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Research in African Literatures 31.2 (2000) 117-131

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Fact and Fiction in God's Bits of Wood

James A. Jones

The history of a complex social movement is probably unknowable. Eyewitnesses provide the most vivid impressions, but they lack the broad perspective that places individual events in a wider context. Scholars who examine history "after the fact" benefit from a broader perspective, but are forced to select from the "facts" that eyewitnesses choose to record or remember. Neither approach combines first-hand knowledge of events with a complete understanding of how those events are interconnected.

With that in mind, this article examines various accounts of the 1947-48 railroad strike in French West Africa. The 1947-48 strike was a watershed event in colonial history that ended in victory over the colonial administration. The struggle furthered the formation of mass movements to fight for independence, and the settlement consolidated social changes that rendered colonialism unstable. The events of the strike have been preserved in colonial archives that contain French administrative records on legal and economic aspects of the strike, by eyewitnesses who provided their own recollections to interviewers in the early 1990s, and in the form of a historical novel by Ousmane Sembene entitled God's Bits of Wood.

God's Bits of Wood is not only a staple of world literature classes in the West, but it is also widely read in Senegal and Mali where the strike occurred. Its popularity in those countries creates problems for oral historians who wish to study the strike (Cooper, "Our Strike" 81). This article compares the two versions of the strike presented by Sembene and the French colonial authorities using archival documents, interviews with Sembene and strike participants, and new scholarship by historians of French West Africa. The purpose of this comparison is to describe points of convergence and divergence between the two accounts, and to evaluate discrepancies in light of events that occurred at the time Sembene's book was published.

In order to present a complete narrative of the struggle from oppression to equality, Sembene condenses fourteen years of labor history into a single year (see Bouta-GuÐ"Ёye). Nevertheless, Sembene's narrative conforms to the official record in most important aspects. There has been a railway linking Dakar to the Niger River at Koulikoro and the Senegal River at Saint Louis through a junction at ThiÐ"Ёs since 1923. The Chemin de Fer Dakar-Niger became the centerpiece of French development efforts in the interwar period (Jones 230-35). Although the steam locomotives are gone and some of the smaller stations are closed, the arrival of a train in Bamako, at ThiÐ"Ёs, or in any of the lesser stations is still an important event. A 1944 administrative reform combined the Dakar-Niger with the Conakry-Niger, the Abidjan-Niger and the Benin-Niger (Lakroum 300-01) into the Chemins de Fer de l'Afrique Occidentale FranÐ"§aise, which employed more than 17,000 African workers, making it the largest industrial enterprise in French West Africa (Suret-Canale 21). The work force is not as large as it once was, but [End Page 117] it still plays a major role in towns like ThiÐ"Ёs and Kayes whose main enterprise is the railway.

Unlike the colonial documents, which stress the contributions of French engineers and officers, Sembene's narrative presents African workers and their families as the heroes of the strike. Throughout the colonial period, the French used Africans for construction and to perform unskilled labor on the railway. Supervision was provided by European technicians and administrators who enjoyed higher salaries, generous medical and vacation benefits, the right to an allowance for their families, and extra pay because they worked overseas. Africans were denied all of this, even the technical school graduates who began to obtain positions with the railway following the expansion of the system in 1923. 1

Much of the book's action is focused in ThiÐ"Ёs where the railway administration constructed a new repair facility in 1923. Within six years the town quadrupled in size to 13,000 inhabitants as African workers concentrated there from all over the system (Savonnet 71-81). They provided a critical mass for labor protests during the interwar period and after World War II. The two-tiered system of labor organization alluded to in the exchange between the workman Samba and "the bureaucrat" Bachirou (Sembene 14) was well-known to Africans and Europeans alike. Since traffic on the Dakar-Niger consisted mostly of agricultural produce, the French need for labor varied widely according to the season (Jones 174, 289). To maintain the flexibility of their labor force, the French divided it into a cadre of permanent employees and a much larger group of day laborers called auxiliaires. The cadre was also divided into three groups: the cadre commun supÐ"©rieur composed of all European workers and a few Africans who worked in the accounting office; the cadre local supÐ"©rieur made up of African technical school graduates who worked as railway technicians and officials; and the cadre local secondaire, which included Africans who obtained jobs as draftsmen and labor foremen by local examination or the personal recommendation of an administrator. All other employees were hired as auxiliaires who were recruited as needed and trained on the job. Their contracts were negotiated locally for short terms, so they had no job security whatsoever, although many held the same job for years. They received no benefits, and the terms of their contract made it impossible for an auxiliaire to advance to one of the cadres (TraorÐ"© 21; Cooper, Decolonization 243).

While the French administration occasionally noted worker displeasure with this arrangement, 2 it successfully resisted any change in the system until after World War II. African railway workers went on strike as early as 1881, and there were major actions in 1920, 1925, 1938, 1947, and 1952 (Jones 324-45). The 1938 strike was the bloodiest (Thiam 300-38), and the 1952 strike was the most effective (Schachter-Morgenthau 228). The 1947 strike, however, was the longest and affected the most people, so

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