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From 1960, Senegal has experienced four long periods of non-military rule: Léopold Sédar Senghor (1960-80), Abdou Diouf (1980-2000), Abdoulaye Wade (2000-12) and Macky Sall (2012- April 2024, pending elections). Yet, the recent parliamentary decision to postpone the February 2024 presidential elections is considered by many to be an institutional coup by the incumbent president. Rejected by the Constitutional Court, the decision catalysed mass uprisings in major Senegalese cities in which three protestors died.
This essay takes a longue durée approach to explain that the pre-electoral period has always been a trying time for Senegalese democracy. All incumbent presidents have attempted to remain in power through manipulating electoral laws. This is well-illustrated by Macky Sall's postponement of the February elections to 2 June by mobilising a parliamentary vote backed by the majority of coalition MPs and the intervention of the police on the street to subdue the protest. This moment is comparable to the major institutional crisis of 1962 which resulted in Senegal adopting a presidential regime. In addition, the prevailing state and EU-sponsored police brutality recalls the crackdown against the May '68 mass protests that erupted for similar reasons. Professor Momar Coumba Diop rightly reminds us that in reconfiguring forces in Senegalese society, the ruling elites were not successful in asserting 'lasting moral and intellectual leadership over the society'. Consequently, groups challenging the legitimacy of the ruling class have developed a 'riot culture'.
The current 2024 political crisis which started with the March 2021 citizen protest has led to the highest number of killings (over 60) and unlawful imprisonments that the country has known. But I argue that what we are currently witnessing in Senegal is neither 'democracy dying in Africa' nor the country being 'on the brink' as per some catastrophist headlines from the British media. On the contrary, the roots of the current crisis are to be found in the highly centralised Senegalese political system which allows for extreme concentration of powers in the hands of the president. Senegal's home-grown model of democracy from below explains the historical struggle against constitutional coups.
An unprecedented parliamentary crisis?
The institutional crisis which started on 5 February 2024 is not unprecedented. It was under President Léopold Sédar Senghor that the young monopartite Republic experienced its first major crisis in December 1962 resulting in the arrest and life imprisonment of the then Prime Minister Mamadou Dia. A few days later, on 19 December 1962, the parliament approved President Senghor's decision to merge the functions of Prime Minister and President, thereby confirming President Senghor as the new head of government. It was following this internal coup, orchestrated by Senghor, that the referendum organised in March 1963 sealed the adoption of a presidential regime in Senegal.
Remember May '68! State-sponsored violence against students
On 3 February 1967, with the assassination of the MP Demba Diop in a parking lot in Thiès followed by the attempted assassination of President Senghor, two people were caught, tried and executed the same year. Senghor was re-elected in 1968 against this background after which his government passed an austerity package affecting student welfare programmes. This prompted unprecedented strike actions at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar. The strike, which constituted the twilight hours of revolutionary politics in Senegal according to Pascal Bianchini, became generalised when major labour unions joined in, later amplified by peasant organising, leading to student and worker arrests and deaths. To address the political crisis a cabinet reshuffle was introduced followed by a state of emergency, declared in May 1968.
In a similar fashion, the 2021 protests resulted in at least 60 un-investigated deaths, including students, and the closure of the main university sites. As was the objective of the May '68 students, workers and peasants, the protests were aimed at fighting the high costs of living in rural and urban centres.
Legacies of 23 June 2023: Macky Sall replicating lessons from Abdoulaye Wade
President Sall has been testing the quality of the Senegalese institutions, which he has spent two terms undermining. The illustration here is the lack of separation between the executive, the parliament and the judiciary. The current coup by Macky Sall reminds many of his predecessor Abdoulaye Wade's attempt to change the constitution for a third term, despite his promise of Sopi (radical change) which got him elected in 2000 but led to extreme confrontations between citizens and the police within and outside parliament on 23 June 2012.
Similarly, we witnessed how on 5 February, a majority of coalition MPs forced a vote to delay the elections until 15 December despite the opposition MPs' disagreement. This push was forced through with the intervention of the police inside parliament. We also witnessed the release of at least 300 unlawfully imprisoned protestors and political opponents since 16 February 2024 and the unconstitutional decision by Macky Sall to moot an amnesty law that would liberate the remaining political prisoners such as opposition leader Ousmane Sonko and the candidate of his party Bassirou Diomaye Faye. Despite the president's constitutional meddling aimed at postponing the elections, the decision of the Constitutional Council to overturn Sall's decree was met with joy and celebrations from most Senegalese citizens. This euphoria was short lived with the president's decision to unilaterally hold a national dialogue on 26 and 27 February and the subsequent announcement that the government approved Sall's proposal to hold new elections in June 2024.
Citizen mobilisations against democratic backsliding
There is much to fear from the political instability in the region, more so now after Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger decided to leave ECOWAS. There is fear of a ripple effect with political instability dominant in the region, and ECOWAS's failure to become an 'ECOWAS of the people' as opposed to a tool that furthers the control of its Heads of States. Therefore, with persisting security challenges for Senegal at its borders, including with Mali, Senegal needs to strengthen its institutions from within. The role of the EU-funded Rapid Action Surveillance and Intervention Group (also known as GAR-SI) in violently crushing Senegalese protesting for democracy revives questions of accountability on the one hand and sovereignty from former imperial powers on the other, within the struggle of Senegalese citizens rethinking their social contract with the ruling class. As Mamadou Diouf reminds us, the 2000 and 2012 political transitions were marked by the same seal: rejection of the political and economic status quo and lack of accountability.
Senegalese women are not second-class citizens!
Senegalese citizens have always been politically educated. As a result, they have a desire to establish more equitable and mutually beneficial relations with political leaders on the one hand, and the powers of the North and South on the other. With regard to the social contract, citizens have mobilised restlessly in defence of the constitutional and Republican order, against which historically they have been the subjects of state violence. These incidents include the murderous repression of the defence and security forces and riot police in Dakar, Ziguinchor and other towns, as well as arbitrary detentions and unlawful torture.
Senegalese women especially are treated as second-class citizens whose bodies have historically been weaponised as a battlefield in political struggles. This is illustrated by the arrest of Yewwu Yewwi activist and journalist Eugénie Rokhaya Aw under Senghor; and under Macky Sall's regime, the Adji-Sarr and Ousmane Sonko case, the rape case in which former minister Sitor Ndour was implicated in the assault of a pregnant MP at the National Assembly. Recently, journalists, among the few stakeholders publicly involved in the debate and coverage of the elections, have also not been spared the violence. The recent arrest and violence against Absa Hane, a journalist with Seneweb, and the stabbing of Maimouna Ndour Faye on her way home from recording a programme are just two examples. In a pre-electoral landscape dominated by the words of men of all categories, with 'manels' (panels with only men as speakers), it is urgent to collectively rethink our project for society as well as the future. To quote Ndèye Khady Babou of the Senegalese Feminist Network: 'we are entering the month dedicated to women's struggle sad and angry. We were dismayed to learn of the assassination attempt on journalist Maimouna Ndour Faye of 7tv, and we hope that justice will do its job to ensure that the guilty parties are punished'.
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Gender-based violence is not just a women's issue. It's a societal problem that only together we can eradicate. Dr Abdourahmane Seck of the university of Saint-Louis advocates for every citizen to 'do everything to ensure that the discourse and instruments of resistance are indeed already the shield against our eternal recommencements ... with each new regime leaving the same consternation in the end.'
Conclusion
At odds with voices presenting the parliamentary decision backed by the president as an unprecedented crisis for the 'Senegalese-exception-in-the-troubled-Sahelian-region', I argue that such a narrative does not hold when one considers the country's political history in the longue durée, stained by state and police brutality and human rights violations. There is a strong belief that with the resiliency of its institutions, and with adequate in-depth institutional reform such as the rethinking of the hyper presidentialist regime which lacks clear separation of powers, Senegal will emerge stronger from this crisis. Citizens understand that this heritage is at stake, hence the urgency to rethink the social contract, especially in the run-up to presidential elections.
Rama Salla Dieng is a scholar activist and currently a lecturer at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, an adjunct Senior Lecturer at the Mandela School of Public Governance, UCT and an Associate researcher of the Laboratory for Research on Social and Economic Transformations, University of Dakar. Among other topics, her work focuses on politics and social movements including African feminisms. She is the author of Féminismes Africains: Une histoire Décoloniale (Présence Africaine, Paris, 2021), co-author of Gagner le Monde, Quelques Héritages Féministes (La Fabrique, Paris, 2023) and the co-editor of Feminist Parenting, Perspectives from Africa and Beyond (Demeter Press, Canada, 2020). She is the Founding Director of the African Feminist Film and Research Festival: CINEFEMFEST.
