Ousmane Sembene

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The Senegalese writer and film maker Sembene Ousmane (born 1923) was one of Africa's great contemporary novelists. His work is characterized by a concern with ordinary decent people who are victimized by repressive governments and bureaucracies.

Sembene Ousmane was born on Jan. 8, 1923, at Ziguinchor in the southern region of Casamance. Among Francophone African writers, he is unique because of his working-class background and limited primary school education. Originally a fisherman in Casamance, he worked in Dakar as a plumber, bricklayer, and mechanic. In 1939 he was drafted into the colonial army and fought with the French in Italy and Germany. Upon demobilization, he first resumed life as a fisherman in Senegal but soon went back to France, where he worked on the piers of Marseilles and became the union leader of the longshoremen. His first novel, Le Docker noir (1956; The Black Docker), is about his experiences during this period.

Well before independence in 1960, Ousmane returned to Senegal, where he became an astute observer of the political scene and wrote a number of volumes on the developing national consciousness. In Oh pays, mon beau peuple!, he depicts the plight of a developing country under colonialism. God's Bit of Wood, his only novel translated into English, recounts the developing sense of self and group consciousness of railway workers in French West Africa during a strike. L'Harmattan focuses upon the difficulty of creating a popular government and the corruption of unresponsive politicians who postpone the arrival of independence (1964).

Ousmane's international reputation was secured by his films based on his stories and directed by himself. He had turned to film to reach that 90 percent of the population of his country that could not read. Borom Sarat is remarkable for the cleavages Ousmane reveals in contemporary African society between the masses of the poor and the new African governing class who have stepped into the positions of dominance left by the French. La Noire de - is about the tragedy of a Senegalese woman who is lured from her homeland by the promise of wealth and becomes lost in a morass of loneliness and inconsideration. Ousmane's prizewinning work Le Mandat (The Money Order) shows what happens to an unemployed illiterate when he is apparently blessed by a large money order; he is crushed by an oppressive bureaucracy and unsympathetic officials.

Sembene Ousmane lived a simple existence in Senegal in a beach-front cottage that he built himself.

Further Reading

The only work by Ousmane thus far translated into English is God's Bit of Wood (1960; trans. 1962). A full-length study of Ousmane is not available. The most significant critical assessments are written in French. Claude Wauthier's essentially descriptive summary of a host of black writers, including Ousmane, appeared in English as The Literature and Thought of Modern Africa (1964; trans. 1966). A chapter on Ousmane is in A.C. Brench, The Novelists' Inheritance in French Africa: Writers from Senegal to Cameroon (1967). For general background see Judith Illsley Gleason, This Africa: Novels by West Africans in English and French (1965).

filmmaker; writer

Personal Information

Born Ousmane Sembène, January 1, 1923, in Ziguinchor, Senegal; son of a fisherman; married Carrie Moore, 1974; one other marriage; children: Alain and Moussa, both sons.
Education: Attended Gorki Film Studios, Moscow, 1962;
Politics: Leftist.

Career

Worked as a laborer in a variety of occupations, including fisherman, plumber, mechanic, and bricklayer, 1938-42; served in the Free French Forces, 1942-46; dockworker, 1948-60; novelist, 1956--; filmmaker, 1963--; Kaadu newspaper, founding editor, 1972.

Life's Work

Ousmane Sembène has frequently been referred to as "the father of African cinema." Yet even such a grandiose title fails to capture the full impact of Sembène's accomplishments as an author, filmmaker, and social critic. Taken together, his work represents an ongoing literary battle against corruption, colonialism, and hypocrisy in all its forms. Despite the international attention his films and novels have received, Sembène has chosen to ignore the lure of commercial moviemaking, preferring instead to remain in his homeland of Senegal, where he is revered as a champion of working people and other victims of exploitation.

Sembène was born into a family of fishermen on January 1, 1923, in the village of Ziguinchor, Senegal. His parents divorced when he was a child, and the young Sembène was sent to live for varying periods of time with different relatives. Of all the family members he spent time with, the most influential was his mother's oldest brother, Abdou Rahmane Diop. Diop, a teacher, intellectual, and devout Muslim, instilled in Sembène a sense of pride in his African heritage. At the age of eight, Sembène was sent to Islamic school. When Diop died in 1935, however, Sembène moved to Dakar to live with another uncle. In Dakar, he began attending French schools. His formal education ended at the age of 14, when he quit school after a physical fight with a teacher.

During the next few years, Sembène worked at a series of odd jobs to support himself, including stints as a mechanic, a carpenter, and a mason. It was during this period that he became mesmerized by the cinema, where he and his friends would spend as much of their free time as possible. He also absorbed a great deal of Senegalese culture in the form of traditional storytellers (griots) and musicians. In 1938 Sembène had what he has described as a mystical experience, resulting in a renewed commitment to Islam. Although this religious fervor was short-lived, it sparked in Sembène a sense of justice and commitment that he carried into his subsequent secular life.

When he was 19, Sembène joined the French colonial forces in their battle against Nazi Germany. After four years in the military, during which he fought in both Europe and Africa, Sembène returned to Dakar, where he helped organize the Dakar-Niger railroad strike of 1947 and 1948. His experience in the railroad strike provided the material for his 1960 epic novel God's Bits of Wood, widely considered to be his literary masterpiece. When the strike was over, and with job opportunities in Senegal scarce, Sembène made his way to France as a stowaway on a ship. Arriving in Paris, he worked at a series of factory jobs. He then moved to Marseilles, where he became a longshoreman; he also resumed his activities as a labor organizer and became affiliated with the French communist party.

By the early 1950s, Sembène had begun writing on a regular basis, mostly as an outlet for his political and philosophical thoughts. His poetry and short fiction began appearing in such magazines as Presence Africaine and Action poetique. In 1956 Sembène's first novel, Le Docker noir (The Black Docker), was published. Le Docker noir incorporated Sembène's experiences as a Senegalese dockworker laboring in Marseilles. Although the novel did not gain widespread attention, it set the tone for much of his later writing in dealing with the difficulties of an African trying to adapt to Western life. Sembène's second novel, O Pays, mon beau peuple! (Oh My Country, My Beautiful People!), was published the following year.

Meanwhile, Sembène traveled the world to connect with writers from different regions. In 1956 he attended the First International Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris. Two years later, Sembène went to the Soviet republic of Uzbekistan to attend the First Congress of African and Asiatic Writers, where he met and was strongly influenced by writer and social critic W. E. B. DuBois. He also met with other writers and artists in China and North Vietnam during the last part of the 1950s.

Sembène's biggest career breakthrough came with the 1960 publication of Les Bouts de bois de Dieu (God's Bits of Wood). The novel received international acclaim, and after its publication Sembène was finally able to devote himself to writing full-time. It also made him a visible figure among France's leftist and intellectual communities, both black and white.

Sembène's filmmaking career began in the early 1960s. Traveling in West Africa, he became increasingly aware of the difficulties of reaching out to a population that was largely illiterate. In 1962 he went to Moscow for a crash course in filmmaking technique. Upon his return to Africa, Sembène was commissioned by the government of Mali to make a short documentary, L'Empire Sonhria, which was completed in 1963. He then formed his own production company and made his first important film, Borom Sarret, which won the First Film Award at the 1963 Tours Film Festival in France. His next film, Niaye, won an award at Tours, as well as an Honorable Mention at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. All of these films were shot on a shoestring budget using nonprofessional actors.

In 1966 Sembène cemented his international reputation as a gifted filmmaker with his first feature-length film, La Noire de... (Black Girl). The film, about a Senegalese nanny who accompanies her white employers back to France, won a number of awards, and was the first film by a black African to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. It is generally considered a milestone in the history of African cinema.

Over the next two decades, Sembène worked steadily in both literature and film, often adapting his fiction for the screen. Le Mandat (The Money Order) published in 1965, became Sembène's second feature film, Mandabi, in 1968. Another example was his 1973 novel Xala, which was filmed a year after its print publication. Those two works reveal the lighter side of Sembène. Unlike the socio- realism (picked up in Russia) of some of his earlier writing, they are farcical, poking fun at the bourgeoisie and their bureaucratic allies. The Senegalese government was not always pleased with the point of view expressed in Sembène's work; while the films were being applauded all over the world, they were often being heavily censored at home.

Xala was Sembène's only novel of the 1970s, but he made a few other important films. Emitai (1971), involves the attempt by French troops to draft the young men of a Senegal village into service during World War II. Ceddo (1977), describes the forced conversion of an African village to Islam. It was banned by the Senegalese government in order to avoid offending the country's 80 percent Muslim majority. Sembène also kept busy during the decade helping establish Kaddu, a magazine in his native Wolof language.

Sembène's only film of the 1980s was Camp de Thiaroye (1987), which deals with the problems faced by Senegalese veterans of World War II upon their return to Africa. His literary work of the decade includes a novel, Le Dernier de l'Empire (The Last Days of the Empire, 1980), and two novellas. In 1992 Sembène reemerged on the scene, to the delight of the international film community, with Guelwaar, which incorporates many of the themes of his earlier work, such as religious tensions, government corruption, the evils of colonialism. Guelwaar was received with world-wide enthusiasm, and its release was accompanied by African film festivals and Sembène retrospectives in many cities.

Throughout his career, Ousmane Sembène taken the idea of the "independent" filmmaker to its extreme. He has never relinquished control of any part of the process. He prefers to work with nonprofessional actors, and the amount of money he typically spends on a film would barely pay the catering bill for a Hollywood production. Because Sembène has remained fiercely loyal to the principles that got him started as a writer, he has not had to worry about such mundane matters as funding, censorship, or box office receipts. Sembène is not only the "father of African cinema," but, as was once noted in Film Comment, perhaps the "only filmmaker left in the world who cannot be bought and sold."

Awards

First Film Award, Tours (France) Film Festival, 1963; Dakar Festival of Negro Arts prize, 1966; Cannes Film Festival prize, 1967; International Critics' prize, Venice Bienale, 1968; Venice Film Festival prize, 1969; Atlanta Film Festival prize, 1970; Silver Medal, Moscow Film Festival, 1971; Paul Robeson Prize, 1978; Nahouri Bronze Medal from the government of Burkina Faso, 1987; Grand Prix, Venice Film Festival, 1988.

Works

Writings

• Fiction
• Le docker noir, Debresse, 1956 (published in English as The Black Docker, Heinemann, 1987.)
• O pays, mon beau peuple, Le Livre Contemporain, 1957.
• Les bouts de bois de Dieu, Le Livre Contemporain, 1960 (published in English as God's Bits of Wood, Anchor Books, 1970.)
• Voltaique, Presence Africaine, 1962.
• L'Harmattan, Presence Africaine, 1964.
• Le mandat, Presence Africaine, 1966 (published in English as The Money Order, Heinemann, 1972.)
• Xala, Presence Africaine, 1973 (published in English as Xala, L. Hill and Co., 1976.)
• Le dernier de l'Empire, L'Harmattan, 1981 (published in English as The Last Days of the Empire, Heinemann, 1983.)
• Niiwam, Presence Africaine, 1987 (published in English as Niiwam and Taaw: Two Novellas, Heinemann, 1992.
• Film
• L'Empire Sonhrai, 1963.
• Borom Sarret, 1963.
• Niaye, 1964.
• La Noire de... 1966.
• Mandabi, 1968.
• Taaw, 1970.
• Emitai, 1971.
• Xala, 1974.
• Ceddo, 1976.
• Camp de Thiaroye, 1989.
• Guelwaar, 1992.

Further Reading

Books

• Gadjigo, Samba, Ralph Faulkingham, Thomas Cassirer, and Sander Reinhard, editors, Ousmane Sembène: Dialogues with Critics and Writers, University of Massachusetts Press, 1993.

• Film Comment, July/August, 1993, pp. 63-69.
• Houston Chronicle, February 18, 1996, p. 11.
• Los Angeles Times, January 1, 1995, p. 30.
• New York Times, December 28, 1972.
• UNESCO Courier, January 1990, pp. 4-7.

— Robert R. Jacobson

Sembène Ousmane (b. 1923) is famous as the pioneer of African cinema, but his contribution to literature is equally outstanding. His early novels, Le Docker noir (1956) and Ô pays mon beau peuple (1957), form part of the wave of anti-colonial literature of the 1950s, but it is with Les Bouts de bois de Dieu (1960) that he emerges as a major artist and thinker, a position which has been consolidated by his subsequent work.

Born in Senegal, Sembène's background distinguishes him from other writers of his generation, especially his famous compatriot Senghor. Expelled from school at 14, Sembène worked as a builder before joining the army. World War II, he claims, was a major factor in his ideological education. During the 1950s he worked in France as a mechanic and later a docker, furthering his formal education in evening classes. He joined the Communist Party and was active in the trade-union movement, before returning to Africa in 1958.

Les Bouts de bois de Dieu is a fictional recreation of the 1947 railway workers' strike in the French Sudan. A beautifully constructed and deeply moving work, it belies the theory that aesthetic quality and ideological commitment are incompatible. One aspect of its originality lies in its introduction into the African novel of a collective, popular protagonist—the developing African proletariat—and of the idea of organized resistance. The novel reflects Sembène's belief that Africa will be liberated, not by the élite, but by the struggle of the working class. Women play a prominant role in the novel: for Sembène, sexual equality will be achieved through women's involvement in the class struggle rather than by separate feminist movements.

In Les Bouts de bois de Dieu Marxism equips Sembène to go beyond the false dichotomy of tradition and modernism in which many African intellectuals tend to flounder. His ideal, ‘une Afrique indépendante et rénovée’, involves a rejection of the Western capitalist development model, which perpetuates dependency, and also of the oppressive feudal, patriarchal, and gerontocratic residues of traditional society. The way forward embraces science and technology along with all aspects of popular traditional culture compatible with scientific socialism, such as self-reliance and the community spirit.

In 1963, after a short course on cinema in Moscow, Sembène made his first film. His involvement in cinema sprang from his concept of art as a means of raising the consciousness of the masses and his awareness of the limitations of literature in French for reaching an African public who do not know the language and cannot read. Sembène also participated in promoting literacy in the national languages, through the Wolof newspaper, Kaddu.

Unlike those writers who had illusions about Independence and consequently refrained from comment throughout the early 1960s, Sembène's critique of African leadership and their collusion with Western capitalism has been continuous. His only collection of short stories, Voltaïques (1962), was followed by L'Harmattan (1964), an incisive fictional recreation of the politics of the 1958 Referendum when, under Senghor, Senegal voted against a radical break with France. Two novellas, Le Mandat and Véhi-Ciosane, published in a single volume, won for Sembène his only literary prize, awarded by the 1966 Festival des Arts Nègres in Dakar. Le Mandat became a famous film, as did Sembène's next novel, Xala (1973), in which he reveals the link between cultural alienation and economic impotence. Le Dernier de l'empire, a roman à clefs which appeared in 1981, within months of Senghor's resignation as president of Senegal, is a hard-hitting review of Senegalese political history since Independence, and a critical meditation on democracy. Two more novellas, Niiwam and Taaw, drafted much earlier, appeared in a single volume in 1987.

Sembène has the great artist's ability to distill the essential structures and mechanisms of society into powerful, memorable images which become symbols of the times: the money-order, the (literally) impotent business man, the peasant forced by penury to convey his dead child's corpse to the cemetery in the bus. Consistently Afrocentric, his work in its entirety is an implicit condemnation of Senghor's négritude and the latter's promotion of la francophonie and other aspects of French cultural hegemony. In Sembène's later work, he appears less optimistic about the revolutionary role of the proletariat, and seems to lean towards the military as the only viable symbol of African resistance and rehabilitation.

[Firinne Ni Chréach´in]

Bibliography

• P. Vieyra, Sembène Ousmane cinéaste (1972)
• F. Pfaff, The Cinema of Ousmane Sembéne, a Pioneer of African Film (1984)