Mamadou Diouf (historian)

Mamadou Diouf is the Leitner Family Professor of African Studies, the Director of Institute for African Studies, and a professorof Western African history at Columbia University.

Quotes

• History is no longer only about the past. Archives are not just there to document what has already happened or to shore up identity. They are resources for thinking—for autonomy, for relation, for building futures that are not already given.
  • [1]
• For too long, Africa has been framed as an afterthought in world history—a continent written into the margins of time.
  • [2]
• First, Senegal has been ranked by some authorities as the leading democracy in the Islamic world since 2000. The country has been brilliantly written about by anthropologists and historians, but many of Senegal's experiences and creations have not been sufficiently incorporated into modern democratization theory.
  • [3]
• The legacy of Nelson Mandela will be with us for decades to come. The reasons are linked to his own history, to the way he understood power, and to the way he led his long-divided country. This is a man who lived under apartheid, a man who had been locked up for twenty-seven years. Of course, he did not solve all the problems South Africa faced, but Mandela is also bigger than South Africa. He’s bigger than the continent. His legacy is a legacy for all humanity to honor.
  • He talks about Nelson Mandela
• Mandela was behind the idea that it was possible to invent a new world. That it was possible to turn enemies not into friends, but into partners. That it was possible to pull together different memories and multiple heritages to avoid the tensions and confrontations of a history of segregation, violence, and systematic spoliation. Insisting strongly on not forgetting, he advocated forgiveness. He believed that it was possible to reinvent South Africa. A new and ideal South Africa. He kept saying that South Africa was a complex country, and that reconciliation was the only appropriate response to the challenge the country was facing — the only way things should be done.
  • He talks about Nelson Mandela