The Black, Muslim mayor who embodies changes in the new France

A portrait of Emmanuel Macron, president of the French Republic, leans against the wall on the floor. Two meters away, a handwritten sign proclaims a symbolic victory: “Here begins the new France.” From the window of the new mayor’s office, painted electric blue, one can see the basilica where the remains of the monarchs of France rest. But also the narrow streets of Saint-Denis (population 115,000), where the air is thick with the aroma of halal shops, and women in headscarves walk among mosques. In short, the multicultural landscape of the second-largest city in Île-de-France, the Paris region, located in the country’s poorest department and the one with the highest proportion of immigrants — one-third of the population. His arrival here has shaken France. He remains completely calm. “The portrait? It was already like that when I arrived. I didn’t take it down; I simply didn’t put it back on the wall,” explains Bally Bagayoko, the newly elected mayor of Saint-Denis.

Bagayoko, 52, the son of a family of Malian origin, won the municipal elections in March in the first round with 50.77% of the vote. It was historic. The first Black and Muslim mayor of a city with over 100,000 inhabitants. A turning point that also sparked a wave of racism from the most conservative media outlets, which went so far as to call him a “monkey” and spread lies such as Bagayoko having said that Saint-Denis was “a city of Black people” instead of kings (in French, the sounds noirs and rois can be confused). “We expected it. We knew there would be attacks. The first accusation came from the outgoing mayor, who said that we were a candidacy supported by drug traffickers. But the racist offensive continued with emails, with threats. Also with music…” he says.

The mayor’s office receives hate messages daily, including anonymous calls that leave the phone off the hook and sometimes play the melody Beaux Dimanches, (Beautiful Sundays), from the album Dimanche à Bamako (Sunday in Bamako) by the Malian duo Amadou & Mariam. Bagayoko laughs. “We share a last name, maybe that’s why… They think I offend the Republic. I represent everything they detest. I don’t fit into their model of power representation, into that white idea of ​​the Republic. But this is a reality and today France, in its diversity, has brought forth people who a few years ago had no right to hold these positions. And that’s something that has escaped the control of those people, who believed they had the right to decide who could occupy them. That’s why they say I’m a monkey, or that the drug traffickers chose me… It’s a neocolonial approach. Obviously, if I were white and had a different name, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

The postal code for the Seine-Saint-Denis department, the province with the most immigrants and also demographically the youngest in the country, is 93. This is the epitome of the banlieue, accustomed to making headlines for insecurity, riots, and Islamist ghettos. Saint-Denis is also the legacy of the Olympic Games, a major investment. It represents the future of a city constrained by its peripheral boulevards and in need of expanding its identity beyond those boundaries. A place, like Saint-Ouen, where many young Parisians seek refuge from the housing crisis.

Bagayoko’s victory stems from a dual phenomenon: demographic and social. The young people who were demonstrating in the streets 15 years ago are now 30, 35, or 40 years old. And instead of radicalization, most have experienced a degree of bourgeoisification. They now have children, professional lives, and want recognition. Furthermore, there is social diversification. “Before, Muslims had access to immigrant jobs, but now they are doctors, lawyers, journalists… social workers. It’s a kind of gentrification of the Muslim middle class,” Oliver Roy, a philosopher and expert on Islam, explained to this newspaper a few days ago.

Bagayoko is the neighborhood, the street. The working class. On Saturdays and Tuesdays, he still coaches children at the basketball school. But he is also the spearhead of La France Insoumise (LFI), Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left party. The LFI has presented its victory in Saint-Denis as proof of the success of its strategy of establishing a foothold in the working-class neighborhoods of the Parisian suburbs. This is where it achieved some of its best results in the 2022 presidential elections, despite record abstention. In the cities of the Seine-Saint-Denis department, as well as in those of Val-de-Marne, Val-d’Oise, and even Essonne, LFI carried out an ambitious campaign aimed at assessing its networks of activists and its capacity to mobilize the abstentionist electorate in the lead-up to the 2027 presidential elections.

Bagayoko and the other mayors and members of parliament of African or Muslim origin who came to power in the last municipal elections — Aly Diouara, Demba Traoré, Bassi Konaté, Yahaya Soukouna, Adama Gaye — represent many things at once. There is a sense of consolidation in this electoral strategy. But above all, it is the inevitable crystallization of that new France depicted on the poster in his office. The France that mobilized in the last presidential elections against the far right in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, home to minorities of African origin, such as the Algerian community, who crowd into the RER commuter train cars every morning to go to work.

The old proletariat, the children of those immigrants who led the revolts of the early 2000s, have grown up and have families. They went to university and want the social recognition their efforts deserve. “The new France is a concept that has nothing to do with ethnicity or the division of the Republic. It’s about recognizing that a new generation constitutes France, and that it’s different from what it was 30 years ago. It’s the story of a country and a society in motion. The development of its networks, its challenges, its diversity. And that means we have to live with this new reality, including people who come from working-class neighborhoods, are Black, and become mayors,” Bagayoko points out.

Saint-Denis, since the last municipal elections, is no longer just Saint-Denis. It’s one of the key locations around which the 2027 presidential campaign will revolve. And Bagayoko doesn’t shy away from his responsibility. “What happens here will be observed at the national level. But it’s an opportunity to put our challenges on the presidential agenda. That’s why I want to use my popularity now to advance many local issues that affect all of France and are related to inequality.” Bagayoko, perhaps one of the most media-savvy mayors in France today, will be a formidable voice for these ideas.

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