“History is stubborn”: Talk about Truth, Justice, and National Reconciliation in the Republic of Guinea

Abstract

This article uses an analysis of discussions of the November 1970 Portuguese attack on Guinea as a window into issues that continue to be raised concerning the country's first post-independence regime (1958–1984). We analyze ongoing debates among Guineans regarding the legacy of the former president, Sékou Touré, and whether or not there is a need for truth-telling and/or justice for abuses committed under his rule. One strand of this discussion focuses on legitimate political tactics and another on the politics of ethnicity in contemporary Guinea. The frequent assertion by Guinean interlocutors that “history is stubborn” points to both the perceived power of truth-telling and the ethno-political stakes with which these debates have become imbued. Debates among Guineans often focus on the uses and abuses of “truth and reconciliation” testimony, which for some Guineans is essential to breaking past cycles of violent state repression and for others is a kind of Pandora's box that could fuel not reconciliation but retribution. We show that Guineans are also engaged in a third order of analysis, of the status of “imported” notions of justice, agency, and culpability in an African setting.

Women, Agency, and the State in Guinea

“…In the 1990s, Conté slowly opened up Guinea's political landscapesimilar to many other African countries. The military regime was dissolved and in 1992, political parties were officially recognised (Arieff and McGovern 2013). Many of the newly established youth, women, and student's organisations got integrated in one of the many political parties.…”

“…Coast covers (parts of) the following countries: Gambia, (southern) Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia (Knörr and Filho 2010, 2). 3 See, for example, Claude Rivière (1971), Adamoleku Ladipo (1976), Lansiné Kaba (1976aKaba ( , 1976bKaba ( , 1977, Ibrahima Baba Kaké (1987), Alpha Ousmane Barry (2002), Mike McGovern (2002, Mohamed Saliou Camara (2005, Jay Straker (2007aStraker ( , 2007bStraker ( , 2009, Christian Højbjerg (2010), André Lewin (2010), Alexis Arieff and Mike McGovern (2013), Céline Pauthier (2013), Michelle Engeler (2019), and Anita Schroven (2019). 4 One of the MDG's eight primary goals was to promote gender equality and empower women, cf.…”

“…This becomes evident when individuals and groups from the local, national, as well as international levels use records of the past to make claims to critique present circumstances (Connerton 1989, 3). In the Guinean case, especially the memory of the First Republic under Ahmed Sékou Touré is politicised: Different groups interpret this time by applying a victim and perpetrator dichotomy (Arieff and McGovern 2013;Camara 2014, xvii-xix).…”

The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective

“…In early 2007, rumours spread that Liberian ex-rebels had reached the capital along with mercenaries from neighbouring Guinea-Bissau. Th ese well-known spectres of the invading stranger built upon actual past threats and sought to connect them to the present (Kaba 1978;Kobélé Kéita 2002;McGovern 2002;Arieff and McGovern 2013). Beyond a call for national unity, identifying a foreign scapegoat implied that the current threat was not made by the ideal Guinean citizens, who were implicitly peaceful, lawabiding people faithfully supporting their government in trying times.…”

Conciliatory States

“…Per ELF, 1960s Guinea was less ethnolinguistically diverse than Ghana, which conventional fractionalization approaches would think beneficial (see Table 2). Sekou Toure rewarded coethnics and targeted plurality Peuls for increasingly harsh crackdowns (Arieff & McGovern, 2013). Within a slim plurality, Toure's position as second-largest Malinke made ethnicized goods-for-support a credible strategy, while increasing his fear of the Peuls.…”