KADDU...also means thunder
Editorial of Kaddu's first issue, translated Kaddu_Editorial from Wolof to French and English
Kàddu! This is the title of this newspaper. Yes, you have our word: Kàddu! We’ve writers writing in Wolof, a cinema in Wolof; and now today we have a newspaper in Wolof.
Diagne and Sembène, along with a few other activist intellectuals, decided to launch Kàddu (“Speech” in Wolof), the first Senegalese newspaper printed entirely in an African language, in order to provide information to peoples marginalised by French print media. For its promoters, Wolof, being the most widely used language in Senegal, was an ideal channel through which to put the richest information and knowledge within the reach of an entire nation, thus giving people the power make up their own minds on any topic.
Ben Diogoye Béye: It's a long story. When I was a teenager, at the age of seventeen-eighteen, we used to hang around the place where the mosque on Malick Sy Avenue is today, in front of Cité Police and the Seydou Nourou Tall mausoleum. We were a group of young Medinans among whom were four of my brothers as well as Boubacar Boris Diop who, for me, was to become the greatest Senegalese writer.
Sey Dou Nourou Ndiaye: It was at high school that I discovered the newspaper. I even lent a hand in selling it, for there was a sales point at the school. But this sales point, which was run by an old man, only worked out for one number. So, I helped out with selling it, but without having contact with the promoters. It was more in the spirit of supporting the newspaper. There was also the image of Ousmane Sembène who, for us, was close to a hero.
Ousmane Faty Ndongo: To talk about my relationship with Kàddu actually means to talk about the influence that Pathé Diagne had over me. The first time I read the Russian author Gogol’s The Overcoat was in Pathé Diagne’s Wolof translation Mantoob seytaane. That is to say that if I became interested in national languages, or more precisiely in Wolof, it is largely thanks to Pathé Diagne.