family
18 June 2007
President Thabo Mbeki has, on behalf of the people and government of the
Republic of South Africa, expressed his heartfelt condolences to the family of
Senegalese novelist and filmmaker, Sembene Ousmane, who died last week.
The President described Ousmane (84) as one of Africa's most illustrious
novelists and the continent's pioneer filmmaker. Born on 1 January 1923,
Ousmane left school at the age of 14 and worked as a fisherman and an auto
mechanic before joining the World War II.
Notwithstanding his limited formal education, Ousmane became a
world-renowned novelist and filmmaker, publishing five novels, five collections
of short stories, directed numerous films, four shorts, nine features, and four
documentaries.
As a result of his outstanding works, Ousmane was called "the father of
African film," won many prizes and awards, nourishing a progressive African
socio-political, cultural perspective as well as placing it on the world
stage.
Sembene Ousmane's work was uncompromising in its commitment to the
liberation of Africans and humanity. It inspired many activists on the African
continent and in the wider developing world.
Humanising relationships between people was an issue occupying a central
place in his work. One feels oneself gleaning from this issue in 'God's Bits of
Wood,' Ousmane's great 1960 novel, when Fa Keita, the Old One, a character in
the novel, counsels his comrades to internalise values different from those of
the coloniser.
Fa Keita implores his comrades "to act so that no man dares to strike you
because he knows you speak the truth, to act so that you can no longer be
arrested because you are asking for the right to live, to act so that all of
this will end, both here and elsewhere: that is what should be in your
thoughts."
He continues in the same vein when he says: "That is what you must explain
to others, so that you will never again be forced to bow down before anyone,
but also so that no one shall be forced to bow down before you."
Speaking of his own role as a filmmaker in 2005, Ousmane said: "I create to
talk to my people, my country. The priority is that my people can understand
me. Africa needs to see its own reflection. A society progresses by asking
questions of itself, so I want to be an artist who questions his people."
President Mbeki said Ousmane's deep-seated commitment to the humanisation of
human relationships as reflected in the foregoing passage of his novel, 'God's
Bits of Wood,' is a loadstone of our government's commitment to building a
caring society premised on the values of Ubuntu.
Furthermore, President Mbeki concurred with Cheick Oumar Sissoko, Malian
Filmmaker and Minister of Culture, who said of Ousmane, "African cinema has
lost one of its lighthouses. He is the most important African filmmaker � one
that all subsequent filmmakers have to be measured against."
In this regard, President Mbeki said Sembene Ousmane's great achievement
will forever be permanently etched in the pages of history, constituting, as
Cheick Oumar Sissoko said, an achievement which current and future generations
of cultural workers and intellectuals ought to emulate and uphold.
For more information, please contact:
Mukoni Ratshitanga
Tel: 012 300 5436
Cell: 082 300 3447
Issued by: The Presidency
18 June 2007
