Aline Sitoe Diatta (also Aline Sitow Diatta or Alyn Sytoe Jata; 1920 – 22 May 1944) was a Senegalese heroine of the opposition to the French colonial empire, and a strong young female symbol of resistance and liberty. A Jola leader of a local religious group living in the village of Kabrousse, Basse Casamance, Diatta was one of the leaders of a tax resistance movement during World War II.
Biography
Diatta was born in Kabrousse. She was orphaned and adopted by her uncle, Elubaliin Diatta. He died in a Ziguinchor jail a few years after adopting her. Diatta left the village of Kabrousse to work in Ziguinchor, later moving on to Dakar and making her residence in Médina.[1]
Jola resistance had continued since the region was annexed to French West Africa in 1914. In 1942 the French government began seizing as much as half the area's rice harvest for their war effort. The period from 1941-1943 was a particularly repressive period and included plans to introduce peanut production as a cash crop over the subsistence production of rice. Diatta led a major religious movement in the region among worshipers of the supreme being, Emitai, in Senegal, Gambia, and Portuguese Guinea during this period. Along with lesser-known female contemporaries, she claimed direct revelation from the supreme being. Her visions and inspired actions transformed a tradition of male prophetic leadership to a tradition that included and prioritized female prophets and leaders. Diatta's vision challenged French colonial development plans.[2]
Diatta claimed that French development plans were disruptive to Jola spiritual practices, fostered dependance on the French, decreased the land's fertility, and diminished women's economic power. She gained followers who flocked to her village. When a boycott begun by market women proved successful, the French authorities imprisoned the boycott's leadership. In 1943, Diatta and many of her followers were arrested by authorities. She remained in prison, and was deported to a jail in Timbuktu, Mali in 1943.[2] There she died of disease on 22 May 1944.
Since her death, Diatta has become one of the best known symbols of resistance in West Africa, and a national symbol in Senegal, especially in Casamance. The Girls University Students Hostel Campus in Dakar, near Cheikh Anta Diop University is named Cité Aline Sitoe Diatta, the main Stadium in Ziguinchor bears her name as well, and numerous schools, businesses, and organizations are named after her. The passenger ferry MV Aline Sitoe Diatta is named for her.
In 2008, an unofficial fantasy coin of the "Kingdom" of Kabrousse was issued honoring "Reine Aline Sitoé Diatta" (Queen Aline Sitoé Diatta). The coin refers to her as "La femme qui était plus qu'un homme" ("the woman who was more than a man").
^ abBaum, Robert M. (1999). "Alinesitoue". In Young, Serinity (ed.). Encyclopedia of women and world religion. New York: Macmillan Reference USA. ISBN978-0-02-864608-4.
Sources
Wilmetta Jesvalynn Toliver, Aline Sitoe Diatta: addressing historical silences through Senegalese culture, Ann Arbor, UMI Dissertation Services, 2002
W. J. Toliver-Diallo, « The Woman Who Was More Than a Man: Making Aline Sitoe Diatta into a National Heroine in Senegal », Canadian Journal of African Studies, 2005, vol. 39
