Quote by Ousmane Sembène: “Poverty does not give you the right to steal, but it explains it.”

Understanding why people do something is not the same as excusing it. Sembène asks us to hold both things at once — moral clarity about wrongdoing, and compassion for the conditions that produce it. This is a sophisticated rejection of both moral laziness and cruel indifference to circumstance.

Sembène made this observation in interviews around the release of Xala in 1975, a film satirising the corruption of Senegal's post-independence bourgeoisie. Senegal, like much of post-independence Africa, was experiencing sharp economic inequality, and debates about poverty, crime, and political responsibility were very much live.

Senegalese filmmaker and novelist often called the father of African cinema. He began as a novelist — his 1960 novel God's Bits of Wood is a classic of African literature — and moved to film to reach audiences who could not read. His films, including Moolaadé and Xala, tackled colonial legacy, corruption, and women's rights.