Deyda, Good to see you here and this great piece of yours.The issues that Malick took up here are of great significance in discussing Senghore.Malick was a student of literature at high school and at one time he was asked to compare and contrast two different poems "Night in Sine" of Senghore with "Night" of Soyenka.Two different poems discussing the same subject,both of them are great poems.But only one of them is speaking the truth about what is the real villager life like in dark nights of Africa.Had it been that night in the village, is so sweet,is in so much conformity with nature,I dont think you would have pointed to some of us the "Teeth of the Sea",do you remember that evening.Senghore chose that life because it is more comfortable.This is all what Negritude is about,speaking of the sweetness of the village life and yet choose to live the comfortable life so distant from reality.It is very false,because there is no African villager who would not choose the comfort enjoyed by the West,no African Villager will say no to a bright village,a refrigerator,etc,all of the struggle is about a better life for us and for the future and not to fall in love with our terrible poverty and decadency. You might consider Seng to be a democrat,but he was far from that,in my opinion.You know better than I do what happened to,among others, our good friend Ceesay whiles Senghore was the president of Senegal and for what reason ?such would have been a head line as a typical character of a dictatorial regime,freedom of speech ,freedom of expression was scarce in Sengs Senegal.It was also Seng who banned all other political parties in Senegal,except that of his own and two other opposition parties,it was not until Abdou Joof took over power that LDMPT,Ade-Jeff etc were able to take up open political work without fear of prosecution.We know what these parties have contributed and are contributing to the democratic process in Senegal. You are right that Seng spoke for the Independence of certain African countries,but Seng never spoke for Guinea Conakry and Why ?He even worked very hard against an Independent Gambia,he wanted us to be part of Senegal against the will of the Gambian people,a democrat would have think otherwise.He was among the very few African leaders who never supported the Liberation struggle in Guinea Bissau.In fact he worked very hard against it and gave the most reactionary forces in Guinea Bissau, protection and ground to sabotage the independent struggle of Guinea Bissau.He forced enrolled his opponents into the Army and sent them to the frontline to fight against the PAIGC liberation army.Among those who had to experience such brutal nightmare was Abdoulie Bachilly,who is today serving the Senegalese people in parliament and in government.Senegal has never in its history been more democratic as it is today. Seng was a great intellectual and contributed greatly to that end,but his vision of Africa and the African was very terrible and I see it to be the greatest hindrance why Seng will and can never be placed together with other past great African leaders like Nkrumah.Even though I am no follower of Nkrumah,I will never buy any explanation that he was a Dictator.Here is a great man,who laboured to carve,not only theory, that is indigenous and so needed by then but also worked hard for the development and progress of the continent,he read Marx,he read Ghandi,he read the bible and so on to come to a conclusion,yes he made terrible mistakes,but these were not out of want of power but that of progress.If you take the trade Union question you will see his mistakes today and argued that our own Jallow Jallow made the greatest contribution on this issue.But Nkurumah on many other issues was far beyond that of his counterparts,had there been any serious approach to some of the questions that Nkrumah raised and work very sincerely for,there is no doubt that we would have been at another stage.Whiles Seng was working hard against the Independence of the Little Gambia,Nkurumah was busy given Gambians Scholarship as a way of preparing Gambians for the independence which he knew was certainly on the way coming ,among those who benefited from that scholarship are Gambians who have contributed greatly and are still contributing to all aspect of the Gambian society and he did not do this only for the Gambians but also for other African countries.A dictator will never contribute to the freedom of the other with so much passion as that of Nkrumah. 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