The conflict in Casamance started in 1982 and thus is one of, if not the oldest conflict on the continent. It is often described as a “low-intensity” conflict and has received less attention than other conflicts in Africa. The CIHA Blog has previously published two pieces on Casamance titled An Introduction to the Casamance Conflict: Implications for Peacebuilding and Feminist non-violent resistance in Casamance: AlañDi-So Bassène (1913 – 1940) in English and French. Today, we run the first of a new series of articles on the Casamance conflict written by CIHA co-editor and editorial assistants.
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Nyimasata Camara, Political Science Lecturer, University of the Gambia and CIHA Blog Assistant Editor
Moise Diedhiou, Ph.D. Candidate, Gaston Berger University and CIHA Blog Assistant Editor
Mame Penda Ba, Professor of Political Science, Gaston Berger University, Director, LASPAD, and CIHA Blog Co-Editor
INTRODUCTION
The Casamance conflict is one of Africa’s long running conflicts. However, despite its longevity, it has gained little attention beyond its regional enclave. Unlike other well-known conflicts in the sub-region such as in Biafra/Nigeria, Cote D’Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the Casamance conflict is considered “lower intensity” and is marked by guerilla tactics. The low intensity nature of the conflict, however, has not prevented the loss of approximately 5000 lives and refugees in the tens of thousands. It has also led to the destruction or closing of schools and medical care facilities, the planting of thousands of anti-tank mines, the worsening underdevelopment of the region and an outbreak of a civil war in neighboring Guinea Bissau (see Trzcinski, 2005).
It all started on 26th December, 1982, when a large gathering of people marched on the streets of Ziguinchor replacing Senegalese flags on government administrative buildings with white colored flags meant as a symbol of Casamance Independence. Several people on both sides -demonstrators and the Gendarmerie- were injured, including one Gendarme fatality. Among the hundred or more people who were arrested in the subsequent weeks was Father Augustin Diamacoune Senghor, who would later become a prominent leader for the secessionist Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (Mouvement des Forces Democratiques de Casamance, MFDC)[*] and Mamadou Nkrumah Sané, the ideologue of the movement. The Senegalese government’s handling of this growing discontent led to greater discord and increasingly violent demonstrations. In one such demonstration in 1983, 24 people were officially reported dead, although the real death toll was said to be higher. The MFDC, which originally started as a political organization, began to recruit and train volunteers for armed rebellion in secret locations.
Thus, 26th December, 1982 is taken to be the formal date of the outbreak of armed rebellion in Casamance. However, several political events preceded this date. For example, in 1970, a series of protests was launched in the Ziguinchor area against the Senegalese 1964 Land Act, which made the state the owner of all lands that were not formally registered. Casamance was going to be hit hard by this new development, especially considering the spiritual and organic connection to land and the fact that most of it was not registered formally. 1980 also marked two separate violent demonstrations- first a riot by students of Lycée Djignabo of Ziguinchor against deteriorating conditions and the other against a bad refereeing decision that caused the Casa-Sport football team to lose to Dakar in the Senegalese Cup competition.
Secession did not feature in any of these events. Nonetheless, they contributed significantly to the growing regional resentments which local elites exploited in favor of separatism. The ultimate goal of the Casamance rebellion is self-rule. This goal emanates from the general discontent with the state administration in Dakar for its failure to develop and invest in the region, as well as cultural differences between the regions and historical claims regarding geography and autonomy.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY AS INFLUENCING FACTORS FOR THE REBELLION
The challenge of integration between the southern and northern parts of Senegal is not merely the result of the limited territorial contact (which has psychological impacts) due to the unique positioning of Casamance: it is separated from northern Senegal by the Gambia, borders Guinea Bissau on the South, the Atlantic Ocean to the west and only a small connection to the rest of Senegal on the east where it neighbors with the region of Tambacounda, still a far stretch away from the capital Dakar. The other challenge is its colonial history. These former French colonies (Casamance and Northern Senegal) were both administered separately and were only integrated two decades prior to independence (Evans, 2004; Trzcinski, 2005). Trzcinski even claims that at the time of independence in 1960, Casamance had very little time to integrate politically, socially, culturally and economically with the rest of Senegal. Thus, among the Casamance intellectual circle advocating autonomy, there has been a strong claim that Casamance was always meant to be an autonomous entity given its colonial history, and that Léopold Sedar Senghor, Senegal’s first president, made promises to this effect allegedly in the form of a written agreement with MFDC leaders. It has been reported that the MFDC elites, notably, Father Augustus Diamancoune Senghor was famous for using this claim to call for the cultivation of a regional identity of Casamance and has produced a booklet outlining all the injustices that Casamance people have suffered under Senegalese authorities as justification for their need to secede.
Similarly, Casamance lies between two relatively small countries. Bigger than the Gambia to the north and slightly smaller than Guinea Bissau to the south, this fact has been a source of inspiration, a seeming validation of the viability of its claim to separate status as well. This has been compounded by feelings of marginalization and under-representation of the Casamance people in both the economic and political spheres.
UNDERDEVELOPMENT AND UNDERINVESTMENT
In the separatist discourse, Casamance as a region is highly underdeveloped relative to other regions in Senegal. The ecological and climatic differences between the region and the rest of Senegal have rendered marked differences as well in livelihoods and trade. Whereas Casamance has a humid subequatorial climate with abundant rainfall and thick forest covers -highly suitable for agriculture- northern Senegal has a Sahelian type dry climate characterized by constant drought and desertification. It is safe to say that the rest of Senegal is dependent on Casamance’s produce including timber and fruits. Notwithstanding, investment in the processing of these products takes place outside the region, denying employment and other economic opportunities to the people in the region on one hand and fueling growing sentiments of exploitation and neglect on the other. Additionally, Trzcinsky notes that:
in 1979 in Casamance there were more than 32 thousand people to every doctor while the domestic average was one doctor per 13 thousand; in the same year in Casamance there was not a single kilometre of asphalt road, while the average for all regions was 486 kilometres; in 1978 there was one single telephone line per 793 people, while the average for all the rest of Senegal’s administrative regions was one line per 132 people.
At the beginning of the 1980s, there was only one high school qualified to graduate university bound students and region’s first and only university was built in the 2000s.
Similarly, the relatively wealthier Wolof and Lebu migrants from the north have threatened both Casamance’s “cultural identity and traditional existence,” fostering suspicions that an “influx of migrants from the northern part of Senegal is stimulated by the authorities in Dakar and that it aims at the future quantitative domination of the indigenous population by the immigrant one” (Trzcinski, 2005). Consequently, the dispossession of land owned by Casamançais, heightened in the late 1970s when the 1964 Land Nationalization Act was applied to the region, gave advantages to the relatively wealthy immigrants from the north. On top of these events, the government invested heavily in construction for the tourism and hospitality sector rather than in other areas of human development, bolstering these suspicions.
THE CULTURAL “OTHERNESS” OF THE CASAMANCAIS PEOPLE
Additionally, the transnational cultural identity of people of Casamance, in particular the Diola, has made integration with Senegal problematic. Professor Mame Penda Ba of Gaston Berger University often problematizes a widely held philosophy that prevails among mostly northern Senegalese. It is that Senegal “Bena bopu la ken munut ko haj nyarr” – “Senegal is of one head, no one can split it into two.” Jacobin centralism inherited from France homogenizes all citizens, and does not admit the expression of difference or any form of autonomy. This is a notion that does not only ascribe a single Senegalese identity and idea of a social cohesion built effectively around the Wolof – Muslim (Senegal’s major ethnic group) cultural identity, it involuntarily tends to mask the many social cleavages and inadvertently denies agency to the other sub-nationals found particularly in the south. She emphasizes that this ideological construction adds to the physical and symbolic violence which accompanied the formation of the modern Senegalese nation-state. This reality is not lost on the people of Casamance who are predominantly Diola and Mandinka. The Diola especially have distinct traditional values as well as a strong cultural mobilization that transcends physical borders. Their spiritual connection to the land, natural environment and the ancestral past reinforce their portrayal as the people of the forest. This sets a clear contrast with the northerners, who are portrayed as a migratory, entrepreneurial people. These cultural differences, therefore, elicit feelings of insecurity in Casamance in the face of the so called “Wolofisation” of Senegal and the increasing “foreign” infiltration through migration and entrepreneurship from the north to the south.
CONCLUSION
The Casamance conflict is as protracted as it is dynamic. There has been a continuous evolution of motives for separation, and the actors and means of combat over the years have also changed as emerging factors shape the nature and scope of the conflict. The Casamance case is currently being described as “No War No Peace,” even as questions about the legitimacy of MFDC and the nation-state loom large.
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[*] a political party founded in 1947 by the Casamancese elites
Further Readings
Evans Martin, (2004), “Senegal: Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de la Casamance (MFDC)” Africa Programme, Armed Non-states Actors Project, AFP BP 04/20, Gatham House.
Tombe Sandra (2016), “The Casamance Conflict: Un-imagining a Community”, Electronic Theses and Dessertations, University of Louisville.
Marut Jean Claude (2010), “Le Conflit De Casamance: Ce Que Disent Les Armes”, LASPAD.
TrzciÒski Krzysztof (2005), “Origins of Armed Separatism in Southern Senegal”, Africana Bulletin, No.53, Warzsawa