De Colette Senghor à Marième Faye Sall : comment vivaient les quatre premières Premières dames
Before Marie Khone and Absa Faye, the two wives of President Diomaye Faye, Senegal had four First Ladies: Colette Senghor (Léopold), Élisabeth Diouf (Abdoulaye), Viviane Wade (Abdoulaye), and Marième Faye Sall (Macky). Each had a role, a posture, and an approach that Professor Ibrahima Sarr, former director of the Center for Studies in Information Science and Technology (CESTI), and his colleague Mouminy Camara attempted to understand in a study published in 2022 and dedicated to the fourth: Marième Faye Sall: Roles and Symbolic Repertoires of the First Lady of Senegal .
The two academics reveal that Senghor and Diouf's wives, unlike their female counterparts, remained largely uninvolved in state affairs. Colette Senghor, Sarr recalls in an interview on the subject published this Thursday in Le Soleil, "embodied a form of restraint and discretion. The same was true of Élisabeth Diouf, known for her legendary discretion, recognized for her generosity and unwavering loyalty to her husband, whom she supported in his roles as Prime Minister and Head of State."
Ibrahima Sarr adds that "through her personality and character traits, Elisabeth Diouf managed to compensate for the rough edges of Abdou Diouf's image."
What about Viviane Wade? The former director of CESTI points out that "despite her French origins, she defines herself as a ' Senegalese of tubaab ethnicity ' to highlight her attachment to her adopted country."
“Finally, Marième Faye Sall was a committed First Lady, deeply immersed in the socio-cultural realities of Senegal,” Sarr notes. “We can thus observe a generational, and perhaps even cultural, evolution, with the shift from the ‘old school’ of First Ladies strongly influenced by Western culture, embodied by Colette Senghor, Élisabeth Diouf, and Viviane Wade, to the ‘new’ represented by Marième Faye Sall.”
Despite their differences in personality and stance, these four First Ladies have one thing in common: "they fascinated the people. Each one left a mark on the political history of the country," concludes Ibrahima Sarr.
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