Guy Labertit, from African politics to music

We knew him as the “Mr. Africa of the Socialist Party” and the close friend of Laurent Gbagbo, less as the poet and composer he became after his retirement from political life. Now 72 years old, Guy Labertit opens the doors of his apartment in Vitry-sur-Seine to us, an apartment steeped in history and paintings by African masters where political opponents, heads of state in the making or practicing, singers and musicians.

From May-68 to African anti-imperialism

He recounts a passion of youth, music, and a first audition in a Bordeaux cabaret ” with 25 songs in [sa] messenger bag “. A bohemian life that led him very early to the radical left, he who joined the barricades of May-68 when he was not yet 20 years old. Then an early career at the National Education, where he worked for 26 years as a Spanish teacher. Very early on, he surrounded himself with a circle of African friends. ” At the time, there were few universities in Africa, and young French-speakers went to study in the academies of Bordeaux and Marseille, a colonial tradition obliges. So I made my first African friendships there, and I went to the continent to find them. He traveled through Togo, Dahomey (south of what is now Benin), Niger, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso). With his experience in the field, he joined and then directed the magazine Liberation Africa (1979-1986).

It was during this period that he met the fine flower of African anti-imperialism, who for many would experience a meteoric political rise: Alpha Condé, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and Alpha Oumar Konaré, Mahamadou Issoufou and Mohamed Bazoum who came from him. succeed at the head of Niger, Joao Lourenço, today Angolan head of state, Pedro Pires and José Maria Neves, former and current presidents of Cape Verde, Étienne Tshisekedi and his son Félix Tshisekedi, who today leads the Republic Democratic Republic of the Congo…” Some of them had a tragic end “, he sighs, his gaze veiled: Thomas Sankara, with whom he befriended in April 1984, Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh –“ at the time when France occupied Chad militarily and when he still had a certain attraction for the maquis who became a minister and then spokesperson for the opposition to President Idriss Déby, before being assassinated in 2008-.

The “Mr. Africa” ​​of the Socialist Party

But his strongest friendship, the one who calls him “my brother”, is Laurent Gbagbo, a political exile in France from 1982 to 1988. The two young men share everything: Labertit’s apartment in Vitry, their taste for music and poetry, and a shared passion for politics, as Gbagbo writes his essay Ivory Coast: For a democratic alternative (1983). ” It is often believed that it was at the PS that I became interested in Africahaving fun today Guy Labertit, whereas it’s quite the opposite: it was my African friendships that pushed me to enter the PS. François Mitterrand arrived at the Élysée in 1981, an event viewed very favorably by the West African democratic oppositions. Supporter of Huguette Bouchardeau and militant of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU), who died a beautiful death in 1990, Guy Labertit joined the PS in 1991, as responsible for Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea-Conakry at the International Secretariat of the PS . In 1993, he became national delegate for Africa of the PS, a position he held until 2006.

” I was deeply marked by the democratic explosion of the 1990she remembers, with the release of tens of thousands of political prisoners. I remember learned debates in Paris, where it was said that the multiparty system was not democracy. But this mass liberation was all the same a sacred human and political achievement! Today, Africa is experiencing a period of democratic regression. But history has always worked like this, two steps forward, one step back. ” The former socialist says he is optimistic for the future of the continent, which, “ thanks to globalization, will skip the stages of development “, he wants to believe. “ Françafrique is still in many minds here, right and left. Throughout my political career, I have heard eminent personalities from all walks of life manifest a paternalistic vision of Africa that smells of the colony. »

“The New Existence”

In recent years, Guy Labertit has published three essays, on Côte d’Ivoire and Chad, and held a last position in local politics, as deputy mayor of Vitry-sur-Seine between 2014 and 2020 (in charge of social economy solidarity, rights of migrants and promotion of world cultures). Today, he watches the French presidential campaign unfold from afar. He returned to his first love: music. ” To assume my passion of youth at this moment of my existence seems to me to be something beautiful and strong. I have the feeling of having led a coherent life, faithful to my convictions. Today, the time has come for writing… Perhaps to give hope to future generations? »

Already the author of a first acoustic album in 2019, he is releasing a six-track EP at the start of the year, ” The New Existence », born from the meeting, in Vitry, of Franck Ballier, the former drummer of Johnny Hallyday. Labertit is accompanied on one of the titles, Colonial Suburbsby Cameroonian bassist Swaeli Mbappe, and on another by Mamoudou Cissoko at the kora. Two red threads run through his work: the Parisian suburbs and Africa, whose passion has never left him. It was Laurent Gbagbo who taught him to play the guitar…