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34 CHAPTER 1do something to relieve their needs, thus increasing US-RDA support. In turn,this meant the US-RDA gained more votes when suffrage was extended. 24Many of the US-RDA main members were engaged in the colonial system asteachers or civil servants in the urban centres. The colonial administration couldthus try to obstruct the US-RDA by sending its activists to the countryside,which proved counter-productive as it helped spread the US-RDA message toremote corners of the colony. Often, ‘the bush’ meant ‘the North’ as most US-RDA activists, if not all, came from the Soudanese Bambara and Mandeheartlands and were sent to places far from home. However, the banishmentsworked in the party's favour by spreading its message in the country, as well asby dedicating the exiled to their cause of uplifting the Soudanese masses. 25Thus, in 1951 Modibo Keita was sent as a teacher to Kabara, the port village ofTimbuktu. Awa Keita, Minister of Social Affairs after independence, was sentas a midwife to Gao in 1950, as a disciplinary act for her political activitieswithin the US-RDA. However, having served in Gao in the 1930's to thesatisfaction of the population, Awa Keita's possibilities to promote her partyonly increased. Having helped to quintuple the adherence to the US-RDA in theGao region as one of two literate party members in the constituency, she wastransferred to Senegal in August 1951. 26 Thus having been banished and havingserved in the remote backwaters of the country came to be seen as an emblem ofsacrifice to the party. The city-dwelling elite was not used to living in huts inremote hamlets and saw doing so as a sign of personal strength and politicalpersistence.We always speak of the masses. But have we penetrated the masses so as to knowtheir way of life, so as to have wiped away the hostility with which they look atthose who went to the schools of the French, and finally so as to have sensed theirvital needs and measured the extent of their ability to resist oppression? How manycomrades agree to enter a dark and smoky hut, to sit on a mat which in colour andcrust resemble the earth, to dip their hand, without the slightest repugnance, into thedoubtful platter of tô or of rice, to carry to lip and drink without fear the milk onwhich swims a thin layer of dust. 27Overcoming one’s repugnance for tô and milk reaped its rewards. In 1946,the US-RDA lost the elections in all Cercles except in Kita, San, and Sikasso.In 1951 it lost Kita but it won both Gao and Bamako, the two largest cities inSoudan Français, from the PSP. By 1956, the PSP had lost everywhere exceptBafoulabé, Nioro, Macina (home of PSP’s second man Hamadoun Dicko),24252627Ibid.Affaires Politiques, les partis politiques au Soudan 1951-1959. ANM – FR 1E-3/8.Keita, A. 1975.Modibo Keita in US-RDA political report 1955. In: Schachter-Morgenthau, R. 1964:291.