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SENEGAL
Creating a strong social movement

This is the second and final part of the interview with Moussa Diop, a Senegalese militant in the education and trade union sectors, which appeared in the previous edition of Le Monde Libertaire. Having covered the various initiatives in the fields of popular education and general social alternatives which have been put in place following the disengagement of the state in the social field in this article we consider the question of social struggle and the current state of the social movement.

LML: You have described to us a dramatic social situation affecting a number of young people who find themselves on the streets alongside street educators who understand the social situation brought about by the economic situation and the political regime and are instigating numerous popular initiatives at the level of education, health and everyday concerns on a basis of self-management and raised social consciousness. But does there exist behind all this movement for a social alternative a commitment from trade unions and political organisations which would try to bring all these initiatives together into some kind of network?

MD: No, in reality the unions and the political groupings are not getting involved in all the structures we have described (district education centres, 'Women's Bank', food co-operatives, recycling workshops...). People become involved as individuals, above all as 'citizens', as inhabitants of a district even if they are also often members of a political or syndicalist organisation. You have to realise that in 1973 in Senegal there was a kind of May '68 which became the launchpad for raising the awareness and the start of engagement in the political process for a number of people. The majority of people who today are the driving force behind the initiatives that we have described have come from this movement. They are Muslims, Trotskyists, Syndicalists, ex-Maoists who are active in the grassroots because their political organisations aren't. At times, when there are emergency situations linked to repression such as arrests we are forced to call on the progressive political parties so that they can ask questions at the National Assembly. In Senegal there is a bourgeois attitude to human rights. Groups which are concerned with human rights only function when democratic political parties are affected by repression. When children die of hunger or are imprisoned, nobody seems concerned with their plight. I have never seen a human rights organisation visit a Senegalese prison in order to denounce the conditions of detention. We face considerable problems forging a link between the political and the syndical and that of the social alternative. One of my objectives is to encourage the different people involved to get a better grasp of the overall picture and to help them see the connection between all the activities they are involved in. Now it is necessary for people to be able to analyse the situation, study the problems they face and to globalise their response. There is truly a need to motivate people. But lots of people have changed and evolved and many people join with us on a regular basis. We have succeeded in attracting many people involved in education. We have also succeeded in getting them involved in the various initiatives going on at a district level. When I am asked where education ends I reply that it isn't at the doors of our institutional structures. I have no territory, I am a man of Senegal, a man of the world. When I need to intervene I feel no need to imprison myself in mental territories. That is what it means to create and have a political consciousness.

ML: Exactly. You speak of political consciousness, managing to face up to the state. I'd like you to speak a little about the social movements in Senegal. What has been happening recently?

MD: In Senegal, for sometime now, we have seen what is called policies of structural management. These policies are imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. They impose on us anti-worker and anti-social laws which have serious repercussions. These policies have culminated in a wave of privatisations. The SDE (Water Company) and the railways have been privatised. Since then many regions have been without a railway. This causes serious transportation problems in those areas highly dependent on agriculture. In addition to this the privatisation of SDE has led to a 3% increase in water prices. If this goes on, in 5 years access to drinking water will be difficult. If electricity is also privatised we will face the same problem there. Today there is an important struggle addressing this issue. Whilst the state promised not to sell off more than 33% of the national electricity company at the last moment everything was offered to the private companies. This provoked a strike. What is of interest is that the official union, linked to the Socialist government, the CNTS (National Confederation of Senegalese Workers) is largely a minority influence on the movement. The union which has been most involved in this campaign is the SUTELEC (Electricity Workers Union) which is affiliated to an independent union and is not linked to any party.

It is this independent union which has taken charge of representing the workers demands. But, with the hardening of the strike movement, the government has decided to liquidate this union. A decision which was reinforced by the fact that, recently, the World Bank and the IMF called for a period of social peace in Senegal so that investment may continue. It was in this way that a policy of purifying the social movement was launched. When the SUTELEC cut off the electricity just after the World Cup (if they had done this earlier the movement would have been very unpopular) the state press along with the private press which is, in point of fact, a free press and often at the forefront of a fair number of issues, opened fire on the movement. There was a concerted media attempt to turn people against the strike action. The secretary of the Senegalese CNT which is close to the socialist party joined in the attack denouncing the movement and calling for sanctions because the strike was preventing commissioners from doing their work and was causing too much hardship for the people in general. The state took advantage of all this to unleash a wave of repression by focusing on supposed acts of sabotage in order to arrest the leaders of the independent union. UNSAS (National Union of Independent Senegalese Syndicalists) to which SUTELEC was affiliated launched a solidarity campaign on the one hand informing people about the real issues involved, the reasons for and the goals of the strike and at the same time calling for the release of the imprisoned militants. It had to be pointed out that this strike is profoundly popular in the sense that workers are fighting for democratic access to electricity, the right for everyone to have access to it even in the most isolated of communities which is far from being the case in Senegal. When I left Senegal, a large demonstration organised by the wives of the strikers had been put down in the same way as almost all the solidarity marches. About 40 women were arrested. At each demonstration there were arrests. Not only were 27 Syndicalist leaders arrested but they were also sacked from their jobs. Normally there is a correct procedure to be followed when people who have been imprisoned are to lose their jobs. Now that the strike is over there are a whole loads of reasons given for sacking the majority of the militants which are not within the rules.

ML: To conclude can you tell us a little more about the Syndicalist groupings, UNSAS and the CNTS, that you have mentioned?

MD: UNSAS is a union of those radical left wing unions who recognise first and foremost the class struggle. At the heart of this group are the most significant membership group which is the teachers. the independent teachers union has been involved in some pretty hard struggles. A year ago, there was a long battle over pension questions which was supported by the majority of the profession. A few years ago this union represented about 25% of state employed trade unionists and today it gets the support of the majority of its members when it launches an action. The CNTS on the other hand, which is linked to the regime, represents the illusionnary involvement of working people. It uses a radical worker type language, very left, but follows policies which are worse than those of the right. The unions leader is a former exile from 1958 who negotiated his return to the country in exchange of a pile of concessions. He is a strike breaker and the mastermind of the move to liquidate the independent unions The great weakness of the democratic movement in Senegal, of the people who are fighting for real citizenship, real respect, but also on behalf of all of the peoples of the world is that the different actors involved have realm difficulty in bringing all the threads together. If they could come together, co-ordinate themselves, define their common aims we could build a powerful social movement. For my part this is what I am trying to do with the local people in the towns

David
Durruti Group - Lyon
Le Monde Libertaire
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SENEGAL Creating a strong social movement

SENEGAL
Creating a strong social movement