinger 2015: 197). In view of the financial crisis almost causing Rusal’s insolvency, this unorthodox withdrawal was most likely beneficial to the company. Still in 2007, Rusal took over the Russian aluminum company Sual and the mining multinational Glencore to become the world’s largest aluminum producer. Sual was owned by another oligarch, Victor Vekselberg, who also ranks among the richest Russians. Vekselberg left Rusal in March 2012 – one month before Friguia closed its doors – because he did not succeed in convincing Deripaska to refinance the heavily indebted company by selling another subsidiary that had been acquired before the sub-prime crisis: Norilsk Nickel, a nickel and palladium producer in Russia. Deripaska is reported to have kept this company due to political reasons, in spite of Rusal’s debts of 11 billion USD in 2012 (Neue Zürcher Zeitung 2010; Khrennikov 2012). He was supposed to be the richest Russian before the sub-prime crisis and is reported to have lost more than 20 billion Euro during the financial crisis (Le Figaro 2008). If an illegal strike in Fria would not have provided a reason for the halt of production, Rusal would have been obliged to put the same amount of workers on leave or sell assets. Further, the resulting pressure on the Guinean government led to the acquisition of another mining concession in Dian-Dian in the Boké Prefecture which increased the market value of the company.

The closing down of the mine and the factory dragged the majority of Fria’s inhabitants into misery. Due to the withheld wages of the workers and little employment possibilities outside the mine and the factory, Fria has been dependent on food aid since then. A small quantitative study by the author in Fria showed that the daily consumption of rice by the families of petty traders fell by about one third after the retreat of Rusal. Many interviewees stated that they eat once instead of twice a day due to the economic decline since the halt of the factory (Knierzinger 2015: 173).

Fria in Guinea 151 As Fria was the only alumina refinery on the African continent and since the global mining business is in sharp decline, the employees hardly find other jobs based on their expertise. Furthermore, since the foreign companies had replaced governmental structures in virtually every aspect, the population no longer received free electricity and lost social services such as health insurances, decent water supply, waste disposal etc. The factory only maintained power supply for a few street lamps of the market place, for a mosque and for three nine-storied apartment buildings, whose sanitary system would have broken down without the possibility to pump water. When I visited the city for the first time in April 2014, these apartment buildings for the workers were in a sanitarily critical condition. The inhabitants complained about rising crime rates, deteriorating health care and a severe restriction of work time and methods due to the cut in power supply (Knierzinger 2015: 143-200).

The population of Fria reacted to this severe degradation in various ways, in the form of written demands to politicians and company officials, numerous demonstrations, roadblocks, sit-ins in front of the prefectural administration (which was renamed "Tahrir place" after its first occupation), judicial procedures and initiatives and projects for a future without mining. In the three years since the lockout, demonstrations of workers themselves were more and more accompanied by activism of their spouses and children. These more recent initiatives, focusing on education, agriculture and tourism, are mostly led by young educated Friakas who have managed to attract a good part of their funding from the Guinean diaspora from around the world (Knierzinger 2015: 199f).

Reactions of the government

The attitude of the Guinean government versus Rusal was inconsistent. While the mining minister visited Fria on the eve of the strike in order to virtually beseech the workers not to strike, the President initially supported the strike. Alpha Condé used to be a class mate of the former French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner (2007-2010; Kappès-Grangé/Soudan 2012) and is

152 Stichproben said to be close to the financial investor and philanthropist George Soros. Via the NGOs Publish What You Pay and the Revenue Watch Institute, Soros provides highly qualified advisors to the current mining ministry of Guinea. Condé not only openly admitted the existence of these influential foreign experts, but even made them a core element of his overall policy (Kappès-Grangé/Soudan 2012). Soros recently called for more or less open military support of the EU to Ukraine (Soros 2015). In view of such illustrious allies, it is not surprising that the personal relation between Deripaska, who is backed by the Russian government and had important stakes in Ukraine until 2015, and Condé was complicated. The Guinean press reported on two meetings between Condé and Deripaska, where the President became "hopping mad" due to the behavior of the oligarch (Knierzinger 2015: 178, 183).

The first of these meetings between Rusal’s CEO and Guinea’s head of state was in April 2011, after Condé had questioned the validity of Rusal’s concession in Dian-Dian and put the company on a list of 41 publicly quoted enterprises that owed taxes to the government (Le Figaro 2011). Rusal claimed the vast bauxite reserves in Dian-Dian on the basis that the Soviet Union had received them already in the 1970s, apparently as debt repayment (Diallo/Kaba 2014; Diallo 2012a). This transfer of claims from the former Soviet Union to the private company Rusal remains questionable and underlines the special relationship between the Russian state and Rusal. Since neither Rusal nor the Russian state had made use of these reserves since the 1970s, Condé set a deadline for the development of Dian-Dian and threatened to sell it to Chinese investors, if Rusal would not start investing. This provoked reactions by the Russian foreign minister and prompted Deripaska to visit Guinea together with the Russian mining minister. According to newspaper reports, the President angrily sent Deripaska out of his office, because the CEO of Rusal apparently showed a lack of respect. While some journalists argue that this personal affair was the fundamental trigger for Rusal's retreat from Fria, the company mainly pointed to the "radicalization" of parts of the workforce (Knierzinger 2015: 178f).

Fria in Guinea 153 In the light of the potential political consequences of hunger and social unrest in one of the formerly richest towns of Guinea, it remains unclear why the President hesitates until the time of writing to enforce a decision on Rusal – either to come back to Fria or to leave for good. Rather than risking another national crisis shortly after having stabilized the situation in the country, Condé could have resold the stakes to other desperate investors. While the personal and geopolitical constellations are much more complicated than can be portrayed in this article, several instances point to a highly unequal rapport de force between the Guinea government and the Russian company that worsened with the consequences of the global financial crisis. Already in late June 2012, a few months after its withdrawal, Ibrahima Diallo, an influential activist and former employee of Rusal, who was himself hit hard by the crisis, reported on announcements of Rusal to finally shut down the locked factory. The mining ministry is said to have reacted by threatening to strip Rusal of all its assets in Guinea if this would happen (Diallo 2013a). Rusal answered by involving the Russian government, which threatened to insist on suspending negotiations on the HIPC (Heavily indebted poor countries) program of IMF and World Bank (Knierzinger 2015: 189).6 Deripaska became the owner of Rusal after a decade of violent fights over Russia’s smelters, called the aluminum wars, which claimed the lives of dozens of competitors. He is married to the daughter of Boris Yeltsin’s former chief of staff and appears to be close to Vladimir Putin (cf. Fortescue 2006: 80). Besides these political entanglements, an overall retreat of Rusal would also mean the closing down of yet another active Guinean bauxite mine which is in possession of Rusal (Débélé) and therefore again the dismissal of hundreds of workers and the decline of another mining settlement, again pushing into poverty not only the large families of the workers, but also taxi drivers, traders, artisans etc. – albeit on a considerably smaller scale than Fria. Considering

6 On 26 September 2012, the International Monetary Fund announced the decision to "support US$ 2.1 billion in debt relief for Guinea, representing a 66 percent reduction of its future external debt service over a period of 40 years" (International Monetary Fund 2012).

154 Stichproben further loss of governmental revenues and even more of workers’ unrest, the government probably opted for the attenuation of the effects of the crisis in Fria by providing food aid. In September 2013, Prime Minister Mohamed Said Fofana succinctly declared that "we can do nothing against Rusal, the owner of the factory. It is more powerful than the state" (Diallo 2013b; translation by JK).

Conclusions

This brief account of the crisis in Fria (for more detailed descriptions see Knierzinger 2015) provides an example of how the rationalities of capital-intensive mining influence the daily life of millions of people. While the strongly producer-driven structure of the industry and the "bottleneck" position of Guinean bauxite miners would suggest that at least a limited number of Guineans wield considerable power in the commodity chain, both local and national "agency" seem to be rather limited, in particular since the fall of global raw material prices shortly after the subprime crisis of 2007/08. In most extractivist countries of the Global South, economic overexploitation is at least partly coordinated "at home" by rent-oriented political elites cooperating with external actors against the interests of most of their compatriots (cf. Shafer 1986: 918–919). However, the case of Fria shows that this cooperation can in fact be quite restricted: Rusal neither needed a cooperative government nor a pleased labor aristocracy to have its way. Its main means of control were the domination of a large part of the aluminum market and its infrastructural power. Its retreat led to the de facto dismissal of a whole city with about 70-80,000 inhabitants and to rapid social decline.

This rather grim picture of continuing the path of Western overexploitation in connection with less corporatist and less culturally interested management strategies has also been confirmed for Chinese mining enterprises. In a study by Lee (2009) of a Chinese mining company in Zambia, the firm was portrayed quite similar to Rusal as culturally disinterested, secretive and anti-union. Beside the fact that both companies

Fria in Guinea 155 had little experience with capitalist ventures in comparison with Western companies, this can partly be explained by the situation in the countries of origin. Both in China and in Russia trade unions are weak, wages are far lower than in the West and both countries have seen vast sociopolitical transformations since the end of bipolarity. The self-assured attitude both of Chinese managers in the study of Lee (ibid: 654) and of Russians in Fria concerning cutting wages and social services can be related to their own experiences in their home countries. In both cases managers described these experiences in a virtuously martial manner as painful yet necessary measures to overcome allegedly outdated socialist arrangements.

Interestingly, the rough methods of Rusal concerning labor relations and cultural exchange went hand in hand with a rise of CSR measures. Only recently, at the same time when the first social and environmental impact studies of Western mining companies in Guinea were about to start, Rusal edited its first colored brochures listing its social investments in Guinea. The same change of attitude can be confirmed for Chinese bauxite companies operating in Guinea (Knierzinger 2015: 173, 257). "Old" and "new" investors therefore seem to have entered a race for corporate social responsibility at the same time, while entering the new scramble for resources in the 2000s. The impact of this social marketing wave is double-edged. Several studies on the extractive sector and beyond have lately shown that CSR is not to be confounded with social policies or development oriented investment. Regardless of the investors’ origin CSR risks deepening the dependency on foreign controlled infrastructure and tends to circumvent local administrations and political representatives in the host countries (see Frynas 2005; Davis et al. 2016). However, this discrepancy between the need to compete with the marketing departments of other companies over CSR measures and persistently restrictive labor politics nonetheless carries the potential for an amelioration of the latter.

In the end, it remains to be underlined that there is no "Eastern" or BRICS model of mining in Africa. For instance, while Chinese state-owned mining companies did fairly well during the recent crisis (cf. Fraser 2010: 23),

156 Stichproben Rusal’s fast expansion before the crisis led to huge overcapacities. If Rusal had sold Norilsk, the factory of Fria would probably still be running. In view of the simple ownership structure of Rusal, it would therefore be easy, and to a certain extent even just, to make its main owner, Oleg Deripaska, responsible for this social debacle. However, as Guinean history shows, the company only took over the management of social decline of a mining town that already began in the 1970s and was reinforced by the ideological turnaround of the 1980s and by cost-cutting measures of European and American companies in the 1990s.

Due to its troubled relations with the Friakas, a return of Rusal to Fria is unlikely. However, based on the improbable developments in recent years as described in this article (most of all the fact that Rusal still operates in Guinea), it is nonetheless possible. In any case, the next "owner" of Fria, no matter if he or she is Chinese, European or American, will be able to start all over: As soon as aluminum prices rise again, the old factory will be razed and a new company will start to export bauxite – most likely based on a mining permit granted for the promise of processing bauxite in Guinea.

Maybe this time the investors will not find any excuses and stick to their promise and a new "Little Paris" (or rather a "Little Beijing" or a "Little Abu Dhabi") will re-emerge, creating relative wealth for a certain amount of time within a certain radius around the factory. However, there is also a small chance that the young activists of Fria carry their point for a "future without mines". In any case, given that the situation of most of the rest of the Guineans has not improved much over the last 60 years of intensive bauxite mining and won’t arguably improve much even if Fria’s bauxite is transformed into aluminum before it is exported, the Guinean political leaders and their advisors would do good to lend them their ears.

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Authors Carole Ammann is a PhD-candidate and lecturer at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Within the scope of her PhD she conducted fieldwork in Guinea between 2011 and 2013. Her main concern is with questions of gender, statehood, transformations of the state, political articulations, and everyday life. E-mail: carole.ammann@unibas.ch Matthieu Bolay is a PhD candidate at the Laboratory for Transnational Studies (MAPS) at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. For his PhD, he has conducted research on transnational mobility in the context of artisanal gold mining in West-Africa (Mali, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Sénégal). He has also been involved in other research projects dealing with questions of access to natural resources and transnational migrations. E-mail: matthieu.bolay@unine.ch Mohamed Saliou Camara: A Northwestern University graduate and a Fulbright alumnus, Dr. Mohamed Saliou Camara is Professor of History, International Relations, and Communication in the College of Arts & Sciences at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Florida. Previously he taught Philosophy at the University of Conakry and served as president of that University’s Press and associate chair of the Philosophy Department. He also served as a journalist for the National Radio Television of Guinea and a speech writer at the Presidential Press Bureau. Camara’s current research interest centers on the study of human security in Africa in the age of globalization. Camara is the author of several books on the political history of Guinea and West Africa. E-mail: Mohamed.Camara@erau.edu Michelle Engeler holds a PhD in Social Anthropology and is currently a postdoc at the center for African Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland. Her research interests focus on the conjunction of people’s life trajectories

162 Stichproben and political transformation processes in West Africa and include analyses of intergenerational relations, life worlds of academics and migration patterns of highly qualified people. E-mail: michelle.engeler@unibas.ch Johannes Knierzinger studied Sociology and International Development at the University of Vienna and holds a PhD in Global Studies from the Universities of Leipzig and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He has done research in Guinea and Ghana and teaches courses on development sociology, global commodity chains and the sociopolitical implications of mining in Vienna, Leipzig and Munich. E-mail: johannes.knierzinger@univie.ac.at Pascal Rey is an agro-economist and a geographer (PhD thesis on local powers in Coastal Guinea). He mainly worked on local organizations in developing countries (India, Rwanda, Peru), particularly in Guinea where he has been developing for 12 years an approach based on the understanding of the decision-making processes at the local scale and has been focusing on approaches for the implementation of corporate social responsibility. He is Insuco’s Chief Executive Officer, an international consulting firm in social engineering. He is used to publish on issues relating to land tenure, natural resource management, decision-making processes and mining sector in South countries. E-mail: pascal.rey@insuco.com