On March 26, 1984, Guinean President Ahmed Sékou Touré died in a hospital in Cleveland, United States. Forty years later, the debate surrounding his memory still tears apart the families of the victims of his regime and the heirs of his ideas on Pan-Africanism and African dignity.
« There is no dignity without freedom: we prefer freedom in poverty to wealth in slavery », the Guinean people will be spoiled: they will have poverty but also repression, dictatorship.
This scathing response to De Gaulle, visiting Conakry on August 25, 1958, to convince, in vain, Guinea to accept the Franco-African Community, marked the start of the mission ” destabilization Guinea » by the Françafrique machine. Sékou Touré nevertheless delivered his speech to Jacques Foccart a few days earlier.
More ” Mister Africa » did not transmit it to de Gaulle. The SDECE (External Counter-Espionage Service) spared no effort to remove him from power. The first attempt at destabilization targets the Guinean economy is “ Operation Persil “. The French secret services manufactured
fake Guinean francs. The country’s economy, already sick, is going through a serious period of crisis, which forces the devaluation of the Guinean franc. For Foccart, Sékou
Touré is public enemy number one. Besides his charisma and the fact that he could influence neighboring countries, his rapprochement with the USSR does not please
not at all to the head of the Africa cell at the Elysée. Following the numerous coups of which he was the target, the “ grand Syli » showed uncontrollable paranoia, leading to the arrest of many suspected political opponents. The symbol of this repression is Camp Boiro where nearly
50,000 people died…
Despite everything, Sékou Touré was an anti-imperialist and pan-Africanist, his only allies in the region are the Malian Modibo Keïta and the Ghanaian Kwame Nkrumah. This was not to the taste of France with whom he broke diplomatic relations from 1965 until the official visit of Giscard d’Estaing to Conakry in 1978. Sékou Touré will make his visit ” reconciler » in France in 1982.
Two years later, on March 26, 1984, the child from Faranah (his native village) died suddenly in a Cleveland hospital. Ironically, despite countless putsch or elimination attempts, Sékou Toure died a natural death!
With Survival.org
2024-03-26 12:19:16