DAKAR – At an intersection in the Medina district, not far from the Dakar Courthouse, dozens of black helmets of the riot forces huddle to prevent the passage of a crowd of young demonstrators who shudder a few centimeters from their shields. A sign emerges from the roar. “We asked you for democracy and development! You preferred wealth and your interests. You are the shame!”. A strangled voice in the hot air screams: “We want to be able to decide! You won’t stop us!”. A week after those events, the signs of the anger of the protests remain etched on the concrete of the Senegalese capital. In the atmosphere of apparent calm debris, piles of ash, broken glass and car wrecks are still piled on the sides of the roads.
The spark that sparked the demonstrations in the main towns of Senegal was the arrest of Ousmane Sonko, which took place on March 3. The young leader of the opposition party Pastef-Les Patriotes, who came third in the last elections of 2019, had in fact to appear at the courthouse to answer the very serious accusation of sexual violence against a young girl in a massage center, but the the choice to change the route from the one established by the authorities, thus generating a spontaneous demonstration, was judged to be an obstacle to public order and an attempted insurrection. Accusation that the politician who was also deprived of parliamentary immunity on February 26 was worth pre-trial detention.
In this sense, Ousmane Sonko has always rejected the charges, calling them a “conspiracy” aimed at eliminating him from the political scene. The young anti-system parliamentarian is in fact considered the main antagonist of President Macky Sall. A political outsider loved by the younger generations and, therefore, one of the main competitors in view of the 2024 vote to which Sall, in office for nine years, will not be able to reapply due to the limit of two terms.
For four days, clashes between demonstrators and the police have affected Dakar and other places in the country including, in particular, the Casamance region, causing at least 10 deaths and 590 injuries. Between 4 and 8 March, the period of greatest intensity of the protests, dozens of Auchan shopping centers and Total stations were also set on fire and looted mainly because they are linked to France, with which Sall has excellent relations and whose presence is considered “uncomfortable. “and” overwhelming “by many Senegalese.
The turning point in the impasse takes place on 8 March. In the morning the judges, after Sonko’s first hearing, decide for the politician’s release from custody, while in the evening President Sall addresses the population for the first time, declaring that he has understood the concerns and concerns of young people. The religious leaders of the powerful Sufi brotherhoods also intervene with a soothing message. The legal case, however, is still open and the politician, officially free but under judicial control, continues to accuse Sall of having “betrayed the nation” and to urge the mobilization of supporters.
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In this context of high tension, which had not been seen in Senegal for almost ten years, the Movement for the Defense of Democracy (M2D) was born, made up of opposition parliamentarians and civil society organizations with the aim of resisting “despotic practices. of the government “. M2D, under the hashatag #FreeSenegal that has spread to social media, organized large peaceful mobilizations for Saturday, then postponed to a later date, after a further pacification intervention by a delegation of the Mouridyya Islamic brotherhood, the most important in the country .
Yet despite a return to calm, the reasons for the anger remain on the ground. A sense of regression of democratic pluralism emerges in the voices of the protesters. During Sall’s tenure, in addition to Sonko, there were two other major incidents of opponents ousted from politics for court cases: in March 2013, Karim Wade, former minister and son of former president Abdoulaye Wade, and in March 2017, Khalifa Sall, former mayor of Dakar, both convicted of embezzlement and corruption. “They have to stop jailing and gagging opponents and anyone who thinks differently. It’s a scheme they always use now”, the young Cherif still unsatisfied, as he walks away from the courthouse.
But if the Sonko case was the initial political engine, the real causes of the anger run deeper. They are rooted in the exasperation and sense of abandonment that has existed for some time among young people. Uncertainty, lack of opportunities, difficult living conditions are the cocktail of an already critical economic context which has then worsened due to the Covid factor. The pandemic and its consequences have affected important economic sectors for the country. Including artisanal fishing, livestock farming, informal trade and tourism, with its induced practically zero. The general picture in Senegal today tells of a 16% drop in exports and a 30% contraction in important remittances from the diaspora abroad, which in 2019 were worth 10% of GDP.
“We have no work. There is no employment, at most they are occasional occupations. We young people are doing nothing and the state does nothing,” says Diouf, another boy met on one of the angry nights in Ngor. There are no updated data on the unemployment rate in the country. The most recent is in 2019 when the percentage was 19%, but already increasing for two consecutive years. “So there are two solutions: either to flee abroad or to try to take back the country”, concludes the young man.
The immigration issue therefore returns to the center of the debate. If in recent years there had been a settling of departures, in 2020 the numbers started to grow again. In particular, the data on the arrivals of migrants on the Spanish coasts of the Canary Islands are illustrative. In 2020, a series of shipwrecks caused more than 1,800 deaths and rekindled attention on the little known “canary route”. Last year, almost 20,000 people landed on the islands arrived on makeshift boats, often pirogues from northern Senegal around Saint Louis or from M’bour, a coastal city south of Dakar. An enormous figure if compared to the 2,700 arrivals in 2019 and a symptom of a prevailing social crisis.
In Thiaroye sur mer, a fishing town in the Dakar belt, everyone knows at least one person who tried to migrate to Europe. Here the canarian route was baptized with the motto “Barça ou Barsakh”, “Barcelona or death”. “The first time they stopped me in Libya, the second, the boat sank not far from the islands. I risked dying and I gave up for now”, the story of Cheikh who lived the experience of the journey on his skin, concluding “in that 1,500km long route between Senegal and Spain there are most of the reasons for the protests”.
Therefore, if today the demonstrations have deflated due to the intervention of political actors e influential religious, tension remains high in Senegal. The wait is for post investments Covid and how the government will act ahead of the 2024 elections.
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