Mimi Touré, la faiseuse de destins (Par Oumou Wane)
The first time I met Mimi Touré, Macky Sall was not yet President of the Republic.
I was launching Africa7 in Senegal at the time. She had come to accompany him to our offices for a visit and an interview. She was his campaign manager. He wanted to become president. She was working to get him elected.
A few months later, Macky Sall was elected.
And Mimi had become Minister of Justice.
Very quickly, her name became a fixture in the press reviews. Two syllables, morning, noon and evening: Mimi.
And already, the attacks.
I remember wondering at the time what could justify such a relentless attack against a woman who had been entrusted with one of the most delicate missions of the new power: the rendering of accounts.
Looking back, I think the answer was already there.
Mimi is a nuisance.
Not because she's trying to cause trouble. Because she possesses that flaw that has become almost exotic in politics: she still believes that principles must have consequences.
Politics, on the other hand, often prefers principles when they remain confined to speeches.
Mimi is less accommodating.
Macky Sall understood this. Their political history was long, complex, sometimes happy, sometimes much less so. He appointed her Prime Minister. She then became special envoy, president of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council, and later returned to the forefront of politics at his side.
A story of loyalty, power, trust, and ultimately, rupture.
In short, it's a political "I love you, I don't love you" situation.
Then came 2022.
Mimi Touré had led the legislative campaign and many imagined that she would take the presidency of the National Assembly. Me first of all.
I believed in it so much that, while she was campaigning under the scorching Senegalese sun, I offered to host her daughter at my home in Italy.
And then there was that day.
I was watching the events at the National Assembly on television. I understood, like her, what was happening. I begged her not to leave the room.
She simply made it clear to me that it was over.
The Macky era was over.
At that precise moment, I had a hunch.
Macky Sall may have just lost much more than an ally.
He had just freed an adversary.
Because you have to understand something about Mimi Touré: she is whole.
She doesn't do things by halves. She gives everything or nothing. Her loyalties are powerful; therefore, her breakups are necessarily powerful as well.
That's sometimes its flaw.
That's its main strength.
She could have disappeared. Taken refuge in the comfortable bitterness of those who spend their time recounting what they should have become.
She did exactly the opposite.
She went back into battle.
When her own candidacy for the 2024 presidential election failed, she could have considered that this election no longer concerned her.
She chose to support Bassirou Diomaye Faye. While still in prison, Mimi campaigned.
With that almost unreasonable energy that those who know her know very well.
She could have said, "My turn will come."
She preferred to say: "We have to win."
This is where his story becomes interesting.
Because Mimi Touré is a maker of destinies.
I met her alongside a man who wanted to become President of the Republic.
More than twenty years later, I watch her accompany another man who has become President of the Republic.
In between, she experienced palaces, disgrace, prestigious positions, betrayals, election campaigns, victories and defeats.
But no one will ever be able to seriously claim to have created Mimi Touré.
Mimi made herself.
It molded itself, all by itself, from the granite.
She's hard on others because she's hard on herself first. She can be wrong, of course. She can be annoying, certainly. She can be excessive, sometimes.
But she doesn't cheat.
And above all, she possesses a quality that has become rare in our public life: we know more or less where she is speaking from.
Whether you like him or not, his battles always end up coming back to the same obsessions: justice, accountability, institutions, the Republic.
His methods can be discussed.
His choices can be challenged.
His character could be criticized.
Good luck getting him to change it.
Mimi never fires first.
But she still has a fatal bullet in the chamber.
Today, she is standing alongside President Bassirou Diomaye Faye.
And I recognize something of the woman I once met at Africa7: that same ability to fully invest in a mission once she considers it worth defending.
I hadn't written about Mimi since 2013.
Thirteen years have passed.
I have observed his victories, his anger, his breakups, his comebacks. I have seen alliances that were thought to be eternal disappear and yesterday's adversaries find themselves around the same tables.
Senegalese politics loves to create eternal enemies and forty-eight-hour friendships.
Mimi, however, continues.
So I wish for one thing.
May the relationship she is building today with President Diomaye remain founded on what should always transcend individuals: the interest of the Republic. This was already the wish that concluded my notes as I watched her resume her place in this new political phase.
Because men pass away.
The functions change.
Coalitions come and go.
And even presidents come and go.
Ultimately, what remains is what each person chose to serve when they still had the power to choose.
The first time I met Mimi Touré, she was working to get a president elected.
Today, I watch her accompany someone else.
Between the two, Senegal has changed a lot.
Mimi too, certainly.
But on the essentials, I'm not sure she's changed one millimeter.
And perhaps that's precisely why she's still here.
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