Text of "Fact and Fiction in GOD'S BITS OF WOOD"

"Fact and Fiction in God's Bits of Wood"
by James A. Jones, Ph.D.
West Chester University of Pennsylvania

NOTE: This article was first published in Research in African Literatures, vol. 31, no. 2 (Summer 2000), 117-131 (Copyright 2000 by Indiana University Press). It has been adapted for use by African history classes at West Chester University by adding internal links and links to original notes from oral and archival sources located in France, Mali and Senegal.

INTRODUCTION

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 1947-1948 railroad strike in French West Africa. The 1947-1948 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 which 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 (Bouta-Guèye). 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 Thiès since 1923. The Chemin de Fer Dakar-Niger became the centerpiece of French development efforts in the interwar period (Jones 230-235). Although the steam locomotives are gone and some of the smaller stations are closed, the arrival of a train in Bamako, at Thiès, 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 300-301) into the Chemins de Fer de l'Afrique Occidentale Française, 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 it still plays a major role in towns like Thiès 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 Thiès 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 supérieur composed of all European workers and a few Africans who worked in the accounting office, the cadre local supérieur 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 (Traoré 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 324-345). The 1938 strike was the bloodiest (Thiam 300-338), and the 1952 strike was the most effective (Schachter-Morgenthau 228). The 1947 strike, however, was the longest and affected the most people, so it is the logical vehicle for Sembene's narrative. Eyewitnesses to the 1947 strike were still numerous when Sembene published God's Bits of Wood in 1960, and the story of an African victory over French administrators resonated during a year in which eight French West African colonies became independent.

Although Sembene is not a historian, his version of the strike is consciously historical. In interviews, he asserts the right to comment on history and claims an obligation to present the things omitted by official histories. According to Sembene:

The artist is here to reveal a certain number of historical facts that others would like to keep hidden . . . Wolof society has always had people whose role it was to give voice, bring back to memory, and project towards something. (Gadjigo et al 101-102)

Scholars have made similar observations about Sembene's work. Papa Samba Diop describes God's Bits of Wood as an attempt to create a new "myth" that subverts official history (449). Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink ascribes the book's success to its fulfillment of an African social need to replace the colonial version of history (117-118). Sembene's films, according to Mbye Cham, undertake "`a rescue mission,' to the extent to which [they] recover, privilege, and articulate . . . what official histories insist on erasing" (24-25).

The "hidden history" that Sembene reveals in God's Bits of Wood is the story of ordinary Africans who overcome an oppressive system operated by European bureaucrats and collaborating African elites. Sembene views the strike as primarily a class struggle, rather than a racial or colonial struggle (interview), yet he emphasizes the African roots of their success. In his author's note, Sembene reminds his readers that the strikers and their supporters "owe nothing to anyone: neither to any `civilizing mission' nor to any parliament nor parliamentarian."

Although God's Bits of Wood is ostensibly a history of the 1947 strike, it also reveals something about the period when it was written. In the late 1950s, the French West African federation was disintegrating. The French had always intended their empire to remain intact and 1944 Congress of Brazzaville reaffirmed the principle of federal unity, but the 1956 "Loi Cadre" created separate colonial governments. Once Sékou Touré's Guinea chose independence in 1958, it took just over two years for the rest of the colonies to follow suit (Schachter-Morgenthau 38-40 & 312). In the process, African politicians like those who appear in Sembene's book emerged as the leaders of new states (Martin 33).

Sembene's narrative contains a number of themes that link the narrative of the strike to the process of decolonization. Pan-African unity, alluded to in passages about support from other colonies and soldiers stationed overseas (38 & 59), was a major theoretical and political force in the elections and referendums that dismantled the French Union. Popular notions of pan-African unity had their roots in precolonial empires, but by the nineteenth century, the traditional bases of political authority--loyalty to hereditary rulers--had been greatly weakened by the effects of the slave trade, Muslim jihads, and European conquest. In the twentieth century, political leaders tried various means to manufacture a sense of unity. First, the French used schools and military service as a means to inculcate a sense of loyalty to France (Echenberg, Colonial 123-126). Later, African politicians invoked precolonial states like those headed by Samori Touré and Sundiata Keita in an attempt to build mass political parties (Schachter-Morgenthau 30 & 281).(3) Although one party, the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA), became a strong advocate for West African federalism, it failed to overcome the sectional and personal differences that turned French West Africa into nine independent states (Thompson xvi-xxiii).

During the colonial era, French officials dismissed pan-Africanism as an impossible ideal employed by African demagogues to stir up trouble among colonial subjects.(4) For Sembene, not only is African unity possible, but the strike creates an entirely new basis for unity. Unlike politicians, who attract their followers with patronage, or soldiers who rely on military discipline to command their troops, the railway workers and their supporters are united by an egalitarian sense of social justice. The sage of God's Bits of Wood, Fa Keita, describes a kind of unity that transcends oceans and eliminates hierarchies--in which "you will never again be forced to bow down before anyone, but also . . . no one shall be forced to bow down before you" (237).

In contrast, Sembene portrays African politicians as self-enriching profiteers who are completely divorced from their constituency (182 & 215-216). French accounts focus on politicians like Léopold Senghor, Félix-Houphouët-Boigny, Lamine Guèye, Yacine Diallo, Marcelin Apithy and Fily Dabo Sissoko who became the first Africans to serve in the National Assembly of the French Union, founded in 1946 (de Benoist 523-524). According to eyewitnesses, only the RDA deputies Houphouët-Boigny and Gabriel d'Arboussier publicly supported the strikers, while most of the others tried to avoid taking sides (Diombana interview; Bouta-Guèye). Fily Dabo Sissoko, the deputy from the Soudan, even tried to order the strikers back to work, like the mayor-deputy in Sembene's novel (216), but most workers refused and Fily Dabo Sissoko lost all influence with the union (Cooper, Decolonization 246; Traoré 67-73). As a result, Soudanese railway workers favored Sissoko's opponents, the local branch of the RDA, by a large margin during the 1950s (Diombana interview).

In 1947 the RDA was the political party most strongly identified with the idea of West African unity. The RDA was founded in Bamako at a 1946 congress that attracted delegates from all over the federation (Kipré 173). When the strike began, party leaders attempted to use it to increase their own support, but even after union leaders resisted, the RDA still provided aid by holding a dance to raise money (Traoré 63) and organizing public rallies to support the strikers.(5) When local negotiations failed, the RDA deputies Houphouët-Boigny and d'Arboussier took the issue to the National Assembly and introduced the motion that led to the first intervention from Paris in January 1948 (Ndour 52).

Sembene makes no specific reference to the RDA or any other African political party in God's Bits of Wood. By 1959 the RDA was engaged in intense political battles with separatist parties in each colony, and no reference to any party could have been perceived as politically neutral. Also by this time, it was equally clear that political parties no longer offered any chance of achieving the kind of unity that interests Sembene.

The leaders of organized religion fare little better than the politicians in God's Bits of Wood. The negative portrayal of El Hadj Mabiqué, who refuses to share food with his own relatives, and the aggressive gender symbolism of his pet ram Vendredi, have been examined elsewhere (Case 283-284; Aire 289). Even the Imam of Dakar appears as a tool of French imperialism during his effort to mediate between Ramatoulaye and the police, and during his speech at the racecourse (Sembene 123-125 & 214). On the other hand, Sembene respectfully portrays Fa Keita, a devout Muslim who maintains his faith while in prison (228-233). It is not religion, but morally corrupt religious leaders that inspire Sembene's contempt (Aire 288-289).

Other sources support Sembene's interpretation of the relationship between the strike and Muslim authorities. Although most marabouts backed the strikers, at least in private (Bouta-Guèye), and the family of strike leader Ibrahima Sarr had close ties to several Senegalese marabouts, a number of major Senegalese Muslim leaders supported the French administration and publicly urged the strikers to return to work (Cooper, "Our Strike" 85 & 94). The accusation by the fictional Imam of Dakar that "communists" and "foreigners" are behind the strike (Sembene 124) echoes charges that appeared in official French communications (Lamotte; Allen 102), and recalls how the French cultivated antagonism between Islam and communism (Coquery-Vidrovitch 388).

The formation of a working class consciousness provides a second theme that connects the narrative of the strike to the time of independence. The concept of worker unity served as a potent organizing force among the urbanized Africans who were the most likely to vote in elections. More than thirty years after writing God's Bits of Wood, Sembene still believes that the development of an "African working class consciousness" is one of the things that distinguished the 1947 strike from earlier strikes (interview). As one strike participant expressed it, "We started the strike in order that the old ones, by the time they reached a certain age, would be able to enter the cadre. The strike was an act of solidarity" (Bouta-Guèye). Historians of African labor like Frederick Cooper repeat the same assertion ( Decolonization 242). The colonial record is vague on this point, since French authorities viewed worker organizations through a Cold War prism that dismissed acts of solidarity as either rooted in African traditions(6) or the result of communist propaganda (Lamotte).

Sembene's version offers several examples of strength derived from worker unity and solidarity among the urban poor. For instance, N'Deye Touti, the stylish young girl with a fascination for French culture, is only accepted by Mame Sofi and the other women at N'Diayene after she begins to join in the work of finding water (Sembene 224). Even more explicitly, Bakayoko exhorts the crowd at the racecourse: "It depends on you, workers of Dakar, whether our wives and our children will ever see a better life. There is a great rock poised across our path, but together we can move it" (218).

Although the book emphasizes worker unity, Sembene includes opposing viewpoints that suggest their unity is fragile. Opposition to the strike is best expressed by the old watchman who accosts Tiémoko in the Bamako train station and says:

Do you think the trains belong to you? They don't--no more than they did to your fathers--but you decide to stop working, just like that, without thinking about other people. And yet you workmen, of all people, should be satisfied with what you have. You don't have to worry about drought or rain or taxes, and you don't have any expenses. Why should you prevent these farmers from going where they want to go? (83)

Similar attitudes appeared in newspaper editorials at the time, and in the speeches of African celebrities sent to persuade the workers to abandon the strike.(7)

By suggesting that the "punitive expeditions" against strikebreakers and the trial of Diara enable the union to maintain strike discipline (81 & 91-96), Sembene presents the strike as more cohesive than that described in colonial records. French authorities acknowledged that during the first months of the strike, there were very few defections,(8) but by the end of the strike, nearly one quarter of the railway workers had returned to work, although the majority of those were not on the Dakar-Niger (Cooper, Decolonization 244). Additional fragmentation occurred after the administration created a rival union under the leadership of François Gning, the former secretary-general of the railway union who was ousted by Sarr in the summer of 1946 (Traoré 67). Both African unions, plus a third union for Europeans, outlived the strike.(9) One consequence was a permanent division among railway workers that reduced their influence on subsequent political events (Sembene interview; Bouta-Guèye).

All accounts agree that although the railway workers enjoyed support from the African public, they were unable to convince the other African unions to join their strike. Gaye, the fictional leader of the confederation of unions,(10) explains that the other unions would not support the railway workers as long as their union remained autonomous (Sembene 204). This is an accurate statement of inter-union relations as they stood after the Senegalese general strike of 1946, which the railway union failed to join. Although Gning and the rest of the railway union's Comité Directeur were ousted a few months later, the new leaders were unable to convince other African unions to offer more than verbal and limited financial support (Cooper, Decolonization 244). On the other hand, the general strike that resolves the impasse at the end of the novel actually occurred in late 1952, when the French finally agreed to provide equal treatment for all workers (Schachter-Morgenthau 228).

Sembene's portrayal of individual union members offers several points of reference to the colonial record, but his history of the union differs significantly from the French version. For example, Sembene writes that Doudou, Lahbib and Bakayoko started the union "right after the war" (24), whereas French officials reported on the formation of a union in 1937. African workers in the cadre, under the leadership of François Gning, responded to the passage of Popular Front legislation by converting their mutual aid association into a union (Ndour 47). After May 1946, the railway union leaders were replaced by members of a "younger generation" who considered the older leaders insufficiently militant, and Sembene treated this incident as the true "birth" of the union.

The character of Bakayoko is based on the real leader of the strike, Ibrahima Sarr, although the biographical details are invented. Bakayoko was born in the Soudanese interior,(11) and worked on the railway as a locomotive driver (Sembene 207-208), while Sarr was born at the coast in Saint Louis and worked as a clerk in the cadre local supérieur at the time of the strike. Sarr had a secondary school education (Cooper, Decolonization 242), while Bakayoko's education is only implied by his interest in books (Sembene 79 & 86).

African secondary school graduates like Sarr began to find railway jobs as early as 1926, and even though African labor unions were forbidden, they immediately started a "fraternal organization" to assist each other.(12) The French administration was content with this arrangement, since the African leaders of the organization served as intermediaries between workers and management. François Gning became secretary-general in 1928 and continued in the position until 1946 (Ndour 47). However, by the start of World War II, a new generation of technical school graduates, including Ibrahima Sarr, found positions with the railway (Bouta-Guèye).

Sarr and his contemporaries were more militant than the first-generation leaders, and in the novel, the generation gap is evident during the encounter between Tiémoko, a young strike leader, and the old watchman who accuses the strikers of selfishness and arrogance (83). During World War II, Gning cooperated with the Vichy governor-general and railway director, while Sarr helped start a newspaper that was critical of the administration. As punishment, Sarr was transferred away from his family and friends to an interior post in the Soudan, where he found the opportunity to make contacts with other railway workers that proved useful during the strike (Cooper, "Our Strike" 85). Sembene hints that Bakayoko did something similar when Dejean exclaims "I should have had him [Bakayoko] hanged in 1942! If only the directors had listened to me" (178).

Like Bakayoko, who "travelled over a thousand miles among the strikers and their families" (Sembene 175), Sarr traveled extensively along the railway to rally the workers. After he helped to formulate union grievances in August 1946 (Ndour 48) and met with French negotiators as the secretary-general of the union ("Note relative" 2), Sarr visited groups of railway workers to prepare them for the strike. After the strike began, he kept on the move to avoid arrest, but unlike Bakayoko, who is merely pursued (Sembene 221), Sarr was actually tried in absentia. He was sentenced to one month in jail and a fine of 1200 francs, but never served his sentence (Cooper, Decolonization 246).

Sarr was a heroic figure to the strikers on the Dakar-Niger. In the opinion of Sembene, Sarr was "outstanding" and "a man of dignity and value" during the strike (interview). One participant attributed the strike's "momentum" to Sarr's leadership (Bouta-Guèye), and police informers made similar evaluations.(13) However, after the strike ended, Sarr became useless to the union, just as, by the end of the strike, Bakayoko is no longer needed in Dakar. As Sembene described it, "unfortunately, [Sarr] did not appear to me to evolve politically . . . For him, the group was everything, but not individuals" (interview). Compare that to Bakayoko's own self-doubt (Sembene 190) or Alioune's criticism of Bakayoko:

The difficult thing about you is that although you understand the problems very well, you don't understand men--or if you do understand them, you never show it. But you expect them to understand every word you say, and if they don't, you lose your temper. Then they become timid, because they know they are not as intelligent as you are, and they don't like to be made fools of. (Sembene 207)

As independence approached, the leaders of mass parties endorsed the emancipation of women to bolster their election totals (Hopkins 20 & 102). Sembene echoes this theme by creating a prominent place in his narrative for women, portraying the daily lives of urban African women with great accuracy. Elements like the individual sleeping rooms that open onto a courtyard (101 & 136-138), descriptions of the activity at public water taps (46), and references to cooking and washing show how women adapted traditional roles to urban life. Sembene does more however, by describing how the strike--like the political movement for independence--altered the relationship between men and women in West African society.

As a group, the novel's women are supportive of their striking males, but at the outset of the strike, the women appear as mere extensions of their husbands. Awa, for example, derives her social status from the fact that her husband is a carpenter foreman (Sembene 141), and Assitan "lived on the margin of her husband's existence: a life of work, of silence, and of patience" (Sembene 235). Later, the women's march from Thiès to Dakar changes the women even more than the strike changes the men (Case 291), so that by the time the strike nears its end, the women of Thiès are sufficiently emancipated to "organize their lives in a manner which made them almost a separate community" (Sembene 239).

The colonial version of the strike makes no mention of a women's march in 1947-1948. While the administration's records rarely mention African women,(14) it is unlikely that any mass demonstration went unreported, especially one that ended in shooting deaths. By the same token, there is no mention of any shootings at Thiès on the first day of the strike, although the event Sembene describes (20-23) bears a close resemblance to the confrontation at the grade crossing on 28 September 1938, which resulted in six dead and dozens of wounded (Thiam 300-338). Niakoro provides a specific reference to the 1938 strike however, as well as to the effect of men's strikes on women, when she warns Ad'jibid'ji about "a terrible strike, a savage memory for those who had lived through it; just one season of rains before the war" (Sembene 2).

Sembene uses the character of Penda, a prostitute who becomes a leader, to show the revolutionary nature of the strike. Her presence is one more clue that the women's march never occurred since, as Frederick Cooper observes and the novel's Mame Sofi asserts, a promiscuous woman would be an unlikely leader in Muslim Senegal ("Our Strike" 95; Sembene 208). Sembene also reverses traditional gender roles to show the revolutionary effect of the strike (Case 289) by having the men fetch water and walk behind the women marchers (Sembene 195 & 190).

A fourth theme, the nature of French colonial domination, had a long history that is familiar to all Africans, and Sembene's account offers useful detail on its economic and psychological aspects. His references to the use of the French language and culture to convey status (57 & 142), his description of colonial architecture and landscaping in "the Vatican" (162) (15) and the progression of rallies, killings and negotiating sessions are all recognizable in the archival records. For instance, Victor states that:

"Twenty years ago there was nothing here but an arid wilderness. We have built this city. Now they have hospitals, schools, and trains, but if we ever leave they're finished--the brush will take it all back. There wouldn't be anything left" (164).

This is consistent with the view of colonialism expressed in this quotation from a 1938 school entrance examination for African students:

The populations whom destiny placed under our control were not real people, capable of directing themselves. They were victims of geography or history who found themselves left behind by the modern world, at the mercy of covetous neighbors, crushed by the tyranny of native dynasties or adventurers, and their very existence threatened by all sorts of weaknesses and miseries. In reality, despite some inevitable errors, French colonization saved them and remains dedicated to increasing their human value.(16)

If the colonial administration appears to be arrogant in its own records, it is quite bloodthirsty in God's Bits of Wood, thanks in large part to the number of people killed by its agents. There are eight killed and a "quantity of wounded" on the first day of the strike in Thiès (25). Policemen kill Niakoro Cissé when they arrest Fa Keita, the firemen accidently kill Houdia M'Baye, Isnard kills three boys with his pistol (102, 122, 160 & 189), soldiers kill Penda and Samba N'Doulougou at the end of the women's march, and finally, unidentified security forces shoot Isnard's wife when she goes berserk at the end of the book (202 & 244). In addition, Bakayoko blames Doudou's death on the administration, which failed to provide medical care, and the strike, which worked him to exhaustion (223).

By compressing so many acts of violence into a period of a few months, Sembene produces a more exciting story that deemphasizes the legal nature of the conflict (Cooper, "Our Strike" 103). This approach conveys the heightened sense of tension felt by Africans during a period when railroad strikers were killed in 1938, returning African war veterans were massacred near Dakar for protesting the administration's refusal to pay bonuses in 1944 (Echenberg, "Tragedy" 109-128), and thirteen RDA demonstrators were shot in C�te d'Ivoire in 1949 (Schachter-Morgenthau 196). Further to the north, a May 1945 demonstration in Sétif, French Algeria, turned violent and resulted in more than one thousand dead (Prochaska 237). Even if Sembene's narrative exaggerates the violence of the strike, it successfully portrays people's anxieties at the time.

Colonial records show that the French administration's coercive power was considerable. After the strike began, the administration passed ordinances that limited public gatherings, fortified railway stations, and financed speaking tours for prominent Africans to urge workers to abandon their strike, all of which are mentioned by Sembene (7, 82 & 124). The administration also arrested strikers and threatened to evict workers from government housing.(17) Administration records naturally reveal nothing like Bernadini's brutality in the Bamako prison (Sembene 230-233) or sexual misconduct by French officials (117 & 221), but oral sources on other aspects of French rule mention both (Magasa 30-35).

As for violent resistance by Africans, the novel includes incidents that do not appear in the official records (158-159). Official records refer to numerous acts of sabotage during an earlier period of labor troubles in the mid-1920s, including the derailment of an express train,(18) but contain almost no references to sabotage during the 1947-1948 strike (Cooper, "Our Strike" 107). On the other hand, Sembene's version is supported by the testimony of a union member from Bamako who claimed that there were acts of sabotage that went undiscovered because "the cheminots' code of silence remained solid" (Diombana, "1938" 6).

Sembene includes several other elements in his novel that appear in the colonial record. He describes the union grievances and the administration's counter-offer in broad but recognizable terms (72 & 174). He includes all the major factions, as viewed from the perspective of the strikers--workers, their families, European bosses and their wives, African merchants, Syrian-Lebanese merchants, and religious leaders.(19) Sembene also shows the division of workers into cadre and auxiliaire with the exchange between Samba N'Doulougou and Bachirou (15). Finally, in his description of the last leg of the women's march from Sébikoutane to Dakar (200-201), Sembene captures the same sense of enthusiasm and solidarity that oral sources remembered.(20)

Eyewitness testimony and the colonial record both suggest that the antecedents of the strike were more complicated than those described by Sembene. There was actually an earlier three-day strike in April 1947 that was timed to coincide with a visit to Senegal by the French president. The president's intervention forced the railway administration to seriously address the railway workers' grievances for the first time, and initiated a sequence of arbitration hearings and appeals whose failure triggered the main strike on 10 October 1947 (Bouta-Guèye; Cooper, Decolonization 243).

African informants and the colonial record disagree on the role of Félix Houphouët-Boigny. As one of the RDA deputies from C�te d'Ivoire, Houphouët-Boigny was ostensibly a sympathizer, yet the French sought his assistance to get railway workers to return to work (Cooper, Decolonization 245), while eyewitnesses suggest that he was more interested in increasing his own personal power than in the success of the movement (Diombana interview, Bouta-Guèye). The only major defection by strikers occurred in his jurisdiction, when over five hundred strikers on the Abidjan-Niger returned to work in January 1948 (Ndour 50-52; "Note relative" 5). Sembene omits all of this from his account.

Nevertheless, God's Bits of Wood is an attempt to present a new account of an important event in West African history. The event is important because of its significance for the subsequent success or failure of West African mass movements, and Sembene's history is important because it provides detail about Africans who generally appear in official accounts as an undifferentiated mass. His presentation of the mundane details of West African urban life--clothing, tasks, social status, appearance--is the highly accurate descriptive work of a dedicated and skilled observer. His narrative also conveys the general development of the strike from hesitant militancy to growing resolve, then economic disaster, desperation, and finally triumph as the colonial administration is forced to yield. However, Sembene minimizes the legal aspects of the strike in favor of violent episodes, and emphasizes the solidarity of the workers while downplaying the cracks in their unity. He even goes so far as to invent a revolutionary stage in the form of the women's march. According to both African and French sources, the strikers won by wearing down the administration, not by threatening its destruction.

As Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink writes, a historical novel like God's Bits of Wood offers more than access to otherwise unavailable sources. It also serves as a sort of "laboratory" for the writing of history (127). Sembene's focus on women, children and elders sets a precedent for social historians of Africa. If his novel complicates their work by influencing the African collective memory of the strike, it also provides a challenge to colonial attempts to manufacture that collective memory.

In the author's dedication, Sembene writes that his intention is to celebrate the victory of the West African labor movement and show that the strike "was not in vain." While the result of the strike described in archival documents is a legal settlement that reaffirmed French notions of their own sense of égalité, the most enduring result of Sembene's strike is the sense of unity that it creates. By minimizing the divisions that developed among workers and politicians during the course of the strike, Sembene attempts to evoke a collective memory of African unity at a time when Africans were preparing to vote on the form that their independence would take.

WORKS CITED

"Note relative à la Grève des Cheminots Africains," no date, in Archives Nationales du Mali K 70 fonds recents.

Aire, Victor O. "Didactic Realism in Ousmane Sembene's Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu." Canadian Journal of African Studies, 11.2 (1977): 283-294.

Allen, C. H. "Union-Party Relationships in Francophone West Africa: A Critique of `Téléguidage' Interpretations." The Development of an African Working Class. Ed. Richard Sandbrook and Robin Cohen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975. 99-121.

Bouta-Guèye, Amadou. Personal interview, 20 June 1992, Thiès. Retired railway worker and 1947 strike participant.

Case, F. "Workers Movements: Revolution and Women's Consciousness in God's Bits of Wood." Canadian Journal of African Studies 15.2 (1981): 277-292.

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