The Beggars' Strike by Aminata Sow Fall: book review

The Beggar’sStrike (1979 in French and 1981 in English) is set in an unstated country in West Africa in a city known only as The Capital. Undoubtedly, Senegalese author Sow Fall writes of her own experiences. It was also encapsulated in the 2000 film, Battu, directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko from Mali.

Mour Ndiaye is the Director of the Department of Public Health and Hygiene, with the opportunity of a distinguished and coveted promotion to Vice-President of the Republic. Tourism has declined and the government blames the local beggars in The Capital. Ndiaye must rid the streets of beggars, according to a decree from the Minister. Ndiaye instructs his department to carry out weekly raids.

One of the raids leads to the death of lame beggar, Madiabel, who ran into an oncoming vehicle as he tried to escape, leaving two wives and eight children. Soon after, another raid resulted in the death of the old well-loved, comic beggar Papa Gorgui Diop. Enough is enough, declared the beggars.

For the beggars, they were as necessary to the citizens of The Capital as the air everyone breathed. “Where will you find a man who’s the boss and who doesn’t give to charity so that he can stay the boss? Where will you find a man who’s suffering from a real or imaginary illness and who doesn’t believe that his troubles will disappear the moment a donation leaves his hands? Even the parents of a man … expecting to be condemned, have recourse to charity … in the hope of an acquittal.”

For the beggars, they were good citizens practicing a ‘trade’ that supports the ethos of the Islamic nation: giving and receiving. By tradition, people of the city needed to give alms to beggars in exchange for prayers for long life and prosperity – for ‘self-preservation.’ Zakat is one of the obligatory Five Pillars of Islam in which a portion of one’s wealth is given to the poorest of the poor, the people of the streets. It is, therefore, every Muslim’s religious duty to give alms to the beggars.

The beggars are disgusted that they have to pay the price for falling tourism and economic progress. The raids organized by Ndiaye and his department, to get them off the streets, have led to deaths. The beggars’ strategy to express their repugnance of the raids is to get organized – into an alliance, an allegiance, a union – and strike!

If the beggar’s strike, how will people manage to fulfill their religious duty? And that is the premise of the story.

Mour Ndiaye wants to ensure he gets the promotion. He consults a holy man on how to be successful at work. The holy man issues specific instructions – Ndiaye must give alms to the beggars, but only to those in their usual locations on the streets. However, the beggars have left the streets and moved en masse to the new Slum-Clearance Resettlement Area, a remote location outside the city. Ndiaye panics. People panic. They drive to the resettlement area and form long queues, just so that they can give the beggars money. Ndiaye is in a ridiculous predicament – his job is to eliminate the beggars from the streets, but in order to receive a promotion, the holy man says that the beggars have to be on the streets so that Ndiaye can provide them with generous charity. How can Ndiaye convince them to return to the streets so that he can become Vice-President?

The novella – a long short story or a short long story – of only 99 pages is comical satire, full of wit and succinct dialogue. It’s a delightful, fun, engaging tale, but with enough situational substance to deserve the 1980 Grand Prix de Literature de l’Afrique Noire.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).