Ahmed Sékou Touré (var. Sheku Turay or Ture; N'Ko: ߛߋߞߎ߬ ߕߎ߬ߙߋ; 9 January 1922 – 26 March 1984) was a Guinean political leader and African statesman who was the first president of Guinea from 1958 until his death in 1984. Touré was among the primary Guinean nationalists involved in gaining independence of the country from France. He died in the United States in 1984.
A devout Muslim from the Mandinka ethnic group, Sékou Touré was the great-grandson of the powerful Mandinka Muslim cleric Samori Ture who established an independent Islamic polity in part of West Africa. In 1960, he declared his Democratic Party of Guinea (Parti démocratique de Guinée, PDG) the only legal party in the state, and ruled from then on as a virtual dictator. He was re-elected unopposed to four seven-year terms in the absence of any legal opposition. Under his rule many people were killed, most notably at Camp Boiro.
Childhood and family background
Sékou Touré was born on 9 January 1922, into a Muslim family in Faranah, French Guinea, part of French West Africa. Faranah is a town deep inside Guinea situated on the banks of the Niger River. He was one of seven children born to Alpha Touré and Aminata Fadiga, who were subsistence farmers. He was an aristocratic member of the Mandinka ethnic group. His great-grandfather was Samori Ture (Samory Touré), a noted Muslim Mandinka king who founded the Wassoulou Empire (1861–1890) in the territory of Guinea and Mali, defeating numerous small African states with his large, professionally organized and equipped army. He resisted French colonial rule until his capture in 1898, and died while held in exile in Gabon.
His father Alpha Touré was originally from the French Sudan (now Mali), and had migrated to the traditional gold mining town of Siguiri with his brothers. He eventually continued to Kankan, Kouroussa, Kissidougou, and then settled in Faranah. Aminata was not his first wife. She bore three babies, including Sékou and a brother who died in childhood, then she died giving birth to a third child, a girl named Nounkoumba. Sékou's birth supposedly coincided with an omen - a baby elephant was brought to Faranah and presented to the French colonial authorities.
Sékou Touré attended the École Coranique (Qur'anic school) in his hometown and later a French lower-primary school in Kankan. He allegedly failed the exams to enter the École normale supérieure William Ponty for refusing to write an essay critical of his ancestor Samori Toure. He was enrolled in the Georges Poiret Technical College in Conakry in 1936 but was expelled less than a year later at the age of 15 for leading a student protest against the quality of food and quickly became involved in labor union activity. During his youth, Touré studied the works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, among others.
In 1940, Touré obtained a clerk's position with the Compagnie du Niger Français while also working to complete an examination course, which would allow him to join the Post, Telegraph and Telecommunications services (French: Postes, télégraphes et téléphones (PTT)). After completing the examination course, he went on to work for the PTT as a postal clerk in Conakry in 1941. During this time, he formed connections with the French General Confederation of Labour, a communist-dominated French labor organization.
Touré first became politically active while working for the PTT. In 1945, he founded the Post and Telecommunications Workers' Union (SPTT; the first trade union in French Guinea), and he became the general secretary of the union in 1946. Also the same year, he was a founding member of the African Democratic Rally (French: Rassemblement Démocratique Africain, RDA), an alliance of political parties and affiliates in French West and Equatorial Africa.
By 1948, he was elected general secretary of the Territorial Union of the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), and two years later, he was named general secretary of the coordinating committee of the (CGT) for French West Africa and French Togoland. In the 1951 elections, he campaigned with a coalition of the RDA, the UDSR and the recently founded Democratic Party of Guinea (Parti démocratique de Guinée or PDG, the RDA's Guinean section); however, the coalition performed poorly.
In 1952, he became the leader of the PDG. The RDA agitated for the decolonization of Africa, and included representatives from all the French West African colonies. The party forged alliance with labor unions and Touré was elected as secretary-general.
His greatest success as a trade union leader was when workers across French Guinea went on a 71-day general strike (longer than any other territories in the French West Africa) in 1953 to force the implementation of a new overseas labor code. He was later elected to Guinea's Territorial Assembly the same year. As a result, he was elected as one of the three secretaries-general of the French Communist Party's Confédération Générale du Travail (General Confederation of Labour; CGT) in 1954.
The PDG-RDA under Sékou Touré's leadership participated in the 1954 by-election, held after the death of Yacine Diallo. He lost to Diawadou Barry. The election was, however, marred with irregularities. The French minister Robert Buron admitted in 1968 that it had been rigged by France to prevent Sékou Touré from winning.
In 1957, he organized the Union Générale des Travailleurs d'Afrique Noire, a common trade union centre for French West Africa. He was a leader of the RDA, working closely with Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who later was elected as president of the Ivory Coast. In 1956, Touré was elected Guinea's deputy to the French National Assembly and mayor of Conakry, positions he used to criticize the French colonial regime.
Touré served for some time as a representative of African groups in France, where he worked to negotiate for the independence of France's African colonies.
In September 1958, Guinea participated in the referendum on the new Constitution of France. On acceptance of the new constitution, French overseas territories had the option of choosing to continue their existing status, to move toward full integration into metropolitan France, or to acquire the status of an autonomous republic in the new quasi-federal French Community. If, however, they rejected the new constitution, they would become independent forthwith. French President Charles de Gaulle made it clear that a country pursuing the independent course would no longer receive French economic and financial aid or retain French technical and administrative officers.
In 1958, Touré's PDG, pushed for a "No" in the French Union referendum sponsored by the French government. Upon hearing of Touré's choice on the matter, General de Gaulle responded, "Then all you have to do is vote 'no'. I pledge myself that nobody will stand in the way of your independence." The French also threatened to cut off all their aid to Guinea in the event that the colony voted to become independent of France. The electorate of Guinea rejected the new constitution overwhelmingly, and Guinea accordingly became an independent state on 2 October 1958, with Touré, leader of Guinea's strongest labor union, as president. Guinea was thus the only African colony to vote for immediate independence rather than continued association with France, and hence was the only French colony to decline participation in the new French Community when it became independent in 1958. In any event, the rest of Francophone Africa gained effective independence two years later in 1960.
In response to the vote for immediate and total independence, the French in Guinea were dramatic in severing ties with Guinea, with many French civil servants destroying Guinean infrastructure as they departed Guinea as an act of vengeance for Guineans voting to become independent. The Washington Post observed how brutal the French were in tearing down all what they thought was their contributions to Guinea: "In reaction, and as a warning to other French-speaking territories, the French pulled out of Guinea over a two-month period, taking everything they could with them. They unscrewed light bulbs, removed plans for sewage pipelines in Conakry, the capital, and even burned medicines rather than leave them for the Guineans."