2023-05-01 13:59:48
“It is here in the National Assembly that the dreams and aspirations of the people you represent are condensed”
May 1, 2023
Max Samuel Oboumadjogo, Gabonese Minister in charge of Culture and the Arts, had defended the bill on the status of cultural actors in Gabon before the Honorable Deputies. It was on April 27, 2023 at the Léon Mba Palace in Libreville. (entire speech).
Mr President of the National Assembly,
Madame President of the Commission for Health, Education, Social and Cultural Affairs,
Honorable Members, Ladies and Gentlemen…
Thank you for your welcome in this house of the represented people. We are here in the place of putting into perspective the problems of our fellow citizens, whose mandate each of you bears.
At this stage of our work, we have, I hope, exhausted the main concerns of the text of the law submitted for your examination. I therefore humbly propose to share its spirit with you, because as you know, the law is one fact and the spirit of the law is another. The complementarity of the two creates a rational clarification which seems fundamental to me.
United in harmony and brotherhood
Awake Gabon
A dawn rises, encourages the ardor
Which vibrates and lifts us up
It’s finally our rise to bliss (twice)
I know you recognized the refrain from La Concorde. And without devious spirit, I specify that it constitutes a true masterpiece.
Remind me that it was Georges Damas Aleka who wrote Gabon’s national anthem, and I couldn’t help but add that he also composed it. It is therefore a text that can be read, recited and sung.
If you said that the author-composer of our patriotic song was a political figure, I would fully accept it.
However, you would allow me in return to brandish the proof that this great man of our history also had an undeniable poetic sensitivity, which necessarily made him an artist.
Honorable Members, recognize that on all official occasions, we play and sing our national anthem, sometimes mechanically, without dwelling on the deep meaning of the words, nor even on their beauty.
Taking advantage of my presence before you, I would like to confess my admiration for all those people who, at a certain time, felt Gabon vibrate so much within them that they were able to name it, sing it and share it from one generation to the other ; thus overflowing our little political, ethnic or tribal quarrels.
It is this admiration – in the form of eternal gratitude – that leads me to dwell on the aesthetic relevance and the depth, both spiritual and societal, of the words of La Concorde. A hymn composed of a refrain, which is actually a quintile, punctuating four quatrains whose verses are alexandrines. Who says better ?
When I pronounce each of the verses of La Concorde, syllable by syllable, not only do I feel transported to a Gabonese elsewhere that reconciles me with myself, but I also feel completely filled with the nine sounds of Gabon.
I then feel my soul regenerating, because bathed in each river that crosses Gabon, and gives its name to a province of my country.
Yes, Honorable Members, I hope that – like me – you feel the Ogooué flowing within you, whether it is High or Medium, whether it is associated with the Lolo, the Ivindo or whether it confronts at the sea.
I sincerely hope that you are sensitive to the majestic waves of the Nyanga and Ngounié rivers; that like me, you feel the vigor of Ntem and the grace of Woleu irrigate our veins?
Let us pay attention to the melody of the Komo which, as it runs to mingle with the Atlantic, forming the Estuary of Gabon, invigorates the accent of our vernacular languages, the mysteries of which only informed minds know how to decipher.
Honorable Members,
it is here at the National Assembly that the dreams and aspirations of the people you represent are condensed, in accordance with the spirit of our national anthem, as the first two lines of its second quatrain remind us:
« Yes, that happy time dreamed of by our ancestors
Come home at last, rejoice sentient beings ».
Honorable, with your permission, I would say:
Yes, that happy time dreamed of by our ancestors
Finally arrives at our house, rejoice the artists.
A brilliant thinker named Cicero once said that ” The most fruitful of all arts is the art of living well ».
Therefore, the questions I allow myself to ask you are simple:
• Does the artist live well in Gabon?
• Do you have the feeling that once the curtain of his folkloric celebrity has come down, the Gabonese artist is truly happy with his condition?
If your answer to these questions is “yes”, all is well in the best of all possible worlds, applaud the artist, forget about it and move on. And incidentally, forgive me for having come to disturb you today.
But, if your answer consists in recognizing that the Gabonese artist is a crushing case of conscience for all of us, you have today, like the Senators a few weeks ago, the responsibility of reconciling the notions of talent, merit and of dignity in the recognition of the work of cultural actors.
They do not expect alms, on the contrary they shy away from it. Fundamentally refusing pity, Gabonese artists and cultural producers fear above all that their end clap will surprise them in the unworthy precariousness of their living conditions.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, like you, like all of us, the artist and the cultural actor want to participate, through their taxes, in the effort to develop the national economy. They want to subscribe to social security, have a pension and ensure a death benefit for their offspring.
Like you and me, cultural actors want to take part in the life of the country and feel useful. Useful for themselves certainly, useful for their families also, useful for their country above all…
Perhaps we tend to think that our artists only claim rights. No, believe me! They know that rights are the reciprocal of duties; they do not seek to become civil servants and are aware that the expected status is in no way a panacea for all their ills.
In any case, our cultural actors will have no choice but to be competitive, as required by the exercise of a liberal profession.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Today I carry the voice of cultural actors, that is to say a part of the people who have also explicitly instructed me to insist on this state of affairs:
Our artists no longer want to be entirely separate citizens, but rather full citizens.
This is why I will dare to ask one last rhetorical question to which I invite each of us to answer in the depths of ourselves, in all objectivity:
Starting from the life led by the artist in Gabon, what idea should the world have of the Gabonese man?
« Yes, that happy time dreamed of by our ancestors
Come home at last, rejoice sentient beings ».
Yes, that happy time dreamed of by our ancestors
Finally arrives at our house, rejoice the artists
As Georges Damas Aleka would say today.
Thank you.
Max Samuel OBOUMADJOGO
Minister of Culture and Arts
#National #Assembly #dreams #condensed