‘… We who have been colonised can never forget…’ (p.161, My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria by Andrée Blouin. Reissued by Verso Books, UK (2025)

I consider it a matter of embarrassment – if not shame – that in my more than four decades on this planet, I only came to know of Pan-African Independence activist, Andrée Blouin within the last year. At least, if I’d heard of her, it wasn’t substantial enough to have made a lasting impression. It was via Kevin Ochieng Okoth’s defence against Afro-pessimism, Red Africa, published in late 2023 by Verso Books, that I gleaned Blouin’s significance. Her general lack of recognition is of course an indictment on the ethnocentric, as well as androcentric, way history is narrated.

More recently, Andrée featured heavily in Johan Grimponprez’ award-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary, 2024’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’État. 2025 also sees a re-issue (by Verso again) of Blouin’s memoir My Country, Africa, almost 40 years after her death.

Always uneasy with colonial oppression, Blouin would become radicalised when her quadroon son, Réné, was left to die of malaria. In central Africa at the time, the required, life-saving quinine was only reserved for those of ‘pure’ European blood. Blouin would go on to play pivotal roles in the independence movements in Guinea-Conakry and most infamously, Patrice Lumumba’s Congo.

As is the case for the most riveting autobiographies, Blouin took a novelistic approach to her life writing.  She had a canny sense of drama and an apparently exceptional memory for details. The memoir opens before her birth, when Andrée recounts (second-hand) the fateful meeting of her parents; middle-aged successful French trader, Pierre Gerbillat and her mother, Joséphine Wouassimba, originating from what would become the Central African Republic (CAR). Gerbillat was 40. Joséphine was barely in her teens.

Alas, economic prowess had the final word. Gerbillat offered to surpass the dowry that the Wouassimba family had accepted from another prospective suitor. Yet, the young Joséphine would never become Gerbillat’s lawful wife.  That dubious honour would go to a Franco-Belgian called Henriette, whom Joséphine – having been sufficiently manipulated by the alternately abusive, alternately emotionally-absent Pierre – blamed for the rupture.

When Pierre returned with Henriette to Europe, young Andrée was deposited at a home for black and mixed-heritage children (both groups kept segregated). The Congo-Brazzaville based orphanage was run by ruthless white Catholic nuns who viewed their mixed charges as sin embodied; the result of the unbridled lasciviousness of African women and sexual incontinence of European men. 

Blouin’s many anecdotes about life at the orphanage have a dark, gallows-like humour to them. The petty, and sometimes plain sadistic treatment she received at the hands of the Sisters of (no) Mercy are often retold with an irony that verges on the uncomfortably hilarious.

The perplexing relationship she had with her birth parents – each disconcerting in their own fashion – is also notable. Gerbillat intermittently ignored his only child (Henriette was unable to conceive) with a casual abandon.

Understandably, Blouin oscillated between delight over any sign of affirmation from her unreformed colonialist father, and resentment towards his highly conditional affection. Andrée’s love for Joséphine is far less ambivalent, albeit not without its complications. Andrée could not have been more different from those who brought her into the world. Her mother never seemed to outgrow a simplistic, even infantile worldview. She remained illiterate her whole life. Unlike her daughter, who pursued knowledge despite the limited education received at the orphanage, Joséphine lacked intellectual curiosity.

Joséphine rejoiced at the fact some of her grandchildren were white-passing. She berated her daughter’s anti-colonial activism, urging her to focus on self-preservation. Joséphine preferred to pine for the occasional attention of Gerbillat, even after a (doomed) marriage to an exemplary, high-ranking African civil servant, Joseph Mialou, whom Andrée adored. He offered her the consistent compassion and acceptance her biological father would only dispense at whimsy. Andrée deemed her mother too uncouth for Mialou. Joséphine was also a brawler; ready to come to blows, be it against a romantic competitor or a nun who was bullying her daughter. 

One senses that spending so much of the memoir on her formative years was cathartic for Blouin.  She would eventually flee the orphanage in nothing short of a Great Escape-style prison break. When both the authorities and Pierre understood how determined Blouin was never to return to the Home, they had little choice but to let her go. From then on, she threw herself into the cultural (self)education that was denied her until late adolescence. Andrée set about learning indigenous languages of the region, like Kikongo and Lingala…

‘… Africa…was a world to which I belonged but had been cut away. I felt I had to learn the contours of that life outside, and language was the means through which came my Africa…Everything that was of Africa became my passion…’ (p.45)

For years, Blouin would hustle a living as a seamstress for exploitative white madams.  Along the way, she picked up various -and exclusively – Caucasian lovers, eventually becoming a wife twice and bearing them all children. Her first two baby fathers were inveterate racists. Andrée’s first husband, Charles Greutz, a Nazi-sympathising brute from Franco-German Alsace, fathered the aforementioned ill-fated toddler, Réné. Greutz had such a visceral hatred of Black Africans that he not only refused to let Joséphine enter the marital home, she was also barred from attending her infant grandson’s funeral. Andrée admits it was a marriage of convenience; one which she thought would ensure the socio-economic security of her other children, in spite of Charles’ viciousness towards her mother.

There is a strong hint of the Electra complex in Blouin’s choice of significant others; as if forever in pursuit of her absentee father.

Andrée claimed she was never actively pursued by an African suitor and would have been open to such a relationship, theoretically. Yet, she also claims she could not have risen to political prominence if she weren’t married to her eponymous once-beloved; André Blouin. More specifically, if she weren’t married to a white man.

She proceeds to list all the reasons why a Black husband would be unsuitable…their desire for a docile woman, their penchant for polygamy, a certain defeatism or resignation to their colonised fate… This seems incongruous with the self-awareness displayed elsewhere, not to mention being riddled with double-standards.  Her white lovers were mostly emotionally abusive supremacists, who expected her to put up and shut up. Greutz even remonstrated Andrée for trying to push through the racist bureaucracy to acquire the adequate treatment for their dying son. The reason? In case it annoyed his Caucasian clientele.

After a sojourn in Europe, Andrée returned to find Greutz had taken up with another woman. She and André Blouin – an acquaintance of Greutz – were both married when they began their affair.  Clearly, she didn’t value monogamy so highly that it prevented this liaison. Her reasons for avoiding Black men as life partners echo internalised racist clichés that would be suitably sanctioned if spoken by a non-Afrodescendant. It’s all the more surprising given that she would have encountered several instances of African men who defied these stereotypes. Blouin didn’t even seem to consider dating somebody also of mixed-heritage. If anything, these blind spots underline how all of us, without exception, must do the continuous work of uprooting the insidiousness of White Supremacy.

Dating outside one’s ethnicity does not necessarily denote self-loathing. It nonetheless arouses suspicion when racialised people, particularly those committed to anti-racist struggles rarely, if ever, date somebody of a similar background. Those given to this tendency don’t usually undertake the level of self-scrutiny required to uncover the root of their aversion. Anecdotally, it seems more prevalent in Afrodescendant men; so many having imbibed degrees of misogynoir, without question. However, it’s not solely a male problem. Even if single, a Kemi Badenoch would be unlikely to couple up with a strapping darker-hued fellow, for instance.

Moving away from Blouin’s romantic preferences, there are other aspects of the memoir that would be problematic for contemporary readers. In her defence, it’s not always clear if this is down to tactlessness or the often clumsy French/English translation by collaborator, Jean McKellan. There are countless transliterated – or untranslated – phrases that would leave anyone with basic to no French baffled. (Blouin was also apparently dissatisfied with a number of McKellan’s publication blunders, including misrepresenting her views on the USSR).

Other faux-pas are not so easy to explain away. Blouin recognised Ethiopians as Africans but only ‘nearly black’. Likewise, she spoke of the Malagasy of Madagascar as if they were not also Africans. These comments are all the more peculiar, given her own background.

Beyond the provocative title, Blouin talked about Africa as one country in a way that, although unintended, plays into the stereotypes of those wilfully ignorant of this vast continent; the most genetically diverse of any in the world. In the foreword, Worldmaking After Empire…author, Adom Getachew and Thomas Meaney attribute this to Andrée’s devout Pan-Africanism. Oddly, whether in praise or critique, Andrée Blouin had a way of caricaturing Africa’s peoples. It was as if she over-compensated for the times she was sequestered in that tormenting orphanage.

Blouin was not merely a compatriot to one country. Her peripatetic upbringing probably contributed to this; born in the CAR, schooled in Congo-Brazzaville, in and out of Congo-Kinshasa and becoming initiated into the world of anti-imperialist struggle in Sékou Touré’s Guinea.

However, that doesn’t explain why Blouin didn’t become a ‘compliant mulatto’; like many of her contemporaries who went through the crucible of extremist colonial education. She could have accepted the depravity of colonialism as the natural order of things; as did her black mother, white father and various romantic interests. Instead, Blouin had an innate love for her continent – a desire to see it unified – that superceded any pernicious environmental influence.

She was not one to take advantage of colourist stratification, or to lord her butterscotch complexion over her cocoa-coloured compatriots. Such considerations seemed beneath her.  She was also a pioneer of Afro-feminism, dedicating much of her (dangerous) campaign work to educating and raising-awareness about independence movements amongst poor rural women.

Blouin’s knowledge and admiration for various African customs is one of many instances that challenges any readiness to map race on to culture. Andrée’s loyalties were unequivocally African; often writing as if she weren’t half-European herself.  As I’ve regularly experienced with people of mixed-heritage born and raised in Africa, Blouin’s closeness to the Continent exceeds that of someone like myself; ‘Black on both sides’ but far more culturally exposed to the West. 

‘…My story, which I have often pondered, is, I see inextricably entwined with Africa’s fate as a land of black people colonised by whites. The contradictions within my life are those from which Africa has suffered…’ (p.274)

Blouin threw herself at African independence movements with a martyr’s zeal.  She was convinced that if she were born a man, she would have been assassinated. That’s not to say she didn’t pay a high price. She was repeatedly separated by force from her family. Joséphine was battered so mercilessly by soldiers whilst trying to prevent them looting the Blouin home, that she was left permanently disabled. Andrée’s mother died prematurely; literally sick with worry about her only child. Eventually, the Blouin marriage fell apart and the family fragmented. As revealed in the Epilogue, Andrée’s now middle-aged daughter, Eve, resents the cost, despite her profound respect for her mother’s political engagement.

Patrice Lumumba was essentially Blouin’s employer. Her various posts incorporated speech-writer including, allegedly, Lumumba’s famous address after Independence. However, the two formed a bond beyond the professional. Blouin’s fraternal – even protective – love for Lumumba is deeply moving. All the more so given the sordid rumours disseminated by their opponents, regarding her proximity to male African world-makers.

‘…Sometimes goodness and simplicity are misinterpreted during the life of a genius, and are recognised only after his death. I think Patrice was such a genius…He personified the best of a race that would never again be slaves…’ (p.253, 263)

Blouin’s affection for Lumumba did not prevent her from criticising his strategic missteps. Lumumba had mastered being as harmless as a dove but often failed to be as shrewd as the serpent. Blouin was a proponent of making peace with one’s enemies for the sake of African unity, yet she had her limits. To her mind, Lumumba showed too much patience with his political adversaries, ignoring them or bringing them closer than was prudent. It calls to mind the years of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the British Labour Party. He’d extend a gracious hand of cooperation to his detractors, only for them to rip it off and use it to deal a death blow.

Sadly, in Lumumba’s case, this was not just metaphorical.

As Blouin details the inexorable descent towards her boss’ untimely and perfidious demise, the intrigue would be edge-of-the-seat compelling if it weren’t factual and so tragically unjust. Andrée’s devotion to the Cause bordered on the cold-hearted. She berates Lumumba for crossing the Sankuru River to save his wife from the quisling soldiers who were manhandling her. Blouin calls it a ‘betrayal of the Congolese’. It was an impossible dilemma for Lumumba; abandon his wife to the tyrannical whims of his heartless adversaries, or effectively sign his own death warrant by exchanging his life for hers. Well, we know how that ended. 

According to the Epilogue, Andrée did not receive a hero(ine)’s farewell when she passed away from cancer in 1986, still only in her 60s. During her lifetime, Blouin wasn’t just dedicated to African independence but actively supported liberation movements across the globe.  Nonetheless, apart from a few admirers, her daughter Eve describes the reaction to Blouin’s death as one of ‘dreary indifference’.  By the end, Andrée was world-weary. She’d have preferred more of African independence to be won by war. A controversial standpoint to say the least but not uncommon. I’ve heard a few fellow Nigerians hypothesise for example, that the country can only be reborn after (another) mass conflict.

In the closing paragraph of her 2024 Epilogue, Eve avers that her mother’s death signified the disappearance of an ‘…Edenic ideal of a free Africa…’

Whilst the filial loyalty and idealisation of a cherished parent is understandable, the sentiment is misguided. Burkinabé revolutionary, Thomas Sankara, was still alive (just) at the time Andrée passed away, for instance. During that same period, the worldwide Anti-Apartheid movement was thriving, with no small thanks to Winnie Mandela. Her then-husband, Nelson, was a free man within four years.

No sole mortal can – or should – personify an idea to the extent it perishes with them. This is often a mistake we make on the Radical Left; placing our chips on a political saviour. It’s always more a collective effort, as Blouin’s career itself demonstrated. 

Fast forward a few decades, although not ‘Edenic’, the era-defining youth uprisings in Kenya last year, as well as the recent political success of the anti-Imperialist Pastef party of Senegal – so long a client state of France – suggest that each generation ignites its own ember of hope. One that can outlive any single individual.

The slightly longer version of this review appears on the I Was Just Thinking….blog