Aline Sitoé Diatta
Figure of Diola resistance in Casamance (c. 1920 – 1944)
Family : Place of birth : Nialou, Kabrousse district (Casamance) ; Date of birth : Around 1920 ; Mother : Silisia Diatta ; Father : Assonelo Diatta (died during her childhood)
Education : After her father’s death she was raised by her paternal uncle and grew up in the Diola tradition.
Action : A priestess and spiritual leader, she began a non-violent civil disobedience movement based on three refusals: tax, export groundnut growing and enlistment in the French army. Her spiritual power, notably calling rain in times of drought, strengthened her authority. In 1941 she heard voices calling her to free her people; in 1942 she was elected queen of Kabrousse and recognised as a prophetess. She restored the six-day Diola week.
Trials : Arrested in 1943, she was moved from prison to prison in Senegal and the Gambia, deported to Kayes and then to Timbuktu. She was arrested with seventeen others.
Legacy : She died in exile at Timbuktu in 1944. She has become a symbol of African resistance; a stadium bears her name, and the repatriation of her remains is still called for. The Dakar–Ziguinchor ferry, a stadium and schools bear her name.
Sources
- Persée — Christian Roche, « Chronique casamançaise, le cercle de Ziguinchor pendant la guerre 1939-1945 » (Outre-Mers, 1998)
- Cairn — « Aline Sitoé Diatta » (Africultures / Notre histoire)
- R. M. Baum, West Africa’s Women of God : Alinesitoué and the Diola Prophetic Tradition
- OpenEdition — « La mémoire face à l’Histoire », Les conflits de mémoire au Sénégal (PUR)
- Wikipédia — Aline Sitoé Diatta