The book brings to our attention a monumental figure in the fight to reclaim Africa, its wealth and its history for its people. It also shares interesting insights into Lumumba and other giants of African liberation, writes Bob Newland
This autobiography was initially published in 1983, three years before Blouin’s death. As someone who at an early age was introduced to the legend that was Dolores Ibarruri (La Pasionaria), hero of the Spanish Civil War, the title of this book immediately caught my attention. Who was Andrée Blouin? Would she live up to the label?
Andrée was born in 1921 in a small village in what is now the Central African Republic (CAR). She was a métisse, of dual French and African heritage. Her father a French businessman ‘bought’ her mother aged thirteen with a huge dowry. Her mother was fourteen, when Andrée was born. Three years later, her father married his white French fiancée, discarding his African ‘wife’ and dumping Andrée in an orphanage for métisse girls. This was a terrible place, run by nuns, surrounded by high fences and walls, and known by its inmates as ‘prison’. Here they were fed putrid food, half-starved and daily punished for the sin of being dual heritage. The culture in the ‘prison’ was racist and brutal, reflecting the overarching ideology of the French empire.
Andrée speaks of the horrors of March when the nuns held a ‘retreat’ spending the month in continuous prayer. Receiving little education, the children were constantly given religious teachings. She reflects on the absurdity of Christianity saying, “There were too many contradictions between its principles and the way we girls were treated.”
Once the girls reached fifteen or sixteen, the nuns arranged marriages to their husbands to be from the nearby orphanage for dual heritage boys. Their racism was so deep that they could not even contemplate their métisse wards marrying black men. Andrée refused several such proposals and aged nineteen escaped with two friends. She briefly lived with her father but soon reunited with her mother, and moved to Brazzaville using her sewing skills learned in the orphanage to eke out a living.
Andrée subsequently established her first relationship with a white businessman. Sadly, this was by choice rather than the enforced ‘sale’ that her mother had undergone. This was followed by two marriages to white colonialists, the first a racist businessman the second a lowly educationalist.
Blouin’s life underwent a transformation when she moved to Guinea. Following defeat in Indo-China de Gaulle sought to save the remains of France’s imperial power by offering ‘independence’ within a ‘commonwealth’ where France’s economic and political and military power could be retained. Referenda were organised in eighteen African colonies. Blouin finally managed to reject her upbringing and its legacy and threw herself wholeheartedly into Sékou Touré’s campaign to reject the commonwealth in favour of complete independence. Two attempts were made on her life during the campaign and following Sekou Toure’s success in the legislative elections, Blouin and her husband were forced by the French administration to leave Guinea and go to Madagascar.
Nothing, however, could stop her new-found mission. Conflict threatened between her native CAR and Congo. On her way back to Guinea in 1959, Blouin intervened with both Presidents in an attempt to unify their efforts to build their newly independent countries. She was successful but now experienced her first tragedy with the assassination soon after, by forces unknown, of the President of CAR, Barthélemy Boganda.
Blouin’s contribution to African unity was recognised by Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah who enlisted her to mobilise the women of Africa to unify their men in the interest of building a wider unity among the newly independent nations. Nkrumah as a Pan-Africanist believed that only by greater union could Africa throw off the yoke of colonialism. This movement ‘The Feminine Movement for African Unity’, was unique. Thousands of women were enrolled not just to campaign for African unity but to overcome paternalism, chattel slavery and the blight of alcoholism – all of which prevented them from playing a full role in society.
As the women’s campaign grew, the Belgian administration of the Congo enlisted the Catholic Church in a campaign of lies about Blouin in an attempt to derail it. This was not successful but reinforced in Blouin’s mind the negative role of the church in her upbringing and its key role in providing the ideological underpinning for colonialism.
Blouin’s Pan-Africanism and lack of sectarianism came to the fore throughout this period. She succeeded in overcoming many tribal conflicts created by Belgium to undermine true independence. Despite the demands of the immediate situation in the Congo she found time to work with Angolan refugees from the Movemento Popular de Libertácio de Angola (MPLA) composing the first leaflets calling for a free Angola which they carried back into the country.
Two parties dominated Congolese politics pre-independence – Antoine Gizenga’s Parti Solidaire Africain (PSA) and Patrice Lumumba’s Congolese National Movement. Blouin played a key role their decision to unite. Belgian efforts to undermine independence continued, enlisting tribal leaders to sow disunity. Blouin was expelled days before independence but in leaving played a very special role in Congo’s independence. She smuggled a Protocol with her to Rome signed by all the pro-independence parties calling for Lumumba to be asked to form the first independent government.
In telling the story of the Congo tragedy, Blouin addresses the army revolt, Katangese secession and finally, after she was again expelled from the Congo, the assassination of Lumumba. Andrée Blouin spent her last years as an exile in newly independent Algeria, a welcome guest of Ahmed Ben Bella. Her autobiography ends with a reflective piece on her life and an epilogue by her daughter Eve which emphasises Andrée’s view that the Soviet Union was a true friend of African liberation and questions some of the words inserted in the book by its co-author, Jean MacKellar.
The book brings to life the reality of growing up in Francophile Africa. With so few voices from below sharing their history, and even fewer women, it is a fantastic contribution to today’s efforts to understand colonial history through the eyes of its victims and those who sacrificed so much to bring an end to colonial exploitation. One may feel that Andrée spends a lot of time, as I have, on her early years. For me this was not too much as these experiences shape her later life and contribute a great deal to the historiography of Francophone empire.
Her later contribution to the struggle for independence of the Congo and so many other former colonies was extraordinary.
Can Blouin be compared to La Passionaria? Coincidentally both had been seamstresses in their early lives, Ibarruri to finance her study as a teacher and Blouin simply to survive. Ibarruri was a public speaker who inspired her people and supporters worldwide to defend the Spanish Republic. Blouin was also a powerful public figure supporting adopted homelands across Africa in their liberation struggles. Andrée Blouin undoubtedly deserves the title ‘Black Pasionaria’.
In contrast to a history of colonialism which has largely been written by Europeans, Blouin’s story brings to our attention a monumental figure in the fight to reclaim Africa, its wealth and its history for its people. It also shares interesting insights into Lumumba and other giants of African liberation. Verso Books is to be congratulated in bringing this amazing story to today’s readers. It’s an unputdownable contribution to our understanding of the role of imperialism and colonialism in both the personal and political field.
My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria. Andrée Blouin. Verso Books £18.99 (ebook £10.00).
Bob Newland is a Liberation member and was a London Recruit.
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