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Chapter 13 Summary of The Beggars’ Strike
Chapter 13 of The Beggars’ Strike portrays the profound role reversal between Mour Ndiaye and the beggars he banished. The chapter opens with Mour and his chauffeur, Kouli, driving far outside the City to the “new Slum-Clearance Resettlement Area” to find the beggars. The journey takes them into a desolate, sandy, and windswept wasteland. This environment physically illustrates how far the government has marginalised its poorest citizens.
Upon arriving at the “beggars’ house,” Mour is struck by the sheer volume of human decrepitude, yet he also notices that the beggars are living peacefully and are well-supplied by a constant stream of donors making the long trek to offer charity. He approaches Salla Niang, who treats him with a cold, indifferent authority.
Driven by the impending deadline to secure his vice-presidency, Mour addresses the crowd. He begs them to return to their regular vantage points in the City streets the following morning for just a few hours so he can distribute an important sacrifice. The beggars immediately erupt in laughter and vehemently refuse. They state they will not return to the “hell” they were driven from just to be beaten and harassed again.
Desperate, Mour reveals his identity as the Director of Public Health, promising they have nothing to fear because he controls the police. Nguirane Sarr, the blind beggar, immediately calls out Mour’s hypocrisy, mocking him: “So, governor, you drove us away and now you’re the one who comes looking for us!” Mour cowardly attempts to deflect the blame, claiming his subordinates acted without his orders and went “too far.” When his excuses and an irrelevant story about defrauded widows fail to move the crowd, Mour offers to satisfy “all your demands” if they will just comply.
Salla Niang finds Mour’s blatant dishonesty and hypocrisy deeply amusing. Rather than continuing to argue, she decides to play a cruel trick on him. She smiles and tells Mour what he desperately wants to hear: “Monsieur Ndiaye, you can go. Tomorrow, if it please, the beggars will be back at their old posts.”
Mour feels an enormous weight lifted from his chest and leaves the compound feeling victorious. However, the very moment he is out the gate, Salla Niang commands the beggars to hold their ground: “Don’t budge from here. No one is to budge from here ever again! Tomorrow, we shall see that he bites the dust!” The chapter ends with the beggars erupting in uncontrollable, victorious laughter, with Nguirane Sarr pantomiming the very whip strokes they used to suffer. He mocks Mour’s impending downfall.
Analysis of Chapter 13
The central irony of the novel culminates in this chapter. Mour Ndiaye, the powerful, wealthy politician who orchestrated the violent removal of the beggars, is literally forced to travel to their dusty wasteland to beg them for a favour. The power dynamic is completely inverted; Mour is entirely at their mercy. This proves Salla Niang’s earlier realisation that the elite need the beggars far more than the beggars need the elite.
When confronted by the people his policies destroyed, Mour refuses to take responsibility. He embodies the worst traits of corrupt bureaucracy by blaming his underlings (“It is my men who went too far!”) and claiming ignorance of the violence. Salla accurately diagnoses him as a “damned liar” who “wears a reversible boubou,” changing his principles whenever it suits his personal ambition.
Salla’s decision to falsely promise Mour that the beggars will return is a brilliant and devastating tactical move. She recognises that simply refusing Mour wouldn’t punish him enough. By giving him false hope and letting him believe he has outsmarted them, she ensures his ultimate public humiliation and the failure of his political ambitions.
Mour’s overwhelming hubris makes him an easy target for Salla’s deception. Because he views the beggars merely as a gullible, uneducated “rabble” to be used as stepping stones, he completely underestimates them. He leaves the compound feeling relieved. He fails to realise that the beggars have entirely reclaimed their agency and have just outmanoeuvred him.
The description of the Slum-Clearance Resettlement Area is a sharp critique of modern urban planning in post-colonial cities. The government did not solve poverty; they simply swept it out of sight into a “wilderness.” This creates a physical divide that mirrors the emotional and economic divide between the rich and the poor.
Chapter 14 Summary of The Beggars’ Strike
The final chapter of The Beggars’ Strike details Mour Ndiaye’s desperate, failed attempt to execute the sacrifice and the ultimate collapse of his political ambitions.
Chapter 14 of The Beggars’ Strike begins with Mour purchasing an expensive fawn-coloured bull. Early the next morning, he has the animal slaughtered in his courtyard and frantically divides the meat into exactly seventy-seven portions. He meticulously places them into seventy-seven cellophane bags while his daughter, Raabi, watches in bewilderment. He loads the meat, along with the seven hundred cola-nuts and twenty-one yards of white cloth, into a van driven by his loyal chauffeur, Kouli.
Mour sets out to distribute the alms, completely expecting the beggars to have returned to the streets as Salla Niang had falsely promised him the day before. However, as Kouli drives him to the Main Market, the traffic lights, the mosques, and the hospitals, Mour discovers that the streets are completely empty; not a single beggar is in sight. Realising he has been deceived, Mour is overcome with panic and fury.
With time running out to fulfill the marabout’s strict instructions, Mour forces Kouli to drive back out to the Slum-Clearance Resettlement Area. Upon arriving, Mour is greeted with complete indifference by Salla Niang, who ignores him to tend to her cooking. Desperate, Mour resorts to outright bribery: he pulls out wads of bank-notes and hurls them into the air. The beggars, including Salla Niang, scramble wildly for the money. Believing he has successfully bought their compliance, Mour announces he will drive through the City after the afternoon prayer to distribute the sacrificed meat, and the crowd eagerly promises they will be there.
Feeling victorious, Mour stops to visit his second wife, Sine. However, he finds her smoking a cigarette, which he had explicitly forbidden. He violently slaps the cigarette out of her mouth, but Sine fiercely fights back. She refuses to be treated like an object or “a piece of furniture.” She explicitly tells Mour she is not a sheep like his first wife, Lolli, and will not tolerate his dictatorial hypocrisy. Mour leaves the house deeply troubled and without eating.
After the afternoon prayer, Mour and Kouli drive endlessly around the City in the sweltering heat, visiting every square, mosque, and market. The beggars never show up; they have continued their strike. Exhausted, physically aching, and mentally broken, Mour returns to Lolli’s house at nightfall and collapses into a chair, refusing dinner. He falls into a heavy sleep, only to be awakened by the television news. The President of the Republic announces the appointment of the new Vice-President: it is Toumane Sane, the former Home Secretary. Mour has lost everything.
Analysis of Chapter 14
The novel concludes with the perfect ironic punishment for Mour Ndiaye. He built his reputation on the sterile, bureaucratic eradication of the beggars to curate a modernised image of the City. In the end, it is precisely the success of this campaign that prevents him from executing the traditional, spiritual sacrifice required to achieve his ultimate goal. He loses the vice-presidency because his own ruthless policies were too effective.
Mour’s attempt to bribe the beggars by throwing wads of cash highlights his fundamental misunderstanding of power. He believes that raw wealth can purchase spiritual and social compliance. Salla Niang brilliantly subverts this: the beggars eagerly take his money because it is their right, but they still refuse to provide the spiritual service he demands. The beggars prove that leverage in this society is not held by those with the most money, but by those who control the spiritual economy.
The confrontation between Mour and his second wife, Sine, mirrors his loss of control over the beggars. Mour abandoned Lolli for Sine to fit his “modernised” political aesthetic, yet he still expects Sine to submit to traditional patriarchal rules (like not smoking). Sine shatters this illusion, pointing out that she is an independent human being, not his property. Just as Mour cannot force the beggars to bend to his will, he cannot force his modern wife to play a submissive, traditional role.
The novel ends with the beggars holding absolute power over their oppressors. By maintaining their strike, they strip Mour of his political future. Salla Niang emerges as the true master tactician of the story. She outmanoeuvress the Director of Public Health by using his own hubris against him. The beggars transition from helpless, beaten victims in Chapter 1 to the ultimate victors. Their triumph proves that society’s most despised members are actually its foundational pillars.
Related:
- Chapter 1 to 3 Summary and Analysis of The Beggars’ Strike by Aminata Sow Fall
- Chapter 4 to 7 Summary and Analysis of The Beggars’ Strike by Aminata Sow Fall
- Chapter 8 to 12 Summary and Analysis of The Beggars’ Strike by Aminata Sow Fall
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