Charter of Manden

The Charter of Manden (or Mandé, Manden is the official transcription of the country mandingue), or Manden Kalikan in language malinké is presented as conceived by the brotherhood of the hunters of Mandé (in the south of Bamako). This declaration, which solemnly would have been proclaimed the day of the establishment of Soundiata Keïta as emperor of the Mali to the end of the year 1222, was transmitted by way oral and fixed in the years 1970 following work of Wa Kamissoko.

The Charter

This charter is addressed to the “twelve parts of the world”. It thus has a universal vocation according to its authors. It comprises seven words, which are as much of heading of articles of the charter:

“Any life is a life”
“the wrong requires Practical repair”
“the mutual aid”
“Day before on the fatherland”
“Ruin the constraint and the hunger”
“That the torments of the war cease”
“Each one is free to say, make and see”

One thus finds in this charter the respect of the human life, individual freedom, justice and equity, solidarity. By taking the party to fight against what seems to him the root of the conflicts, slavery, it identifies the violence of the situations like preceding violence by the war. The Esclavage had become current in West Africa. According to the transcribers of the charter of Manden the Abolition of slavery was a main work of Sundjata Keïta and Empire of Mali. However one could say in connection with the Epic of Soundiata: " the ideological diagram set up answers the dominant situation of those which built it and aims at consolidating this one. This model which gives of the social organization a simplified image divides the men in three categories: the hôôrôn (free men) specialists in the capacity, of the war and the production, the nyamakala (people known as of lower caste) to which it company delegates the care of the safeguard and the teaching of the history, and the jôn (slaves) with the multiple roles. The diagram that we evoke here reflects before all the total structures of a warlike company and dissimulates the tensions between the three social categories, under cover of a balanced exchange of mutual services. Moreover, it justifies, by the achievement of these services, the inequalities in fact, the idleness and the opulence of holding of the capacity and the nyamakala their allies, the obligations of labor which weigh on the jôn and the exploitation whose the latter are the object. Finally this ideological reflection reassures insofar as it aims at stabilizing the structures of which it shows the image in the interest of the elites which occupy their top. This ideology of the company, which is indeed resolutely preserving, conceives divisions of which it describes the adjustment like “orders”, i.e. groups considered as immutable, delimited by borders difficult to cross . " : the state of the company describes in the Epic of Sundjata strongly contradicts the text of the charter. In this respect, the charter of Kurukanfuga, sometimes comparable with that of Manden, and which would go back to 1236, as retranscribed by the CELTHO, (Center off Linguistic and Historical Studies by the Oral tradition) in 1998 does not mention abolition of slavery but only in its article 20 the obligation for the Masters to behave humanly. The charter of Manden is the subject of an interest shown in West Africa and in particular Mali. Its seniority claimed make of it an argument locally strong to fight against slavery. From a historical point of view it raises many questions, to start with that of the reliability of the oral sources, their rebuilding and their reinterpretation during the history.

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