ASC-075287668-2887-01

CREATING MALI 73policies. To purge party and state of incompetent and moderate elements, Keitadissolved the executive office of the party in August 1967. In January 1968,Parliament was also dissolved. All political institutions were replaced by theComité National pour la Défense de la Révolution, in which only Marxisthardliners found a place, but this did not end the economic crisis, and evenaggravated the Cultural Revolution-style actions of the Milice Populaire and theBrigade de Vigilance. Finally, what seemed inevitable in those early years ofpost-colonial Africa happened. On 19 November 1968 the Comité Militaire dela Libération Nationale (CMLN) staged a coup d’état. Modibo Keita and hisprincipal ministers and US-RDA leaders were imprisoned and sent to speciallyerected prison camps in the Adagh, where they were guarded and taken care ofby the people they had most of all sought to educate, develop, and rule againsttheir will: the Kel Adagh. 145 The news of the coup d’état was enthusiasticallygreeted in the Adagh. The fall of Keita, a reality to the Kel Adagh as he enteredKidal as a prisoner, was at first equated with freedom and the end of Malianrule. Children abandoned school. Caravans were formed to move to Algeria,probably as the effects of the drought were already being felt and many wantedto sell livestock before disaster befell them. The administration reacted quicklyby organising an ‘explanatory campaign’ to warn the Kel Adagh against ‘a possibledeformation of the meaning of freedom’. 146 The caravans were halted;children were sent back to school; business remained as usual.145 Since the 1990s, a number of survivors of these camps have published their memoirs.Samaké, G. 1998; Traoré, A.S., K. Pleah, M. Talla & K. Sidibe 1996.146 Cercle de Kidal, Revue mensuelle des évènements du mois de Novembre 1968.ACK.