Embodying Colonial Memories

Spirit Possession, Power, and the Hauka in West Africa

Paul Stoller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780415908764
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136652660
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: Social Sciences

A study of the West African Hauka - spirits that grotesquely mimic and mock "Europeans" of the colonial epoch. The author considers spirit possession as a set of embodied practices with serious social and cultural consequences. Embodying Colonial Memories is the first in-depth study of the West African Hauka, spirits in the body of (human) mediums which mimic and mock Europeans of the colonial epoch. Paul Stoller, who was initiated into a spirit possession troupe, recounts an insider's tale of the Hauka with respect and "brotherly" deference. He combines narrative description, historical analysis, and reflections on the importance of embodiment and mimesis to social theory, with particular reference to the Songhay peoples of the Republic of Niger.

PART FOUR
Transforming State Power
The Hauka Movement in the Postcolony of Niger

Introduction
Crossing Ceremonial Boundaries

Boundary crossings are sometimes dangerous; they always involve premeditated risk. Sometimes boundaries mark a space of challenge. As one approaches a line, one considers the risks and decides to cross or not to cross the boundary. One thinks of Gaddafi's "line of death," which the US Navy crossed without one sailor dying. The U.S. Admirals knew that Gaddafi could hardly challenge the might of the American Navy.

Boundaries of all sorts crisscross the spirit world in western Niger, Some are permanent, invisibly separating the spirit and social worlds. Others are fleeting as when spirit priests trace a magic circle (kelle) into which the uninitiated are not allowed. What happens when such a boundary is crossed?

Take the following story, which I paraphrase, told to me by the late Sorko Mounmouni Koda of Mehanna. Sorko Mounmouni tells a tale of Dongo, the "father" of the Hauka, the Songhay spirit who burns villages, punishes people who disobey him, and executes those who insult him.

During one rainy season lightening struck and killed several farmers in their fields, near Niamey, capital of Niger, From the vantage of some Nigeriens, these sorts of deaths are attributable to Dongo's displeasure; they also prompt spirit-possession priests to organize a Dongo hori, a ceremony at which people ask Dongo how to avoid more suffering and death. Accordingly, a Niamey spirit-possession priest organized such a ceremony. Before long Dongo shuddered into the body of a frail old woman dressed in homespun indigo cloth—Dongo's cloth. Dongo roared at the crowd, wagging his forefinger at people as he pranced around the priest's compound. With the same forefinger, Dongo drew a line in the sand, again wagging his finger. The priest interpreted the gesture.

Anyone who crosses Dongo's line will die," he said.

The din of the audience subsided as a tall barrel-chested man dressed in fatigues and a red beret marched up to Dongo's line. "You are all devils," he was reported as saying. "This is the product of charlatans." He pointed to Dongo, now dressed in his flowing black robe. "You are not Dongo," he thundered, "you are nothing but an old woman."

People in the audience moved away from the soldier, who by his dress was probably a border patrolman. He spoke again: "I will show you that these devil dances are nothing but a ruse. I will cross this boundary."

At that, the soldier crossed the boundary and collapsed on the sand. Someone hailed a taxi. People carried the soldier to the taxi so he might be rushed off to the hospital. No one knew for sure what happened to him, but someone said that he died before he reached the hospital.

As in the case of Tyiri Gao's story of the Hauka jailbreak and the eruption of fires in the Gold Coast, there is no way to determine the veracity of the tale. But surely this question of veracity here is beside the point. These kinds of stories are part and parcel of the Dongo mystique, which is primarily a mystique about fiery, unexplained power that frightens people. The story also reveals sociopolitical cleavages among spirit-possession players (deities, mediums and others), the military (the military, police, educated civil servants), and Muslims (some of whom are members of the educated elite, some of whom are peasants (teleke). In short Dongo's power overwhelms that of the Islamically inspired, partially educated, French-speaking soldier. Taken as a metanymn, Dongo's power overpowers the forces that govern Niger, supplanting that of invincible Allah. Dongo commands respect and generates fear. Lest we forget, the French colonial military commanded just such respect and terror and used it to govern the Colony of Niger with a firm hand. The Hauka, as we have seen, used the mimetic faculty to tap into this perceived power. Although the specific identities of some of the characters in this play may have changed in the postcolony of Niger, the dynamics of power relations have remained virtually the same.

CHAPTER TEN
Independence and the Postcolony of Niger

The postcolony is a chaotic, fragmented entity, the pluralities of which defy business-as-usual scholarly analysis. And yet there is some regularity in the postcolony's chaos. Just as the seemingly infinite mutable patterns in cloud movements or gushing streams have "structures," so in the complex chaos of the postcolony there is what Mbembe calls an "internal coherence."¹ Indeed, postcolonies are characterized by a system of signs—a discourse— in which the state creates significantly empty symbols—veritable simulacra. The postcolony,

is not, however, just an economy of signs in which power is mirrored or imagined self-reflectedly. The postcolony is characterized by a distinctive art of improvisation, by a tendency to excess and disproportion as well as by distinctive ways in which identities are multiplied, transformed, and put into circulation. It is likewise made up of a series of corporate institutions, and apparatuses which, once they are deployed, constitute a distinctive regime of violence.²

Mbembe also argues that postcolonies in Africa at least consist of what he calls, "the commandament", the French term used to mark a colonial regime that wields absolute power and that tolerates nothing less than total discipline and obeisance.³

And yet, Mbembe does not suggest that the postcolony is brutally and simply a regime of terror. For him, postcolonial relations cannot be reduced to analyses of domination, resistance, and collaboration; they are

Hamani Diori, First President of the Republic of Niger. Courtesy, Office National de le'Edition et de Press.

much more complex and subtle. In postcolonies, he suggests, there emerges a certain conviviality that familiarizes and domesticates power relations and leads not to resistance, but to the "zombifkation" of the commandament and their subjects. Considering Reagan's regime in the United States, for example, one can add that mutual zombification is not unique to the African postcolony. The conviviality and complicity of power relations in Reagan's America lead to a certain kind of impotence. Reagan happily took naps as the nation felicitously went to sleep.

Just as quotidian rituals, advertising rites, and political myth-making led to a remarkable period of "political success" in Reagan's America, so in the postcolony routine rituals reinforced .. the commandament's own institutionalization (its recherche hegemonique) in its capacity as a fetish to which the subject is bound... "⁴ At the same time, the subject in the post-colony displays "... a talent for play and a sense of fun which makes him homo ludens par excellence,"⁵ Such capacity and necessity for play, of course, split the postcolonial subject's identity into so many fragments—peasant, laborer, member of the party, member of an ethnic group, Muslim, Christian, citizen.

In this chapter, the Republic of Niger is considered as a chaotic and fragmented postcolony that exhibits most, if not all, of the attributes that Mbembe articulates. The space of the postcolony, as we shall see in Chapter Eleven, is one that nourished the Hauka, who, after all, have been spiritus ludentes par excellence.

Movements Toward Independence

Prior to World War II, the French regime in Niger was in Mbembe's language, the commandament, a colonial government that used terror, real or perceived, to maintain iron-fisted rule. Following World War II, several factors lead to growing sociopolitical change in colonial Niger. First, there emerged in the late 1940s a small elite which gained a degree of legitimacy at the expense of "traditional" chiefs whom the French had used to collect taxes, supply labor, and enforce discipline. In opposition to these chiefs, the new educated elite stressed economic development, which, they hoped, would steer Niger onto the path of independence. Second, there appeared a small working class in major towns. These workers had aims and interests similar to those of the new elite. Third, the French reconstituted their colonial empire under the Fourth Republic, which meant that Africans, no longer the completely powerless sujets of the indigenat, could run for office and represent their peoples in the French Parliament.

Change in the metropolitan political climate brought on an era of West African electoral politics. In 1946, a group of educated Nigeriens formed the Parti Progressiste Nigerien (PPN) which was affiliated with the Francophone West African, Rassemblement Democratique Africaine (RDA). As Robert Charlick suggests, the great majority of the PPN leaders were not from chiefly families. As commoners, they promoted a vigorous program of socioeconomic development that would supplant traditional authority following independence.⁶ Indeed, the PPN chose Hamani Diori, a commoner, as their candidate for the French Parliament. He was elected in 1946.

In a colony governed by colonial and chiefly authority, the PPN had a very narrow electoral base. Since he initially viewed the PNN as a radical force, Colonial Governor Toby worked assiduously to splinter its growing power. And why not? PPN members routinely "agitated" in the countryside to weaken the hold of collaborationist chiefs, the lynch pins in the French machine of colonial governance.

These were the radical years of Diori and his PPN cohorts. Toby's politics of fragmentation worked well—at first. In 1948 Toby lent his support to a rival, more conservative party, the Union Nigerienne des Independants et Syrnpathisants (UNIS). PPN, which had been allied to the French Communist Party, fared badly in that year's elections. PPN quickly realized that they needed French support to win future elections. Ever the political pragmatists, PPN severed its ties with the communists and allied themselves with a right-center party. In the cities, their stronghold, PPN continued its "agitation" politics, their attempt to undermine chiefly authority. In the rural areas, however, they bribed local leaders to bring in the vote and fanned the fires of ethnic divisiveness. This partial ideological transformation made the PPN more palatable to the French and laid the foundation for the first regime of the Republic of Niger,

Not all the leaders of the PPN agreed with the pragmatic politics of Hamani Diori. Djibo Bakari, Diori's cousin, founded the Union Democratique Nigerienne (UDN) in 1954, an overtly radical party which appealed to oppressed peasants in the countryside and downtrodden workers in cities. Being a trans-ethnic party, Djibo built a substantial electoral base. He organized a Youth League and a Free Women's Association, the aims of which were to create new sociopolitical structures in rural areas. These radical organisms posed major threats to existing rural authority. When the new Socialist Government of France replaced Governor Toby with a socialist colonial governor in 1955, Djibo pragmatically switched the UDN's affiliation from the French Communist to the French Socialist party. In 1956 the radical UDN formed an improbable coalition with the Bloc Nigerien d'Action (BNA), a rurally based, conservative party of traditional interests. The French supported this coalition, according to Charlick, because they thought it represented the best opportunity for economic reform. In May 1957 the UDN-BNA took control of the national government.⁷

Given the imminence of independence, Djibo Bakari, the leader of the coalition, seemed to be on his way to becoming the Republic of Niger's first president. Then came General de Gaulle's Fifth Republic and the great choice: to remain or depart from the French Community. To remain meant self-rule with little international autonomy. To depart meant "... immediate independence from France against President Charles de Gaulle's explicit wishes, and ... the ... risk ... of... a total break with France."⁸

Two weeks before the referendum, Djibo announced his decision to seek immediate independence. He renamed his party, Sawaba, which in Hausa means "freedom." France's response was immediate. De Gaulle dispatched a forceful new governor, Don Juan Colombani, who quickly took measures to crush the Sawaba Party. Colombani used his office to persuade Nigeriens to remain in the French community. When the vote was tallied on September 28, 1958, eighty percent of the voters elected to cast their fate with France. Colombani indicated that he would support the parties that had resisted Sawaba. Djibo's government resigned on October 19, 1958.

The Governor disbanded the old National Assembly and called new elections, in which the PPN-dominated Union Pour la Communaute Franco-African (UCFA) won the majority of the National Assembly seats. In the election Djibo as well as Hamani Diori lost their bids for the National Assembly. On December 18, 1958 France declared Niger a republic in the French Community. Emerging miraculously unscathed from his electoral defeat, Hamani Diori was named President. Historian and author Boubou Hama became President of the National Assembly.

In the space of the next twenty months the PPN, aided extensively by its French advisors and the French police, established the outlines of a repressive one-party regime in Niger. One by one, opposition organizations were banned, and rights to oppose the regime were limited. Early in 1959 all political meetings were outlawed, and Sawaba supporters were physically beaten in several demonstrations. Sawaba deputies to the National Assembly were refused permission to speak, and in May 1959 they were simply barred from the chamber and replaced with PPN deputies following an annulment of the December 1958 election returns from Zinder...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue Diplomacy on a Dune
• I Sensing Spirit Possession
• II Confronting Colonialism in West Africa
• III Migrating with the Hauka
• IV Transforming State Power: The Hauka Movement in the Postcolony of Niger
• Epilogue Memory, Power, and Spirit Possession
• Notes
• References
• Index