It seems an unlikely place for Mali’s president to seek advice in times of crisis. A simple family compound in a bustling working class neighbourhood, where barefoot children compete with goats and belching mopeds for space to play on the dusty streets.
But this is no ordinary family.
With his greying hair and flowing white robe, Baba Titi Niare (84) is one of Bamako’s most respected men, the elder of the city’s founding families — and an obligatory source of counsel for visiting dignitaries and troubled politicians.
”I meet with the founding families from time to time. They tell me the real preoccupations of the people,” Mali’s President Amadou Toumani Toure told Reuters.
”They serve as facilitators, mediators … They have credibility, they are a lot more independent, they are impartial,” he said in his palace on a hill overlooking Mali’s capital.
Titi Niare is the oldest living descendant of Diamoussadian Niare, a legendary 17th-century hunter who founded Bamako on a bend in the river Niger after killing a giant crocodile that had been terrorising people in the area.
The city took its name from Diamoussadian’s heroism — Bamako means crocodile-river in Bambara — while the district where Titi Niare lives, one of the oldest and busiest in the capital, is called Niarela — place of the Niare.
Its strategic position on trade routes between the old Moorish empires of north-west Africa and the Songhai empire to the south meant Bamako quickly became a cultural melting-pot, from which its elders say Mali derives its modern-day stability.
”Sharing is the cornerstone of progress,” Titi Niare said emphatically, jabbing his finger in the torrid air.
”Our stability is because we agreed to share.”
Guardians of tradition
The Niares may have been the first to settle Bamako, but they were only one of three founding families that gave the city and ultimately the country its social cohesion and strength, said Titi Niare’s nephew, Adama.
”Then the Toures came. They were Moors. They were the second founding family of Bamako. They married our women and had mixed-race children,” he said, sitting on a brown sofa between the older members of his family.
Adama (48) looked to the elders for approval as he spoke, apologising if he slipped up.
There is little written history in Bamako. As the oldest of his generation, the 15th since Diamoussadian, it will fall to Adama to pass the facts on accurately.
”We were animists, they were Arabs, Muslims. In Bamako we did not become Muslims by the sword,” said one of the elders, Souleymane Niare.
”That is what allowed the tolerance. There have been no religious wars, no discrimination, no problems between us.”
The third family, the Draves, came a generation later from the Adrar des Iforhas, a rugged mountain range deep in the Sahara, north-east of Timbuktu.
They received land in exchange for kola nuts, a chestnut-sized fruit from a local tree and the drug of choice in the region before the arrival of tobacco, cannabis and tea. Kola nuts are still a traditional sign of friendship in West Africa.
”The three formed a community which had a geographic position unavoidable for trade,” Adama said.
”It was in no man’s land between all the ancient kingdoms. It was a natural stopover and the Niare family controlled it. So we became friends with everyone who traded on the river. The outsider was sacred. Hospitality was a duty.”
Guiding philiosophy
Mali has seen some instability in modern times. Nomadic Tuaregs from the Adrar des Iforhas staged revolts in the 1960s and 1990s and still feel marginalised, while the country has witnessed two coups since independence from France in 1960.
But by comparison with some neighbours, it has a record of which its people are proud.
The first coup in 1968 was bloodless, while the second in 1991 was led by current president Toure, who earned the nickname ”The Soldier of Democracy” when he handed over power to civilian authorities and accepted defeat in initial elections.
Many see the philosophy of the founding families as the country’s guiding hand.
Toure’s predecessor, Alpha Oumar Konare, gave the proudly apolitical families honorific status for their role as traditional community leaders, whose continued influence over different ethnic groups makes them valuable consultants.
”It has been important to us to promote contact with them and to give them a role as mediator, facilitator, when certain social problems arise and in certain important decisions we have to take,” Toure said in his whitewashed palace.
On the wall of Titi Niare’s sparsely furnished home hangs a picture of him, shoulder-to-shoulder with French President Jacques Chirac, being saluted by Mali’s guard of honour. But he is quick to point out there is no material gain from his role.
”The politician is working for himself and for his family. He is not working for the people. That is the tragedy,” he said.
”People know that we speak under honour. They know we cannot be removed by a vote and that we have no interest in lying.” – Reuters