Joseph Ki-Zerbo - Political Activities

Political Activities

Ki-Zerbo’s political activities started while he was still student. He was the co- founder and president of the students in France (1950–1956). He was also the President of the Christian Students Association of Africa, Caribbean Islands, and Malgache. In 1954, according to Hollenstein (2006) Ki-Zerbo released an article in the newspapers “Tam-Tam” with the remarkable title “On demande des nationalists”. (In English, “we demand nationalism”). In Paris, Ki-Zerbo met other intellectuals as the Senegalese historian Cheik Anta Diop, and the current president of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade. During one of his tour in Western Africa in Mali, Ki-Zerbo met his wife Jacqueline Coulibaly. She is the daughter of a famous Malian syndicalist. After his studies, Ki-Zerbo became professor in history at and Paris. He taught in some public schools in 1957 in Dakar with a status of French employee and citizen.

The second half of the 1950s was a deep disruption on the African continent with the different desires to access to . Barry (2007), a reporter of Rfi reported that in 1957, he created his party, le Mouvement de Liberation Nationale (MLN), (In English, National Freedom Movement), and he informed the first Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah about the MLN. The MLN aims were immediate independence for Africans, creation of a United States of Africa, and socialism. MLN went to many other West African states to ask people to say “No” to the referendum on the creation of a Franco African community presented by the French President Charles de Gaulle. From all the West African countries, only Guinea Conakry got independence and voted No to the referendum. Barry (2007) mentioned as a result in his article that Sekou Toure the current President of Guinea Conakry at this time asked Ki-Zerbo and his wife with other volunteers to come to Conakry and replace the French teachers returned to France because of independence.

Ki-Zerbo came back to Burkina Faso in 1960. Ki-Zerbo justified his coming back in saying “I explained to Sekou that I have to go back home to pursue the fight for independence in others territories”. After some years of teaching, Ki-Zerbo was at this time the first and most qualified high school teacher of his country. He was nominated in 1965 as academy inspector and General Director of Juvenile, Sports and Education. Then, Ki-Zerbo was professor at the University of Ouagadougou (1968 to 1973). Ki-Zerbo was the co-founder and general director (from 1967 to1979) of the African and Malagasy Council on Higher Education (CAMES) that assures an academical autonomy of Africans countries. CAMES plays a role of pioneer in the research of African alternative medicine and promote scientific relief in Africa.