When an event that took place is only made known by eye witness account that makes it veracity somewhat questionable as you have people who may not remember or even record what they have seen. The onus is now on the people studying or searching out this piece of history to select from this eyewitness information what they perceive to be facts and what might not carry so much weight. The strike of 1947 and 1948 was one of such events even though it was a watershed event that took place in colonial Africa and wrought victory over the presiding colonial administration.
Ousmane Sembene however did his best to capture the events in his book God’s Bits of Wood. This book had gone on to be a staple read and especially in Senegal and Mali where the events actually took place. This book has garnered so much popularity in those areas that it has become hard for oral historians like Cooper to get a feel of what truly happened. After all that has been said and done, it should be said that Sembene does indeed have some historical facts right as he correctly reported that indeed there was a strike that occurred and how the strike changed the face of many things in French West Africa in particular and the African continent in general.
20,000 African railway workers went on a strike that began in October 1947. The strike shut down most of the rail traffic along the French West Africa and it lasted for five and a half months. This experience has also been immortalized in the minds of Africans by the book written by Ousmanne Sembene – God’s Bits of Wood. In his book he scripts a drama about a strike attempt that was weakened as a result of the impersonal approach by the trade unionists as well as the seduction of French education. It was also hampered by the greed of the local elites. What redeemed this strike however was the women’s movement that climaxed into a march on Dakar that blossomed into an African’s community fight against colonialism.
The task of the historian is made both difficult and important as a result of the novel by Sembene. Cooper claimed that this novel has built some sort of resentment in the lives of those rail workers who believe that Sembene took their struggle for independence and glamorized it in a bid to make his novel seem epic (Cooper 81). Cooper took a different approach in the writing of his article and he wanted to re-examine what part in history the Rail Way Strike occupied in post-World War II West Africa. In hindsight one can claim assimilation between social and political struggles after the achievement of independence. Although a connection will always exist, the problem arises when one tries to pry the complexities and ambiguities. It was possible for the striking railway workers to hold on to their strike for five months because they were so embedded in the African communities. However if their demands were to be met they would have to be pulled out of those same communities and into a non-racial body of railway men.
Although the union’s goals from 1946 and onward was to create a uniform set of wages for Africans and white French railway men there are some people who could argue otherwise that the movement of the strike drew from anti-colonial movements that went beyond the workplace giving Africans a sense of empowerment (Cooper 82). Cooper stipulates that this strike is better off being understood from the point of view of the French government that was at that time trying to understand the changing political terrain of an African people that were been infused with nationalistic valour.
The French sociology of Africa was myopic at best as they divided them into two categories – paysans and evolues. The government officials were happy to provide them the barest minimum in a bid to further their economic growth. The strike began in December of 1945 and by January it had extended to other commercial establishments as it began a general strike. In order to end the strike officials had to negotiate with different category of workers and this worked in ending the strike by February. The strike brought about empowerment as politics was being changed from the top and the bottom. In April of that year the railway workers became agitated as they felt that their restrain during the strike has ensured that they did not receive what they were due and they believed that their leader was not interested in fighting for their benefits as he had a different agenda to pursue. There arose a clerk Abdoul Karim Sow and some other people with clerical skills. This younger generation of people staged a personal attack on leadership. The leadership resigned as the union went on to request an equalization of wages and benefits for all railway workers and admittance of all auxiliaries in the cadres (Cooper 87).
Reading through Cooper’s account it is obvious to see that he handled his research from the French point of view and that while he was reporting on events that had taken place in Africa he was relaying it through the leadership at that time that was French. This is the greatest contrast between his work and that of Sembene. Another semblance of the dispute was the uncertainty felt by railway workers with regards their position as government workers. In the months of April the worsening economic terrain meant that officials had to hold down prices and wages although they did not want this to result in a strike.
Cooper claimed that going through research and reports about the five and a half month strike revealed some strengths and weaknesses of the strike and how it was maintained and where it may have fallen short. He gave many instances as the fear of the strikers that the strike beaters may affect their success or the slow speed of the African politics and political game or even the month long wait before they reconstituted a work force or even increased traffic. In all it was fascinating that a large body of workers could conduct themselves together during the strike and Cooper claims that they were able to do this because the community stood as one with farmers and other members of the community supporting the railway workers. The police came to learn about this web of support because they had believed that the strike would not last long as they felt the railway workers would not be able to sustain themselves and their families. What they found out was that the community came out to support these railway workers because they were family (Cooper 94). The railway workers have been advised by the union members to go back to their villages as this would help them reduce the cost of feeding as many of them went back to the farms or families with a means for sustenance so they were not living by the depots which would have been a more expensive venture. In all, Cooper was able to ascertain through interviews he had in the 90s that the communities rose up to prove the importance of rural ties in the African environment.
Women also played a very important role in the success of this strike as they were seen to hold the home with many of them selling their market in a bid to sustain their families, and even going on to write songs about the strikers while taunting the strike breakers. However Cooper disagrees with Sembene here on the impact the women played in this strike or even if his Penda character was not a figment of his own imagination. He goes on to state that the ‘women’s march’ spoken of by Sembene is absent from police reports or oral testimonies and that in itself makes it hard to lay a claim to the very impact had by these women during the strike.
However this strike embarked on by the railway workers saw them get alienated from many other bodies who felt they may not win and did not want to be on the receiving end of the negative repercussions that may come about as a result. Cooper does however agree with Sembene’s main point that the struggle led to a sense of entitlement among the strikers and this went on to have serious implications. On the other side though the leaders on both sides did not make the railway strikers cause their own. The puzzling aspect of the government’s actions came in the fact that they felt the strike would not last long and as such did not do anything to really negate the strike. Although the high commissioner said in the aftermath of the strike that there would be no penalty for the strike, he did mention that the workers would be taken back in order of seniority until all the available spaces have been occupied. The administration had faced the strike as a dispute over labour and not a colonial contest and many years later you still find former railwaymen who will claim that the strike was held over the respect of professional value and not the ‘spirit of the independence’ (Cooper 115)
As have been stated above, while Cooper handled his research from the point of view of the French officers, Sembene African families and workers as the heroes of the strike and its aftermath. He did however allude to the exchanges between the workman and the bureaucrat (Sembene 14). At the time Sembene wrote his book there were still eyewitnesses that were willing to give their reports and though he was not a historian, his story of Africa having a victory over the French resonated positively with the Africans. It also has proven to be true that his facts were indeed historical. While he had gone on to interviews to claim that the strike was not racial or colonial but rather a class struggle, he also emphasized that their success could be traced to their African roots. He also had connected his retelling of the strike to the process of decolonization (Sembene 59).
While many other historians after him have made mention of various African political parties, Sembene made no mention to either and many scholars believe that it was a ploy on his part to be seen as politically neutral as these same parties were engaged in battles in 1959. If Sembene did not speak about the African politicians of the time, he did even worse with religious leaders as he portrayed negatively those he believed to be morally corrupt. With regards the support of the Muslim leaders, both Sembene and Cooper are on different sides of the fence. He called out the consciousness of the working class as the distinguishing factor between previous strikes and the one of 1947. He backed this thought up with examples of how solidarity and unity among the poor helped strengthen the strikers in their endeavours.
While it is obvious from Sembene and Cooper’s narration that there are many things they did not agree on in their retelling of this watershed event and even while the outcomes may be different from both perspectives, what is true and obvious is that there indeed was a strike in French West Africa of 1947 that lasted for five and a half months. A strike that men decided to partake in because they wanted their voices to be heard and they wanted their lives to be changed. No type of narration or research could ever change that.
References
Ousmane, Sembene. “God’s Bit of Wood.” Oxford, UK: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1960. E-Book. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-5jPSaS1lGkC&pg=PA1&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
Cooper, Frederick. “Our Strike': Equality, Anticolonial Politics and the 1947-48 Railway Strike in French West Africa.” The Journal of African History, Vol. 37, No. 1. (1996), pp. 81-118.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8537%281996%2937%3A1%3C81%3A%27SEAPA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R
