In 2014, the Ivorian Gauz’ took the literary world by storm with Standing Paid, a debut novel that reads like a fierce satire of consumer society seen through the eyes of an African vigilante. Novelist, but also screenwriter, director, photographer, the writer has just published Cocoaians, his new opus with the theme of the relationship of domination between the West and Africa through the history of chocolate culture and trade. An eminently political novel.
” In reality, we live in a literary society. When I say “we”, I mean most Africans. In fact, everything is totally literary. The field is literature. Planting rice is literature. Evening tales are literature. So my literature isn’t just words, it’s also photography, it’s also sculpture, it’s also cinema, acting, music… And I do all of that, thoroughly. It’s a bit protean, but it’s the same block of rapture. There is no classification, there is no drawer, as long as we are in the beauty of the gesture. »
So speaks the Ivorian Patrick Gbaka-Brédé, known by his pen name Gauz‘. A biochemist by training, the man is a multidimensional artist, practicing with equal happiness literature as well as cinema, sculpture or even photography. He rose to prominence as an author in 2014 by publishing Standing Paid, an intelligent and satirical first novel, drawn from his experience as a security guard in Parisian department stores. The Ivorian owes his reputation as a committed and inventive novelist to this first book.
Who are the Cocoaians?
Cocoaians, which has just been published, is Gauz’s fourth novel. The book is part of the tradition of literature of social and political protest whose pioneers are named Aimé Césaire, Rabemananjara or Sembene Ousmane. Taking hold of tradition in turn, Gauz’ renews it with his incandescent writing, coupled with an absolutely radical reflection on history and the aberrations of the present.
It is this mixture of gravitas and what the author calls ” the beauty of the gesture », which had made the success of his second novel, Comrade Dad (2018), Black African Literary Grand Prize, on colonization, and Black Manoo (2020), his third opus whose action takes place in the Paris of the lowlands reviewed and corrected by a junkie Ivorian without papers. The action of Cocoaians is located in Ivory Coast. With this story halfway between pamphlet, essay, theater and fiction, Gauz’ takes us to the heart of the history of his country of origin, through the prism of the cultivation and trade of cocoa, including the Côte d’ Ivoire has become one of the major world centers since the introduction of the cocoa plant in this country during colonial times. Brief volume of a hundred pages, Cocoaians is undoubtedly the most political work from the pen of this novelist.
The story opens with the circumstances of its conception. The idea was born, says the author, during a long discussion with a childhood friend on the terrace of the latter’s office in Abidjan. Accompanied by the tasting of a cup of chocolate prepared from beans “made in Côte d’Ivoire” (” One of the best chocolates of my life! “), the conversation quickly drifts to what the cultivation and trade of cocoa say about the relations of domination imposed by the West on African countries producing raw materials. ” My trip to the land of the Cocoaians began there “, writes the author. But who are the Cocoaians?
” It is all Africans, and, by extension, it is all countries that have only raw materials as a source of income, replies Gauz’. It is beyond the Ivory Coast which is the leading cocoa producer. I am also thinking of Cameroon, Mali, Guinea, the two Congos, these oil producers, Gabon. The Cocoaïans are all those exploited by world injustice, by big finance. In this global economy, we are the continent of raw materials and not of their transformation. In Côte d’Ivoire, we boast of being the world’s leading cocoa producer, while it is the Belgians, Swiss, Norwegians and Americans who make their fortunes on chocolate and who dictate the prices of our raw materials. You don’t need to do Sciences Po to understand this iniquitous relationship to the world. It’s time to take back this wealth in hand. »
history and revolution
How to regain the initiative? By transforming the beans into chocolate on site and selling it at fair value. We will understand, Cocoaians is a call to revolt against the iniquitous order of the world. However, in Côte d’Ivoire, the revolt has been brewing for a long time, since the imposition of cocoa cultivation by the colonists at the beginning of the 19th century, but the revolt has always been put down or recovered by the powerful of the moment. Dwelling on the key moments in the country’s history, the author recalls how much cocoa, its rejection as well as its instrumentalization, have been consubstantial with the construction of the Ivorian nation.
His book is a dive into history. It opens in 1908 with a clandestine meeting, held in a sacred grove, with the participants already calling on the people to resist the cultivation of cocoa. ” This bitter plant that cannot be eaten and does not cure anything they said.
The rebellion of the African agricultural union against colonial discrimination and forced labor under the leadership of local cocoa growers is another founding moment of Ivorian modernity. This rebellion will give birth to the African Democratic Rally, a party that will lead the country to independence in 1960. However, independence has not changed anything in the balance of power between the industrialized West and Africa, a supplier of raw materials.
The perpetuation of relations of domination is signified in an ironic vignette depicting the passage of Côte d’Ivoire under the caudine forks of international donors, with the World Bank negotiator being called Jean-Baptiste Marchand, just like the colonial conqueror of the beginning of the century. Faced with this strategy of “changing everything so that nothing changes”, the revolution that Gauz’ proposes will not only be political, it will also be ecological and poetic.
A story of conquering freedom
” The world capitalist system, in fact, why does it work? Beyond all the explanations, it is made only of beauties and delights. He is constantly seducing. With my little words, I don’t have the means to destroy centuries of domination. All I can say is, “Look, I too have beauty to offer. Right next to your tall building, there’s a green garden over there. Look over there. .There’s beauty and intelligence there too.” And proposing, trusting the intelligences and the ability to delight people. Me, that’s my plan. This is my revolution. »
Jubilant by its style close to slam and orality, Cocoaians is a passionate and passionate plea for a revolution in mentalities and minds. In this coming revolution, there is room for imagination, dialogue and the utopia drawn by the “afrofuturist” vision of a calmer, balanced and peaceful world with which Gauz’s story ends. It is this happy prospect that makes Cocoaians ” a tale of the conquest of freedom as claimed on the back cover of the book.
Cocoaïans, (Birth of a chocolate nation), by Gauz’. Éditions de l’Arche, collection “Writings for speech”, 106 pages, 14 euros