An important and informative anti-colonial Marxist survey of French West Africa in this speech at the 2nd Congress of the League Against Imperialism by Tiemoko Kouyaté, a founder African Communism. Born in Mali in 1902 and moving to France in 1924 to attend teaching school, he was soon expelled. Joining the French C.P., Kouyaté organized African mariners in French ports, established the Pan-Africanist League for the Defense of the Negro Race and edited its ‘La Race Nègre’ addressing the diaspora in France and its many colonies. The LDNR was a founder of the League against Imperialism in 1927, then led by another pioneering African Communist, Senegalese Lamine Senghor, who died shortly after. Tiemoko Kouyaté assumed leadership of the LDNR and was delegate for French West Africa to the second League Against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression congress held in Frankfort, Germany in 1929. Kouyaté would work closely with George Padmore and followed a similar trajectory, both being expelled from the Communist movement in 1933 for ‘nationalist deviations.’  Kouyaté remained in France, working as a welder, continuing Pan-Africanist political activity and collaboration with Padmore. Arrested during the Nazi occupation, Kouyaté died in Mauthausen Concentration Camp on July 4, 1944.

‘Speech of Comrade Tiemoko Kouyaté at the Congress of the League Against Imperialism’ from Negro Worker. Vol. 2 No. 4. August, 1929.

Comrades,

At the First Congress of the League Against Imperialist in February 1927 our lamented friend Segghore Lamine represented the League for the Defence of the Negro Race. He died in November of the same year, while imprisoned in a French dungeon for his activities in exposing French Imperialism at the Congress. His services were typical of the risk and dangers which all who strive for the defence of the oppressed Negroes have to undergo. You are not unaware, comrades, that all along imperialism, leaning also on bought philosophical teachings, has served the greed of the capitalists. This is displayed in varied and complicated forms. In black Africa colonisation (in our era oppression is cloaked under this name) is destructive. In the Antilles it is the cause of the terrible poverty of the Negroes despite the deluding exterior.

The French Congo.

Recent events of a most appalling nature have attracted the attention of world Public Opinion to the French Congo. The population of this country, which is being exterminated by forced labour on transport and by sleeping sickness, has decreased from nine millions in 1900 to 2,850,000 in 1921. This country has been in the rower of concession companies since 1899. These companies were afforded these privileges for thirty years through the French parliament. Here we come across the very essence of fraternal collaboration between capitalism and imperialism: the creation of riches for the bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries at the expense of the colonial peoples. This is what the railway, the well-known “Congo-Ocean” line was required for, to get the produce to the coast. The building of the railway line of 140 kilometres cost 25,000 Negroes their life. The Batignolles Building Company, which was given charge of this thankless work, gave the natives no improved Instruments. They forced them to dig the tunnels with spades and picks; the rails and hewn stone had to be carried on the backs of the Negroes. They worked 11 and 12 hours a day. The workers, recruited from all parts of the Congo, died in thousands: 25% died whilst being transported to the place of work; 37% died during work on the “Congo-Ocean” line from consumption, dysentery, tropical grippe (dengae), malaria, bad and insufficient food, the results of various brutalities, etc.; 20% died upon their return home–total 82% out of the first recruits died during the year. These are official figures, Albert Londres in his book “Terre D’Ebene” writes that 75% of those working on the Bribingut section died. Out of a party of 1,250 men working on the Likonala Mossak section only 89 returned. Out of the 174 sent to work on the Cuesso sur la Sangha section only 80 arrived in Brazzavile, and there were only 60 when they arrived at the place of work. In three months time there were only 36 of them. In other dristricts the death rate was in the same proportions.

Did all those Negroes willingly agree to go to such a death? No, comrades. The workers recruited by the local administration for private works and also far public works, are forced to work. This is how the administration of French Equatorial Africa starts to recruit these groups The Governor-General at the beginning of the year, orders groups of workers to be conscripted, in accordance with the demands made, in each given locality. Whether the year is a good or a bad one, they have to be conscripted. It is easy to imagine the drama that takes place, the search for people which then begins. The Governor’s assistants, by their own special orders establish certain districts where the workers are to be recruited. The administration of French Equatorial Africa provided for the conscription of 23,250 workers in 1929, who were to be sent to various works. They were divided up as follows: the conscription in 14 localities of Gobon was to give 8,500 workers (decree of September 20, 1928), the monthly wage being 50 francs; the conscription in 11 districts of the Midale Congo was to give 4,950 workers (order of November 13, 1928), wage from 35 to 45 francs monthly. The recruiting in 9 districts of Cuban-gui Shari should have given 4,650 workers (decree of November 6, 1928); In 9 subdistricts of Tchad there were to be 5,450 workers conscripted (November 17, 1928), wage of 30 francs a month. The daily rations can Le received in money, not to exceed 75 centimes. The law laying down 15 days’ compulsory labour for public works, applies everywhere in the French Congo. The day rates of the workers on the railway line “Congo-Ocean” are: general labourers get from 1 to 1.75 francs, gangers get from 1.25 to 2 francs (decree of November 22, 1928), and those who “voluntarily” renew the contracts after their term of conscription get from 2.25 to 2.50 francs. Of course one can only speak ironically of contracting workers in these conditions, as this contract is concluded against the will of the workers, the right being retained to interpret it to the disadvantage of the workers.

The wages which I have mentioned just now are starvation wages. As recognised by the Governor-General himself, the work on the line is extremely exhausting. The tribes which have suffered most are the Bayas, Bandas and Saras. When a new conscription of workers was to be carried out in November, 1928, the Bayas in Upper Sangha (Oubangui Chari) rebelled.

The suppression of this rebellion was most severe. The trees were converted into gallows, from which hung the lacerated Negroes; villages were burned to ashes after the population had deserted them; 200,000 Negroes escaped to the neighbouring British and Belgian colonies, the Negroes were castrated, had their stomachs cut open and their ears chopped off, as was the case in the village of Fam Chef–such are the charms of civilising colonisation of the Twentieth century. The repressions have not yet come to an end. After the attempt at an uprising in the Lai district (Tchad) seven well-known natives were imprisoned in Bangui.

Comrades, you are often told that the sleeping sickness rages in the French Congo. We will attempt to explain the fact. The Tse-tse flies, whose bites cause the sleeping sickness, like to live in the obscurity of the forests. The blazing heat of the sun kills them, The Negroes, persecuted by the police and the concession agents, hide in the forests, and thus fall into the danger of being bitten by these death-bringing flies. The depopulation of the districts increases the danger of the spread of this sleeping sickness. All these facts show that forced labour still exists, despite the touching care taken by the French Government against this, forbidding it in the decree of October 22, 1925, The extermination of the Negroes in the Upper Ogoue district has never before been precedented: the agent of the forestry company in 1927 ordered 1,100 people to be killed because the amount of caoutchouc which was to have been produced was not reached. The population of Gobon since 1911 to 1921 has decreased from 1,050,000 to 300,000, Besides this, during the same decade vital statistics the French Congo showed a drop in population of 63% (official documents of M. Georges Bruel). According to other official data of the French Colonial Ministry, out of a population of 20,000 4,000 to 5,000 dies annually in the Upper Ogoue district. The uprising in this district was especially stormy. The mining companies of the Congo and the companies of San-go-Oubangui during some two or three years easily succeeded in tripling their capital. You all know that the worst scourge in the French African colonies is to carry heavy weights. I will not dwell any longer on these questions,

The situation created by French imperialism in East Africa is about the same as that in the French Congo, only the following difference existing there is no sleeping sickness there, the organism of the natives there is more enduring, the concessionaires are more limited.

Although forced labour has been forbidden by the decree of October 22, 1925, it is still in force. The local administration in 1929 resolved to recruit 245,000 workers from 20 to 40 years of age, of whom 50,000 have been used to form infantry squads. This means that under the decree of October 31, 1926, this contingent is recruited over and above the annual conscription. The Decree of June 3, 1926 appliable in Madagascar, is very similar to the above.

43,000 workers are to go to public works and serve the administration apparatus.

54,000 have been assigned for work in private, timber, agricultural, and commercial enterprises.

In accordance with the decree of July 30, 1929, the Negroes of French Eastern and likewise Equatorial Africa, are called up for military service for a term of three years, This does not take into account also the migration of 2,600,000 Negroes to the neighbouring British colonies. The Negroes wounded in the last war return home in extreme poverty. Thus for instance, a disabled Negro soldier receiving a 100% pension, and father of a family gets only 1,800 fr. a year, whilst French drafted soldier with a family to support get’s an annual pension of 15,390 francs.

Comrades, you cannot imagine the inhumanity of the courts in black French Africa and Madagascar to which the Negroes are subject. For minor offences they sentence the natives to imprisonment up to 20 years, to life imprisonment and exile (Decree of March 22, 1924),

By the decrees of July 24, 1906 and October 8, 1925, we were deprived of our lands and they became the State property. In Togo and the Cameron, French Mandates, the natives were robbed in a similar manner (Decree of August 11, 1929). The Boulous and Bayas tribes are at the present absolutely terrified. The agrarian problem threatens to develop into a very nightmare.

We are deprived of the right to protest against all these crises of imperialism; we have no right of assembly, to strike, freedom of speech and press; neither is there any right of migration. The “Negro Race”, the official organ of our League, has been banned in these countries. There is the right for unions only in four districts in Senegal. This is the explanation of the existence of the Railwaymen’s Union in Dakar. These leaders of our regional sections in Africa are under observation, they are baited and persecuted. We have been absolutely pauperised. The taxes press upon the workers, and in particular, on the peasants.

The reason why several Negro organisations of the French colonies in Africa are not represented is that in general there is only one organisation, and that is our organisation.

In the French Antilles: Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Guiana, the Negro workers are absolutely unorganised. They have their representatives in the French Parliament. But these Negro deputies, including the representative from Senegal, day by day more and more betray those whom they have been charged to defend. Arrayed in aprons, brush in hand, and with a briefcase ticked under one arm, they resemble lackeys of imperialism. This is why the Negro masses in the Antilles, like their African brothers, are more and more beginning to reject any idea of representing the colonies in the French parliament.

You, comrades, all know that in September 1928 Guadeloupe was ravaged by a cyclone of rare force in September 1928. This cyclone resulted in the death of more than 1,200; 22,000 houses were destroyed; the coffee, cocoa and sugar plantations were devastated and the yield decreased by 70%. The French Chamber of Deputies, in an out- burst of generosity, voted 100 million francs for the help of the district. After eight months of waiting, those who had suffered from the cyclone only received 80 guaranteed loans of from 1,500 to 25,000 francs, and 1,100 benefits of from 150 to 300 francs. Two barracks were built which could not house more than 100 persons, so that the sufferers, the agricultural labourers on the plantations and the workers sleep under the open sky and in abject poverty. Such good help was [end of article missing in original].

First called The International Negro Workers’ Review and published in 1928, it was renamed The Negro Worker in 1931. Sponsored by the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW), a part of the Red International of Labor Unions and of the Communist International, its first editor was American Communist James W. Ford and included writers from Africa, the Caribbean, North America, Europe, and South America. Later, Trinidadian George Padmore was editor until his expulsion from the Party in 1934. The Negro Worker ceased publication in 1938. The journal is an important record of Black and Pan-African thought and debate from the 1930s. American writers Claude McKay, Harry Haywood, Langston Hughes, and others contributed.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/negro-worker/files/1929-v2n4-aug-incomplete-copy.pdf