[Analysis] Baobab Choices #13 — The post that can save or destroy

Reminder of the dilemma

A — You publish now: the truth does not wait for calm to return.

B — You delay publication and forward the file to the court first.

If you chose A

Choosing A is to affirm that transparency is an immediate, non-negotiable right. But it also means accepting that your truth, once dropped in the digital arena, no longer belongs. You become the match in a gas-saturated room.

If you have chosen B

Choosing B is still believing in institutions in a country where they often disappoint. It's a bet on slowness, an act of faith in justice that many consider complicit. You protect peace, but perhaps also impunity.

This dilemma lies precisely at the fracture that many African democracies are experiencing today. On the one hand, the sacred duty to inform — This conviction that corruption thrives in silence and that every day of delay costs lives in these stripped rural hospitals. On the other hand, the dizzying responsibility of those who know that truth in a hysterized media ecosystem can become an uncontrollable weapon.

The choice A carries within it the nobility of the combatant journalism, one who refuses to negotiate with the power the calendar of transparency. But it also bears a form blindly: to believe that publishing is necessarily to do justice. In Senegal as elsewhere, legitimate revelations have been seen instrumentalized by digital crowds, transformed into popular verdicts, and manhunts. The formal democracy that the country claims to be flickering when the street replaces the court.

Choice B, on the other hand, embodies a wisdom that many will call naivety — Or worse, complicity. Forwarding the case to a court that is often perceived as commanding is a risk to the funeral of the case. It is also, paradoxically, the most democratic gesture: to refuse the temptation to legislate hot by opinion, to demand that institutions function rather than bypass them. But who pays the price for this patience? The sick in the villages waiting for stolen medicine.

The truth is, no option is clean. Publishing too soon can fuel the chaos that those who devour Africa from within denounce. Waiting too long can feed the immobilism that protects them. The journalist is caught between two forms of violence: speech and silence.

Baobab does not choose between storm and drought. It sinks its roots so deeply that neither one nor the other reverses it. The real question may not be when to publish, but if society has built strong enough roots to accommodate truth without simmering.

To go further

Next dilemma Next Monday

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