Aoua Keïta, the voice of African independents

Audio 48:29

Aoua Keïta.

Pascale barthélémy

By: Valérie Nivelon

59 mins

The first woman MP for French West Africa, Aoua Keïta speaks on behalf of Africans in love with justice and freedom.

A historical figure in the independence of Mali, Aoua Keïta gained his popularity thanks to his talents as a midwife.

Publicity

Trade unionist, member of the US-RDA since its creation in 1946, she embodies the anti-colonial and pan-African movement for the emancipation of women.

With the sound of our unpublished archives, we discover all its eloquence, 60 years after the independence of Mali.

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, historian, lecturer at the ENS of Lyon

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, former teacher, trade unionist comrade of Aoua Keïta, Malian delegate to the Congress of the International Democratic Federation of Women, Vienna 1958

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, director of Cauris

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, former deputy from Mali and historian.

and

To read:

, published by Présence Africaine.

A program produced by Sophie Janin in partnership with the site The Conversation, of which we publish an article below on Aoua Keïta.

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The fate of Aoua Keïta, exceptional woman and figure of the independence of Mali

On July 7, 2017, the 38th promotion of the Koulikoro Combined Military School was baptized Promotion Aoua Keïta, named after Mali's first woman MP.

Twitter account of the presidency of Mali

Who remembers, in Mali today, the fights led by midwife Aoua Keïta, political and union activist at the time of decolonization?

At a time when Mali celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of its accession to independence and is going through a deep political crisis, the trajectory of this exceptional woman reminds us of the role of African women in the effervescence of the political struggles of these decades of emancipation. of the colonial yoke.

Becoming a “communist midwife” in a colonial context

Born in 1912 in Bamako, the capital of French Sudan (now Mali) which was then part of French West Africa (AOF), Aoua Keïta grew up in a polygamous family.

It was on the initiative of her father, a former tirailleur, that she attended the Foyer des Métisses in 1923, which welcomed black and mixed-race students that the French administration wanted to educate.

She then belongs to the small minority of women in the AOF who go to school, to the dismay of her mother who considers that a girl who went to school is lost for marriage and declares bitterly:

" 

 "

But Aoua Keïta is brilliant.

In 1928 she passed the competitive examination for the AOF School of Medicine (which opened in Dakar in 1918) and obtained her midwifery diploma three years later, in 1931.

She was then assigned to Gao, a town located in the far north of Mali, in a region whose language she did not know (sonrai, although she spoke Bambara).

Because of her profession, however, she quickly became popular and forged bonds of trust with local women which would serve as a breeding ground for her political activity.

It begins alongside her doctor husband, Daouda Diawara, whom she married in 1935. Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia fuels her revolt against colonialism.

She joined the Union of Doctors, Veterinarians, Pharmacists and Midwives then the Sudanese Union – African Democratic Rally (US-RDA), the Sudanese section of the federal anti-colonial party created in October 1946 in Bamako and affiliated in a first time in the French Communist Party.

Aoua Keïta quickly becomes a very active activist.

She takes charge of propaganda in the localities where she is affected, is one of the rare African women to be able to vote in the elections of 1946 as an "indigenous" citizen, and clandestinely organizes meetings of women in her maternity ... to avoid so much wrath husbands than the colonial administration.

In 1949, Aoua Keïta, failing to have children and rejecting the idea of ​​having a co-wife, divorced.

She then devoted herself fully to her professional and political activities.

Identified by the colonial administration as a “communist” activist the day after the US-RDA's victory in Gao in the 1951 elections, she was transferred to Senegal.

Despite the repression, she became a major figure in her party.

She was appointed “commissioner for women's organization” in 1958 and, as such, became the only female member of the US-GDR Political Bureau.

The following year, she was elected member of the Federation of Mali in Sikasso, becoming the first African from the former AOF to accede to such a position.

Bamako: epicenter of pan-Africanism for women

For Aoua Keïta, the fight against colonial injustices is inseparable from the organization of women and the defense of their rights.

In collaboration with the teacher Aïssata Sow Coulibaly, she founded a union of women workers in Bamako in 1956. Two years later, she participated in the creation of the Union of Women of Sudan (UFS), which aims to defend women's rights and serve as a basis for the creation of a pan-African organization: the West African Women's Union (UFOA).

It was founded in Bamako in July 1959, by women from French Sudan, Guinea, Senegal and Dahomey.

Founding Congress of the West African Women's Union in Bamako from July 20 to 23, 1959. AFP

The organization has an ambitious program: it condemns the abandonment of marital homes and repudiations, calls for the abolition of certain customs deemed harmful, the institution of civil marriage and the compulsory consent of the spouses, the abolition of early marriage and of polygamy.

Its creation obeys several concerns: consolidating the links between the countries of AOF at a time when the autonomy of each territory is asserting itself more and more;

constitute an organization capable of making African women more visible on an international scale, in particular in relation to their “sisters” in the English colonies;

promote reforms both in the family sphere and in terms of recognition of the place of women in the public sphere.

The UFOA disappeared in 1960 but the networks that it enabled to weave served as the basis for a continental structure a few years later: the Conference of African Women (future Pan-African), created in Dar es Salaam, capital of Tanzania, in 1962 and headquartered in Bamako.

The Malian capital is a central space for Pan-Africanism at the time of decolonization.

In the same year, it also hosted the first meeting of the International Democratic Federation of Women which was held on African soil.

Shortly after, the Marriage Code was passed in the newly independent socialist Mali.

If Aoua Keïta, the only woman to sit in the National Assembly during the vote, does not manage to prevent an amendment restricting monogamy, this text is considered revolutionary in its time.

The exclusivity of civil marriage will be abrogated in 2011 against the advice of Malian women's organizations, which saw it as an infringement of rights acquired after independence.

An African in the Cold War World

A ardent fighter for the anti-colonial cause, African unity and women's rights, Aoua Keïta contributes to strengthening links between African activists and international organizations.

As such, and like the Ivorian Célestine Ouezzin Coulibaly, she travels the world and articulates the struggles waged locally on the continent with international anti-imperialist struggles.

She made a trip outside Africa for the first time in 1957, as a delegate to the Congress of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in Leipzig in the GDR.

At the age of 45, she made a strong impression there.

The day after Mali's accession to independence on September 22, 1960, she moved closer to socialist countries, traveled to the Soviet Union and Asia (China, Korea, Vietnam) and established links with women's organizations in these countries. cooperation focused on girls' education, maternal and child health.

The solidarity forged with the women of the Third World and the communist activists does not mean, however, that it breaks off relations with the women of the “Western Bloc”.

In the context of the Cold War, socialist Mali chose non-alignment and maintains effective collaboration with France as well as with the United States.

Aoua Keïta becomes an "African Woman"

Aoua Keïta's political career came to an abrupt end in 1967. While the country was going through a "cultural revolution", she was excluded from power, as were the other rare women to have obtained political responsibilities.

The military coup d'etat which overthrows the 1st Republic of Modibo Keïta, the following year, pushes it on the road of exile.

Living between Congo-Brazzaville and France, she devotes herself to writing her memoirs.

This exceptional testimony published in 1975 is undoubtedly not for nothing in the fact that today it embodies the participation of women in the struggle for the independence of Mali and a model for Malian women's and feminist associations.

Her effigy was reproduced in 2006 on loincloths on the occasion of African Women's Day set for July 31.

“Mali's first woman MP.

Aoua Keïta ”.

Mural located on Koulouba hill in Bamako.

The griot Bazoumana Sissoko is the author of the music for the national anthem of Mali.

Author provided

His portrait also adorns the vast mural located on the heights of Koulouba, the "hill of power" in Bamako, which traces 150 years of Malian history.

Authors: 

- Ophélie Rillon,

researcher at CNRS, member of the Les Afriques dans le monde Laboratory (LAM), Bordeaux Montaigne University

- Pascale Barthélémy,

lecturer in contemporary history, ENS Lyon.

→ Click here for the article on The Conversation

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