The Politics of Street Names and Memory in Mali
Nationalism, anti-colonial politics, and a pointed reminder that the 2012 rebellion remains a source of serious contention.
On December 13, Mali’s military government announced the renaming of approximately thirty boulevards, avenues, and roads in the capital Bamako, as well as a public square and several universities and institutes. As some media coverage of the move has pointed out, the new names replace older ones associated with French colonialism and with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a bloc that the junta is at odds with. But it’s important not just to think about what’s being replaced; the new names are important in and of themselves.
The military authorities, as this decision and others show, are not interested merely in rule by a kind of brute force and intimidation - although force has been at the core of the junta’s power, from the coups of 2020 and 2021 (orchestrated by the same group of officers) through the arrests of numerous critics and opponents through the harsh “counterterrorism” policies applied in the center and north of the country. Alongside violence has been a somewhat amorphous nationalist-populist ideology. The junta has articulated and developed that ideology not through lengthy manifestos or grand intellectual schemas, but by iterating it in a fairly haphazard way. The street renaming is one significant moment in this process - every ideology, after all, needs some kind of narrative of history, and where better to experiment with that narrative than in the cartography of the capital. The renaming is decolonization, to be sure, but a certain version of it that is favorable to the stories the junta wants to tell.
The names chosen fall broadly into several categories:
Precolonial monarchs and nobles such as Soundiata Keita (founder of the medieval Mali Empire), Kankan (Mansa) Moussa, and Sumanguru Kanté;
Anti-colonial resistance figures such as Oumar Tall, Samory Touré, Bazani Thera, Niamody Sissoko, Babemba Traoré, and Fihroun ag Alinsar;
Independence-era politicians such as President Modibo Keita and National Assembly President Mahamane Alassane Haidara
Prominent military rulers/officers such as Abdoulaye Soumaré, Moussa Traoré (in power 1968-1991), and Amadou Toumani Touré (who was president from 2002-2012, although the avenue in question is pointedly named “General Amadou Toumani Touré Avenue”);
Other figures, including Nelson Mandela and several Malian intellectuals and cultural icons.
Reading between the lines, I think there are a few logics at work here.
First, there is an appeal to national unity through invoking glories of the distant past and more recent memories of anti-colonial resistance. All of this is woven through with what scans to me as a systematic attempt at ethnic balancing - notably, by my count, the anti-colonial rebels make up the largest category, and whoever selected the names tried hard to include figures from across the Malian territory, ranging from the very well known to the considerably less famous.
Second, the renaming project helps project the anti-French posture of the junta back through time. That is, the cluster of rebel names suggests a picture of a land where the French were fought fiercely - which is true, although there were also those who worked (collaborated, if you like) with the French. The junta can leverage history to argue, if only implicitly, that they are picking up where the heroes of the turn of the twentieth century left off.
Third, there is the outline here of an implicit narrative of postcolonial history; it’s instructive to think about who is in and who is out. Founding fathers of the independence period - in. Prominent generals - in. Major artists and intellectuals - in. The political class of the 1990s-2020s - out.
Fourth, the name “Captain Sékou Traoré Avenue” points to considerable tensions just below (or not even below!) the surface image of national unity. Traoré was in charge of a military base in the far northern town of Aguelhoc which was overrun by rebels in the early stages of the 2012 uprising; Traoré - who is widely considered a martyr, especially by those who see the rebels as terrorists and criminals - was among more than 100 soldiers who were killed at Aguelhoc, many of them summarily executed in one of the most infamous incidents of the rebellion. Invoking Traoré’s memory is one of many indications of the unsettled business the junta has with the rebels in the north now - many of whose leaders also participated in the 2012 war.
In sum, the decree is a coded message about how the junta sees history, wants history to be seen, and wants itself to be seen. The anchor for this history is anti-colonial politics, combined with a bid for a unifying nationalism that is nevertheless shot through with tensions and divisions.