Pan-Africanism, anti-Semitism, links with Russia… Who is Kemi Seba, the Beninese activist deprived of his French nationality?

The activist, who claims to fight against France’s colonial influence in Africa, also advocates racist, misogynistic and anti-Semitic ideas. He enjoys the support of many authoritarian regimes, including Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

He describes this procedure as “a medal for [lui]“Pan-Africanist activist Kemi Seba, known for his virulent criticism of France, has lost his French nationality, according to a decree issued on Monday, July 8 and published the following day in the Official Journal.

The 42-year-old Beninese activist, whose real name is Stellio Gilles Robert Capo Chichi, is one of the main French-speaking figures of anti-colonialism on social networks. Today at the head of the organization Urgences panafricanistes, Kemi Seba campaigns for the independence and unity of the entire black African population against foreign powers.

On social networks and in conferences, he denounces the influence of Western countries (particularly France) and their companies in their former colonies. It would still form a “colonial” system, the activist even evoking on X a “mass genocide of the peoples of the global south”This speech has a wide audience: Kemi Seba now has more than 1.3 million subscribers on Facebook, 340,000 on TikTok, and 272,000 on X.

The commitments of the activist, who left France in 2011 for Senegal before being expelled and settling in Benin in 2017, are not new. In France, he became known in the early 2000s as the founder of Tribu Ka, a small group advocating black supremacy and rejecting any interbreeding between “Khemites” (blacks) and “leucoderms” (whites). This small group was dissolved in 2006 by the Minister of the Interior at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy, two months after an expedition by several of its members to the heart of a Jewish neighborhood in the 4th arrondissement of Paris.

Kemi Seba then explained to the New Observer to want “demand accountability” to members of two Jewish organizations and that “justice be done for the black people who were beaten and whose attackers seem to enjoy total impunity in this country“. When he announced his dissolution, he issued numerous threats: “The white man is a detail for us (…) You haven’t seen anything yet. In the coming months, blood will flow.”reported another article in the New Observer of the time. Kemi Seba then created the group Génération Kemi Seba in 2007, renamed Jeunesse Kemi Seba, also dissolved in 2009.

The activist, who spoke of Dieudonné as “a brother and a friend”was himself convicted of incitement to racial hatred in 2009. In writings, he claimed that international institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF and the World Health Organization were “held by the Zionists who impose on Africa and its diaspora living conditions so excremental that the Auschwitz concentration camp can seem like a paradise on Earth”.

On social networks, he also uses anti-Semitic language (on X he mentions the anti-Semitic stereotype of the“financial stateless elite”) and conspiracy theorists (Volodomyr Zelensky “is objectively at best a puppet, at worst a consenting tool of the neoliberal elite”quoted The world (according to a show broadcast on YouTube).

Faced with the entities that he describes as “colonial” Or “neocolonial”Kemi Seba has found several objective allies: on X, he assures to have received “funds from countries in the Global South”notably authoritarian or dictatorial regimes. On the same social network, Kemi Seba defends the military juntas that came to power following coups d’état in Niger, Mali or Burkina Faso. He recently undertook a tour of several pariahs of the international community such as Iran, Venezuela or Cuba.

He seems especially close to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which has been expanding its influence on the African continent for several years by stirring up anti-colonial resentment, just like Kemi Seba and other activists. In an interview given in Venezuela and published on his X account, Kemi Seba described the Russian autocrat as “the hero [et] the Messiah from Russia”.

Kemi Seba was invited in March 2023 before the Russian Parliament to give a speech. The pan-African activist even met Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late boss of Wagner, whose mercenaries are accused of numerous crimes in Africa. This former close friend of Vladimir Putin, who died in a plane crash after rebelling against the Russian president, gave more than 400,000 euros to Kemi Seba so that the latter could develop his activities and gain influence, according to an investigation by several media outlets including Young Africa. Kemi Seba responded to “Quotidien” that it is not “an exact sum”).

Kemi Seba assumes these relationships and justifies them with a strategy “multipolar”so as not to depend on a single country or camp. These states are not “Not a country of angels, far from it, but they are opposed to Western imperialism, and that suits me”he defends on the microphone of “Quotidien”. He adds that “Russians are allies but not our messiahs”and “One-off alliance does not mean eternal”.

In 2023, Kemi Seba had published on the Urgences panafricanistes website a letter presented as sent by the General Directorate of Foreigners in France, which announced the opening of a procedure for loss of French nationality against him. This procedure, provided for by Article 23-7 of the Civil Code, authorizes the Ministry of the Interior (after the approval of the Council of State) to withdraw a dual national’s French nationality if he “actually behaves like a national of a foreign country”. A procedure distinct from the “deprivation” of nationality, provided for in some by articles 25 and 25-1.

According to the letter revealed by the activist, the general management of foreigners in France reproached Kemi Seba “particularly virulent and even outrageous messages against France” And “serious accusations”as well as’“a constant and current posture that is resolutely anti-French, likely to seriously harm French interests and likely to constitute manifest disloyalty”Contacted by franceinfo to verify the authenticity of the document, the Ministry of the Interior did not respond immediately.

The loss of his French nationality does not seem to affect Kemi Seba: he reacted on Tuesday on X by saying “freed (…) from this burden”recalling that he had already burned a document presented as his French passport in March. His counsel, lawyer Juan Branco, assures AFP that his client “is very happy” : “He had given me a letter of renunciation [à la nationalité française] even before the procedure is initiated”he said.