*Democracy, human rights, and castes in Senegal.
*
* *Translated from the article by Penda MBOW
Reflection on democracy, human rights and castes in Senegal doesn't
necessarily belong in the agenda of this issue on contemporary forms of
slavery, as caste-cleavage isn't founded on the principle of servility. But
the necessity of building a democratic society where respect for human
rights isn't simply a matter of rhetoric sufficiently justifies inserting
this article in the debate opened by the *Journal des Africanistes. *A new
citizenship demands scrutinizing African societies and eliminating barriers
that hinder both individual and citizen fulfilment. The new definitions of
human rights imply directly facing the fundamental issue of order and caste
cleavages. Of course, for some Senegalese intellectuals, the problem of
castes seems to be outdated, to be part of a backward struggle, especially
when the continent is faced with all sorts of difficulties. According to
them, there is no need to contribute to afro-pessimism, as if one could
forget it is the duty of Africans themselves to look critically on their own
societies. Daniel Etounga Manguelle, in a book with an evocative title (*Does
Africa need cultural adjustment?)* mentions, among other impeding factors:
excessive conviviality, rejection of any kind of open conflict and placement
of the individual in the shadow of the community. In short, all
characteristics of pre-industrial and pre-modern societies. And yet,
analysing the situation in our countries by considering solely their
material foundations and the evolution of their political classes would be
singularly reducing the capacity of transformation of our societies.
With the development of *"L'Ecole des Annales"*, the *"Nouvelle Histoire"
and *structural anthropology, African researchers have access to conceptual
tools enabling them to distinguish with greater precision the current
mutations in continent societies. Today it is possible to practise what
Roger Bastide calls "clinical anthropology", which consists of applying an
analysis to special cases, the condition of a social group or of a community
undergoing a crisis, with a view to determine in each case the suitable
socio-therapeutic treatment. The debate on castes in Senegal must define one
of the aspects of the serious crisis of values this society is undergoing,
as well as defining its current mutations. Indeed, the feeling both groups
and individuals experience regarding their respective positions and the
conditions that result in this feeling, are not immediately determined by
the reality of their economic conditions, but by the image they have of it;
an image, which is never reliable but always manipulated by a set of complex
mental perceptions.
Analysis of the caste-system enables understanding the long and complex
process through which any change of society is achieved: studying
mentalities is then of fundamental importance. This prospect requires every
African or Africanist researcher to consider African societies in the
long-term, while favouring the notion of structure, as it is defined by
Fernand Braudel and applied by observers of the social phenomenon. What does
one mean by structure? It primarily means an organization, a coherence of
somewhat fixed relations between realities and social masses. This is
precisely what historians speak about when they use terms such as
"assembling" or "architecture" to characterise a reality that has
disintegrated with time but which firmly continues. Certain long-standing
structures become unwavering constituents for countless generations: they
obstruct history, thus calling for its collapse. Others will crumble more
quickly. But they are both supports and obstacles. Mentalities are thus also
prisoners of time (Braudel 1969). Like Guy Bois ( 1989 : 17-18), we believe
old societies die slowly. Even when dying, they hold out a long time, and
their widely spread roots prevent new shoots from emerging. Today the social
condition of caste people has changed but the caste-system has survived. Its
survivors have a real impact on the collective conscience imposed by the
Wolof, Balpula and Bambara systems and they are a hindrance to the arrival
of real democracy, especially in regard to – particularly in the beginning -
the individual's own self-awareness.
Can a comprehensive study of the caste-system aid in understanding how deep
transformations in Senegalese society have been? Impeding factors will no
doubt be identified in the area of hierarchy reproduction mechanisms, a
major phenomenon in social history. From precise examples we will evaluate
the impact of the caste-system on beliefs and the strength of the
ideological discourse underlying it. We will then attempt to clarify the
concept of the caste-system with the aid of different works and studies. But
let's look at first at the attitude of Senegalese society faced with this
problem.
*
Senegalese civil society in face of the caste-system.
*
The emergence of civil society in Senegal is connected to the reinforcement
of the democratic system, the complete multiparty system, and the triumph of
cultural adjustment policies. But the main interest of the phenomenon lies
primarily in the strong will of the Senegalese to be seen as citizens. In
Senegal, the characteristics of civil society are both its dynamism and
variety. This reflection on castes, therefore, can constitute a
starting-point to looking at the relationship between civil society and
intellectuals, who form a subgroup of it. The complexity of this
relationship goes much further than our area of focus calls for.
Nevertheless, the difficulty of debating this question in Senegal can be
grasped from Madeleine Mukamabano's reaction: "when I wanted to make this
programme, certain people said to me " but there is no point, it is not
really a problem, it is something psychological that will be resolved, it
has no impact whatsoever on people's lives. So today I don't even know if I
was right to bring up the problem."(*cf* note 2). Such a reaction reveals
the nature of civil society in our country and the lack of determination of
Senegalese intellectuals to face their own society.
In fact, the organisations in Senegal which work on promoting human rights
never carry out investigations to evaluate the impact of hierarchies of
order and caste on the lives of individuals and their social relations, on
their married lives and, subsequently, on their personal fulfilment. What is
the meaning of the system of statutory hierarchy? The human rights
organizations are not very motivated as far as this important question is
concerned as, most of the time, their own concerns are defined according to
those of Northern NGOs, who themselves don't always have good knowledge of
African social realities. Regarding the problem of slavery in Mauritania, it
was only after the Senegalo-Mauritanian crisis in 1989, with its train of
human tragedies, that the debate was at last raised on an international
level. Of course, the caste problem is not on the same level, but there is
crucial education work that needs to be begun, notably to accelerate the
process of the individual's emergence.
Instead, a good proportion of civil society deliberately maintains total
vagueness in regard to the disappearance of order and caste hierarchies. Is
it, as some think, a real logic of exclusion to keep whole areas of society
out of all decisions ? Has the system established taboos so firmly fixed in
the collective unconscious, that many people don't want to transgress them,
because of the immanent unhappiness they are supposed to cause here and
there ?
The issue of castes reveals one of the weaknesses of Senegalese democracy,
which is still far too formal. For a long time, men said caste people hardly
ever tried to found or lead a political party, because the social origin of
individuals always determines their relationship to power. Even in
marxist-feminist parties, in which the large number of activists of caste
origin has always been noted, these activists have almost never been
leaders, in spite of their intellectual qualities. It was not until 1992
that the former Minister of National Education, I.D.T. created the first
party lead by a descendant of blacksmiths. Today there are many either at
the head of a political party or aspiring to take over from the present
leaders. O.N. is at the head of the "*Parti pour la Libération du
Peuple"(PLS),* while I.S. is in a good position to take over from M. Wade at
the *"Parti Démocratique Sénégalais"(PDS)*. Among the most important
activists in so-called leftist parties, .P.G., M.T. and the *"Guissé de la
Ligue Démocratique" *can also be mentioned*.*
In the 1990s, one notes a small presence of caste people soliciting elective
mandates due to universal suffrage forty years after independence! If until
now caste people have often held very important positions, including the
position of Prime Minister- a nominal function- they are rarely to be found
in elective functions. Thus, in Parliament, the elected caste people are
usually elected on the national list and hardly ever on the "department"
list, where the election is carried out locally. At this level, the
candidates' individual qualities, political talent or social origin remain
determinant. Obviously the paradox lies here, since social origin always
overrides other criteria. According to Landing Savané, the leader of And-Jëf
PADS, (a leftist party), his party was faced with the reality of castes
being involved. One of his most committed activists who wished to be a
candidate in the Fouta region told him that, as a "*griot*", he met strong
opposition including within his own party from electors who considered he
wasn't going to stand as a candidate. According to an enquiry in *"Le Nouvel
Horizon"* the risk for a caste person of not being elected is still high In
the "Fouta" or Wolof countries, it is not rare to see activists of some
political party not allowed to speak at meetings, because, traditionally
they were not entitled to speak in public gatherings. The PS (Socialist
Party), which has been in power since independence, has contributed in
perpetuating such political ostracism by leaning on traditionally important
families.
Now, with the "Refoundation" they are endeavouring to change this situation,
to the extent that the man who leads the reforms, O.T.D, is said to be a
caste person. But the man is so controversial within the area of public
opinion, that one wonders if negative reactions surrounding him are really
linked to his being a caste person or to more objective criteria: lack of
political experience, or his privileged position in taking over from
President Diouf, who passed on his prerogatives to him, not only in
political matters but also in the administrative field, which, of course,
arouses jealousy.
Whatever it may be, the caste problem can in no way be underestimated. This
is what M.N. understood, in 1981, when the succession to Senghor went to
Abdou Diouf instead of him. Although he denies it, many thought his caste
origins put him at a disadvantage. From then on, he became closer to the
TALL Families of Fouta (Toorobe) by creating family bonds with every marabou
family in the country. But for a long time, people referred to the
blacksmith origins of the "Niassenes" - powerful Kaolack marabout - to which
his father belongs. He seems to happily ignore this aspect and recalls with
pleasure, that his wife is a "descendant" of Blaise Diagne; the first
Senegalese deputy in the Bourbon Palace during the first world war.
(1914-1918).
He feels therefore strong enough, regarding his origins, to confront
president Diouf in the February 2000 presidential election. Yet,
genealogical questions, which many Senegalese hold important are often
manipulated. For a long time a rumour circulated that M.N. wanted to build
himself a new genealogy. "*L'autre Afrique*" takes this up by asserting that
"M.N is distributing a letter in political circles sent from Kaolack, his
native town, by an old woman who retraces his genealogy: if it is to be
believed, M.N is a apparently a descendant of a family rich in prestigious
ancestors." Aside from this statement, the debate brought up around the
issue illustrates the considerable importance given to the social origins of
individuals. In fact, everyone knows perfectly well that Keur Madiabel, the
natal village of M.N., was founded and peopled by caste people, who had
their own graveyard. If M.N. feels the need to close the chapter on his
origins, it is simply because neither Senegalese civil society nor the
so-called caste intellectuals, have done their work in awareness and
education.
As far as we know, the first important public debate regarding the caste
phenomenon, was organized in April 1992 by a group called ACTANCE, made up
of intellectuals and artists and lead by Issa Sam (Joe Ouakam). All Dakar's
intellectuals, artists and diplomatic representatives (from western
countries) attended the debate. The only intellectuals of caste origin who
dared to face the subject were the mathematics professor Sakhir Thiam and
ourselves, being those that introduced the discussion. All the other
supposedly caste intellectuals, many of who were present, carefully avoided
saying anything, even to refute such and such idea with which they did not
agree. One fact that was extremely revealing was that every time a
participant spoke, they began by stating who they were: they did not want
any ambiguity about themselves. For the first time in our lives, we were
faced with the dilemma. : "Did we have the right to raise this debate?" as
we were fiercely reprimanded by certain caste people: they reproached us for
breaking a pact "for speaking publicly of ourselves when our strength had
always been to be feared."
How to understand the attitude of the elite, as a whole, in the face of this
phenomenon ? Landing Savané probably best accounts for it : "Actually we
started from the principle this phenomenon had to be totally ignored. We
never mentioned it, but in reality, some of us fully supported it. (cf
"L'autre Afrique"). And yet Landing Savané belongs to the May-68 generation,
known for its revolutionary and generous ideas, nevertheless like their
elders they carry on elucidating the debate. This is what accounts for the
surprising reaction of one of the first lawyers of the Senegal-Bar, Maître
Ogo Kane Diallo, also in l'Autre Afrique, where he declares : "Senghor had
surrounded himself with caste-people because all the intellectuals loathed
him as a French creature and nobody wanted to join him". This vision is not
rare in Senegal. For some, Presidents Senghor and Diouf surrounded
themselves with caste-people so as to have people indebted to them for their
social rise. What place for competence, talent, rigour, honesty ? As a young
counsellor near the Ministry of Culture in the 1980,
we had had to record Senghor's opinion regarding the problem (shortly before
he left power): " I nominate caste-people to positions of responsibility
because they are more intelligent than the average and I marry my nieces to
well educated caste-people.
Finally, as regards social stratification, civil society remains idealistic
and generous. One of the symbols of this rising civil society at the end of
the second millenium
allows us to measure how far we still have to go: one's caste origins are
still brandished to exclude, humiliate or hurt. What does "being casted"
mean ? The question is justified.
Before turning to other aspects, let's close this chapter about the place of
castes in administration. Sociologist Abdoulaye Bara Diop doesn't think the
phenomenon can play a part in the sphere of modernity. To back up his
theory, he leans on an enquiry which shows that blacksmiths are
proportionally more numerous in the Senegal-administration than in other
categories of the population. Even if it is true that the individual's
social status intervenes neither in recruitment nor in nominations, there is
no denying it is present in the relationships between colleagues. At the
time of independence, the Foreign Office, then led by a caste-person, Mr
Doudou Thiam, had chosen to be called 'the jewel-shop", a name that seemed
stigmatising. Besides, many cases are found in administration of
subordinates refusing to obey their boss, under the pretext that he is in no
position to give them orders, being himself a jeweller or a cobbler or a
wood-worker. DM admits to once losing the head of a service in the River
Area : he chose to be sent somewhere else, as he could no longer stand the
contemptuous reactions of the people around him.
And yet because civil society is being reinforced, because
public-spiritedness needs to be rooted into the Senegalese people,
interesting phenomena are appearing. El Hadj Mansour Mbaye, known until then
to be the President of the Republic's griot and special counsellor,
announces to general surprise : "I want to be either a member of Parliament
or a Senator, like other socialists, to take part in the development of
Senegal. The time has now come when it is necessary to think about this." As
the authorities now use the talent of griots to mobilize and instrumentalize
the values they incarnate for its legitimisation, one now sees a shift in
the labelling: they are no longer referred to as griots but as "traditional
communicators". The phrase is both less connoted and more flattering. The
authorities, by manipulating them differently, gives them the impression
they are indispensable, which probably accounts for their sudden ambition.
Moreover some values of those called caste-people prove precious in the
modern world. Communication, a world whose control is practically in the
hands of griots, is the strongest example of this. They excel at the press,
above all the spoken press, but the written press too, and one of their best
representatives is still Bara Diouf, former General Manager of the national
daily (Dakar-Matin and Soleil) who boasts about being a griot. About this
acquired awareness, a new phenomenon, let's remark that l'"Association des
Boisseliers" (the Laobés do all the work that has to do with wood) have
given themselves the aim to reforest the whole of Senegal. In spite of this
will to go forward, what explains the persistence of castes and perpetuates
the phenomenon ?
*
A few considerations about the caste system
**
The Geography of castes in western Africa
*
In a thesis about the whole group of endogamic artisans and musicians
–called castes- of western Africa (Sahelo-Sudanese area, border areas with
Sahara and forest Africa), Tal Tamari comes back on to the spatial
delimitation of castes. These groups, the most famous of which are
associated with the work of iron, wood or leather, or else with music, are
to be found in about ten ethnicities, in particular the Mandingues,
Soninkés, Wolofs, Peuls, Toucouleurs, Songhay, Senoufos, Dogons, Touaregs,
Moors. The repartition zones of the castes includes Mali, Mauritania,
Senegal, Gambia, Guiinea, Guinea-Bissau, the north of Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina
Faso, Niger, the East if Ghana, part of Algerian Sahara, a few spots in the
North of Cameroon, Liberia and Sierra Leone (Tal Tamari 1988; 1997) . What
can this stratification in castes be linked with ?
*
Hypotheses about the origin of castes
*
The work of Georges Dumézil (1956, 1958) about Indo-European societies has
highlighted the situation of the caste-system : the shock of cultures seems
to be one determining element of it all. In the example of India, one is
facing the transformation of a society of order into a society of castes.
Indeed by the end of the Vedic period the society of orders was divided into
3 "colours" (Varna) : Brama -poet and priest- , Kishastra –warrior and
chief- Vis – of common birth- . A fourth colour, inferior, composed of
defeated Black people –Dasa, Sudra- meant to serve the Aryas (other orders)
then came and made the situation more complicated. From this time the
Brahmin-order offers every characteristic of a caste : a functional group
occupying a precise place in a hierarchy, shut in on itself by heredity,
endogamy and a very strict code of interdicts.
Before India, the same process had been noted in "casted" Egypt. According
to Dumézil (1958 : 17) "Greeks, in the 5th century, thought they were
discovering there the prototype, the origin of the oldest Athenian
functional classes […]. Actually this structure only took form on the Nile
after contact with Indo-Europeans, who, suddenly appearing in Asia minor and
Syria in the middle of the second millennium before our era, also revealed
to Egyptians horses and all their uses. It's only then that, to survive, the
Pharaohs' old empire gave itself a new organisation, and notably, a
permanent army, a military class.
CheikAnta Diop, in "L'Afrique noire précoloniale" questions Dumézil's thesis
about the origin of castes in India. Relying on a text by Stratbon (who,
himself relies on a more ancient author, Megasthènes) Cheik Anta Diop thinks
that castes in India fit with a division of work, excluding any ethnic
difference, and indeed a Dravidian can be a Brahmin. The criteria allowing
to tell one from the other are either moral or material, not ethnical. In
black Africa, particularly in western Sudan, it is possible to attest to an
Egyptian origin of castes, a very old phenomenon. One can agree with Cheik
Anta Diop when he says that work specialisation, which has brought
hereditary transmission of jobs in the caste system, on either family or
individual scale, started with clan-organisation. At the time of the great
empires, and Ghana, the most ancient, probably dates back at least to the
2nd century before Christ, detribalisation was already effective over the
whole territory of the great empires.
In western Sudan, the origin of castes can be apprehended from the
hypothesis developed by Yoro Dyao about the Noole caste, "the buffoons",
biologically constituted, and which might have been born during the Jaa-Ogo
emigration from Egypt. Researchers unanimously acknowledge that Jaa-Ogo
master iron-metallurgy (Bocoum 1990). Captain Steff, in his "Histoire du
Fouta Toro" puts forward a very interesting idea : "The Jaa-Ogo were very
poor, owned little cattle and cultivated only the minimum to feed
themselves. Their chief was Coumba Waly whose family had the prerogative of
melting and selling iron. They went far away up the mountain to find the
ore, which they melted in furnaces "
According to Cheik Moussa Camara : "The Jaa-Ogo not only sell the iron but
they also govern Fouta" One can, then, question the origin of the debasement
of the blacksmith's social position. How could he fall from the top of
hierarchy to the position of an inferior caste-man ? Why such decline ? How
has this loss of power, which perpetuates through history, been possible ?
Military defeat seems to be the most plausible explanation: the Jaa-Ogo were
defeated by the Soninkés of Ghana as Sumanguru Kanté, the last blacksmith
king of Sosso, was beaten by Soundjata Kaïta in the famous battle of Kirina
(1220-1235). The hypothesis of Abdoulaye Bathily (1989: 221) to explain the
social decline of blacksmiths in upper Senegal is very stimulating: "the
fall of the regime of Sumanguru was perhaps followed by a dispersal of
blacksmiths in all countries. The massive circulation of iron in West Sudan,
as much through the intensification of regional trade as through the access
of an increasing number of peoples and groups of individuals to the
techniques of metallurgy, lead to gradually break the traditional monopoly
of a minority."
One can assert that even if the "social enlargement of the metallurgist
profession had contributed to the decline of the blacksmith's social
influence," the problem remains intact. Why, despite the increase in
economic resources, has a caste consciousness involving fundamental changes
not developed? African societies, up until recently, did not give major
importance to material accumulation and disassociated the control of weapons
from the access to power.
The centralising monarchy, created with Ghana, went further in the political
domination of inferior castes. According to Abdoulaye Bara Diop (1981), it
developed caste relations not in the sense of a socio-economic
interdependence based on the division of labour, but in the sense of a
dependence of inferior castes on superior ones. We will return to this
fundamental idea, even if it contradicts the racial theory of caste
formation developed by Abdoulaye Bara Diop, which is an attempt to root
culture in biology: the so-called caste hierarchy is not based on the wealth
of their members, not on their role in the mode of production, but on to
their degree of purity or impurity.
It is impossible, within the outline of this reflection, to go over the
entirety of problems connected to the evolution of castes in our societies
(all the historians have amply tried to do so). Let's remember16, however,
that its structure had already taken shape in the XIXth century at the time
of the colonial penetration and that two significant cleavages divided
society. They were, on the one hand, the criterion of freedom and, on the
other, hereditary professional specialisation (castes). The criterion of
freedom opposes free men or *geer* (sing.gor) to slaves, *jaam*. Castes
oppose the *ñeeño* – those who practise crafts, music, singing, praises – to
all those who are not tied down by this kind of limitation, the *geer*, from
which results the idea of social bipartition. When they analyse the caste
system, researchers generally include among the *ñeeño *the *griots*, who
have an ideological function, as well as a singing and praising role (*
sab-lekk*, "those who live by the word", *cf*. A.B.Diop). This
classification lends itself to confusion. The term *ñeeño *actually connotes
a more restricted sense; it is applied predominantly to craftspeople castes,
who are often excluded from political power, whereas the *griot* is an
indispensable element of the centralising monarchy. It remains that,
generally, people within castes are "characterised" by endogamy and
impurity.
Let's again refer to several of Tal Tamari's important conclusions regarding
the relation between caste-people and slaves and the reproduction of
caste-people. In certain regions, people within castes have increased in
number through the integration of people who did not originally have caste
status17. The most common process, at least, the most frequently admitted by
those concerned, concerned children of a man within a caste status and his
concubine of servile origin: the children accessed the father's status.
Descendants of captives held by a caste family could, in certain cases,
become eventually integrated into the master's family, conforming to the
model that prevailed in the relations between noble families and their
slaves. This case occurred regularly with blacksmiths. In other
circumstances, nobles passed themselves off as people of castes in order to
escape slavery. We know that people of castes could never be reduced to
slavery (Tamari 1997). Moreover, in Senegal, it is easier to hide a servile
origin than a caste origin.
Concerning the notion of impurity, one can assert that it is a theorised
phenomenon, to say the least: the *geer* are superior by birth, they are of
pure blood, of wolof, halpulaar origin, as far as one goes back in time; the
*ñeeño *are biologically inferior, of a foreign origin. According to Yoro
Dyao (*Cahiers*): "If it is said that the sweat of a blacksmith is
ill-fated, it is because he remains between two bodies: iron and fire. One
is hard, the other is hot. His work is tiresome and the sweat that results
from it creates pain and unhappiness to he/she who touches it." In reality,
the place occupied by ideology in the caste system is fundamental since such
a system is not only a mechanism but also the mental representation that
individuals within groups have of what the behaviour of other groups should
be in regard to them. However, a question remains: through what processes
did the internalisation and formation of values by the castes themselves
occur for as long a time? We will come back to this by analysing the
experience of castes from a matrimonial perspective, but let's first look at
the explanation Cheick Anta Diop and Abdoulaye Bara Diop give.
Cheick Anta Diop (1987: 11) estimates that for "each caste: inconveniences
and advantages, alienations and compensations balance each other out" and he
adds: "the stability of the caste system is secured by the hereditary
transmission of social functions that corresponds, to a certain extent, to a
monopoly, disguised in religious interdiction, in order to eliminate
competition" (*Ibid*: 17). What Cheick Anta Diop is saying is mostly
relevant for a pre-capitalist society and it must be also acknowledged that
the fact of being removed from areas of decision is not easily compensated
for. As for Abdoulaye Bara Diop (1981: 73-90), he explains the situation by
the domination of an agricultural economy, resulting in the dependence of
artisans on peasants in a trade system controlled by the latter. One can not
help holding several reservations. Peasants did not control trade at all,
especially in a long-term perspective. Trans-Saharian trade had generated a
class of merchants closer to Muslim scholars, while the peasants would be
Islamised later: XVIIIth, XIXth century?
Moreover, the *ñeeño *were not forbidden to work in agriculture. They played
not only the same role as the *geer badolo* (peasants) in an economy of
subsistence, but they also had control over the tools of production. Why,
then, did the *ñeeño *not follow the same evolution as the European
bourgeoisie, which was in practically the same situation at the end of the
middle ages?18 Perhaps because the communal movement initiated by the
European bourgeoisie within corporations would be the spearhead of social
and economic mutations in Europe between the XVIth and the XVIIIth century.
In its beginnings, the communal movement's sole objective was for the
bourgeois to be recognised by a three-party society made up of those that
pray, those that fight and those that work the land. The *ñeeño *had no need
whatsoever for this kind of recognition as they were born through
detribalisation. Recognition has often been the objective of emancipation
movements.
Lastly, in the clientilistic relations maintained by caste people and *geer*,
the gift function must not be over-estimated. Only the *griot* was truly
economically dependent, and as much on the *gor* as on the craftsperson. One
can also presume that contempt, which is often emphasised, was reinforced by
the monetisation of exchanges.
*
Daily life, matrimonial status and castes
*
Societies in crisis, such as current African societies, live in a
paradoxical situation: money has become the sole real value, but the need to
avert the crisis develops identity reflexes in the individual and the group.
The exaltation of values specific to our traditions and to our culture often
determines inter-individual relations. The reality of the caste phenomenon
can therefore be grasped also through examples that reflect the everyday
reality, primarily at the level of the lower social classes.
*
Everyday life and caste
*
To respond to an offence received by his daughter, an old jeweller from
Dakar preferred to recognise his grandson rather than the father who is *
geer*. On the contrary, someone else pressured his daughter into choosing
celibacy, forbidding her to marry the man of her life because he was a *
griot*. These sorts if incidents are not only limited to matrimonial
aspects. Some ordinarily explain their misfortunes from having had such and
such contact with a so-called caste person. A woman acknowledges having
never had her hair plaited by a woman of blacksmith origin out of fear that
it would lead her hair to fall out. If she touches the hand of a person of
blacksmith origin, her own hand would be immediately covered with bumps. For
S.L., a driver, it is enough for him to sit on the bed of a blacksmith for
the same effects to occur.
There are numerous such examples. Obviously impossible to prove, they rise
from the worlds of fantasy and the imaginary. The existential reality of
caste people deserves therefore more attention, even if one can observe a
certain evolution in the everyday attitudes towards them. Each time that an
individual is faced with difficulties he/she tends to accuse the other - the
neighbour, the friend - and the caste people generally represent an easy
target as ideological justification is deeply rooted in the collective
memory. It is thus that the caste person is regularly accused of having the
ability to change the fortune of another: they bring bad luck. The caste
people may reach the height of success but they will always be reminded of
their origins. What Sartre says in *Réflexions sur la question juive* (1954:
108, 113) is relevant to caste people in our societies: "They (the Jew) may
accumulate legal protections, wealth, honour but they are only more
vulnerable and they know it (…) but at the same moment that they reach the
height of legal society, another amorphous, diffused and omnipresent society
is revealed to them in flashes that refuses them. They feel, in a very
particular way, the vanity of honour and wealth, since the greatest success
will never gain them access to this society that claims to be the real one:
minister, they will always be a Jewish minister, both an excellency and an
untouchable. However, they will not meet any particular resistance: but a
sort of escape, an impalpable emptiness will hollow around them, creating in
particular an invisible chemistry that devalues all that they touch." To
various degrees, the caste people experience the same reality. Whatever
their success may be, they will always be reminded of their caste origin;
this origin is the cause for their false steps and they will be forgiven no
failure. In lower class neighbourhoods where the caste people are often
accused of witchcraft, it is believed that one must beware of their
*thiat*(their evil-purveyor words). One witnesses here an abusive and
completely
warped generalisation of the belief in the mystical powers of the
blacksmith. The control of fire required magic faculties, the blacksmith was
responsible for circumcision, he possessed healing abilities and practised
incantations (*jat*) to tame iron. This fear of the caste people's words
sets up relations between friends that are not founded on confidence;
reasons to mistrust sleep in the unconscious of the individual and the
weight of culture and education is omnipresent.
*
Matrimonial relations and castes
*
The caste system is particularly rigid in matrimonial relations. As Proust
remarked at the time of the Dreyfus affaire: "When it comes to the Jewish
question, the driver like the aristocrat have the same attitude" (Sartre
1954: 36). The majority of intellectuals, men and women who hold an
important position in the state apparatus share with the local housewife
nearly all the same reflexes on marriage: caste barriers are crossed with
difficulty. Matrimonial investigation is a preliminary that all marriage
suitors must comply to: one must avoid, above all, mixing one's blood. The
consequences of this situation are numerous but the most common remain
premature divorce and a split from the family. In our societies the notion
of a couple is uncommon: marriage is primarily a matter of families and not
of individuals. Other consequences are abortions –problems of caste are not
always the cause for this, but they can be the basis –, most of the cases of
suicide and suicide attempts, infanticides and life traumas connected to
unhappy love affairs19. Is the matrimonial question an individual affair
then? Most of the time – no.
There is certainly no individual revolution, and yet it is the amount of
individual awareness that will be the basis of a revolution in mentalities.
Because caste people are the only ones on who endogamy is strictly imposed,
they have the highest rate of polygamy and arranged marriages between close
relatives, resulting sometimes in harmful consequences on the child's
health. It is true, however, that caste people share these characteristics
with the marabous. Are Islam, school and urbanisation factors of
transformation?
The presence of Islam in West Africa is very deep-rooted as it goes back at
least as far as the VIIIth century; but it was not until the slave-trade
period and particularly that of the colonial invasion that Islam penetrated
the lower classes. However, its presence did not fundamentally modify the
caste system. On the contrary, the Islamic religion adapted itself perfectly
to this system, replacing aristocratic officials with religious ones; in
many aspects, the marabou house reminds one of the royal court. Of course,
certain small cities of Senegal such as Bambey, Mekhé and even once
Tivaouane had caste people as great imams, but this is altogether
exceptional in a big city like Dakar. The results of a study carried out by
Abdoulaye Bara Diop (1981: 94-95) are still relevant today: "In religious
society, they (*sab-lekk*, the *griots*) fulfil certain secondary functions
related to their hereditary specialisation as "people of the word". Muezzins
in mosques specialise in religious songs in evenings organised by the
believers.
The adaptation of Islam to the caste system contradicts its egalitarian
principles (*cf*. Surat 49, *Al-Hujarat*, "Private apartments", verse 10).
The first revolution in the history of Islam – that of the Abbasids (750)
–precisely wanted to put an end to clientelistic relations between Arabs and
non-Arabs (mawalis). Abdoulaye Bara Diop was certainly right to think that
Islam, however important it may be, was not, through sole ideological force,
able to radically change or curtail the caste system. However, the great
marabous with the great majority of them being of a superior caste, did not
initiate any action to assert the egalitarian principle.
Moreover, the supposed superiority of marabou origins remains to be
clarified. In regards to this, traditions are completely contradictory even
if research can determine the very modest origins of those that lead the
marabou revolutions at the turn of the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries, Islam
being the only alternative to aristocratic oppression. The problem arises,
above all, from culture and, generally speaking, African culture is stilted.
It is only able to grasp exterior contributions and adapt them. African
cultures change little through contact with other civilisations, and there
are objective reasons for this. For instance, the changes provided by school
are not considerable. Attendance to a western school does not greatly
disrupt mentalities. The same phenomenon is found all the way through to
professional training. Let's take a large caste family where nine people
were able to access tertiary education. Their specialisation is as
following: three people in chemistry-physics, two in natural science, one in
economics, one in pharmaceutics, one in general mechanics and one in
literature. Is it only a coincidence? In any case, one finds a predominance
of caste people in scientific fields of study, particularly experimental
sciences, and this phenomenon may be explained by the existence of a
pre-scientific mind in caste professions20. One also observes that youth
unemployment affects less those that come from crafts castes: it is common
to see these young people go to school the days there are lessons and, the
other days, to find them in the workshop of the father, the uncle, etc.
Another example is that of the *maîtrisards* of caste origin who formed an
economic interest group to open a big modern jewellery shop. Or again, the
case of a young person with a PhD in law (with a specialisation in
international relations) who, unable to find a position corresponding to his
diploma, lives off his trade as a jeweller. We think that a valorisation of
craft castes after independence would have given a technological basis to
Africa in the perspective of endogenous development.
*
The attitude and perspectives of the caste people
*
The attitude of the caste people can prove to be deceptive. There is firstly
the caste people's self-consciousness, which manifests itself through
certain excesses such as ostentation, the acceptance of gifts (contrary to a
certain conception of human dignity). But there is also the solidarity of
the caste social environment and the exaltation of sometimes very
conservative values: sense of family, honour, etc. Max Weber's analysis on
the relations between Protestantism and capitalism could be equally applied
to caste people. By preventing energies from unravelling in all directions
(the inferiority complex being a limiting factor), the system compels the
caste people to dedicate themselves to work and, since the end of the Second
World War, there has been a high number of caste people immigrating (Morice
1982) towards the majority of the African capitals. They bring their skills
(jewellery, tapestry, shoe-making, etc.) but they are also found in trade.
Does the decline of the craft-industry due to the invasion of the internal
market by foreign products explain the immigration of caste people? This
hypothesis actually remains empirical. We are convinced, however, that a
more in-depth study would reveal conclusive results, especially if one
considers the proportion of migrants in relation to the number of caste
people within global society. The economic success of the caste people is a
significant feature of modern Senegal. By definition, caste people have
always been present in productive sectors. Many are those that, at the time
of independence, transformed their workshop into a small family company:
woodwork, jewellery, shoe making, clothes manufacturing… Others such as "the
caste people of Baol entered successfully into trade". (*L'Autre Afrique*)
The caste people's second type of reaction is the acceptance of their
"state", non-refusal, the proclamation of themselves such as they are. This
attitude of the caste people can be criticised especially in a process of
democracy construction. The fact of wilfully considering oneself as a caste
person must only be a step in the course towards the abolishment of the
system, a *sine qua non* condition to reach true democracy. Yet, one
observes that certain caste people, primarily the *griots*, misuse their
position in society. Under the pretext that they are considered inferior,
they distort social relations, become involved in numerous intrigues, and
spend their time begging, an occurrence that is becoming widespread. This
situation contributes, among other factors, to the systemisation of begging
and creates an ideal environment for corruption to set in: in a society
where one is not repelled by begging, indulgence becomes commonplace and
favours parasitism. In Senegal, many are those that live off the State and
its citizens, thus reducing the number of active people while at the same
time, annihilating their efforts. It is not solely the existence of caste
people but the type of social relations created by the caste system that
favours this situation.
The ultimate attitude is that of refusal. Certain caste people, taking
advantage of a neutral name, simply refuse to take on their situation as
caste people; others hope to escape their castes by entering into
matrimonial relations outside of their own society. This may explain the
high number of mixed marriages among the first intellectuals of caste
origin. These marriages outside of caste are not always a bad thing, but
they often put the children resulting from these unions in an awkward
position: they are described as *geer benn tank* (having only one foot). One
can gain a certain optimism following the example of the philosopher
Souleymane Bachir Daigne21 who estimates that the matrimonial stronghold is
in the process of falling. It is harder to follow him however when he
asserts that "urbanisation made it possible for caste people to blend into
the anonymousness of the city." The family name remains the caste people's
identity card even if it is recognised that the emergence of a financial
nobility in a society in crisis has demolished the foundations of ostracism.
Let's say, by way of conclusion, that fighting in favour of caste
suppression is a primary principle for human rights, as individual
liberation remains the very condition of development. How can our economic
backwardness be fought without supporting new ideas to discredit certain
dogmas, prejudices, fanaticism, arbitrariness, parasitism, in short, all
archaisms of a society that has become, in a certain way, too intelligent
for its own structures? Responding to this question firstly implies
proposing the eradication of, among other archaisms, the caste system.
Society will progress faster the day the Senegalese become aware that
practicing a profession has absolutely no relation to social decline.
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