In newly independent Dakar, a prosperous businessman and Chamber of Commerce member marries a third, much younger wife to crown his success — only to be struck impotent on his wedding night, a curse that sets his pride, his three wives, and his standing unraveling.
A custom with its own rules and obligations gets turned into a status display once wealth arrives. Rural polygamy kept all wives and children in one shared compound. Its moneyed version gives each wife a separate villa across the city and quietly drops the principles that were meant to govern it. One wife's verdict: a man with two wives is a liar and a hypocrite, and with three he is even worse.
An elite raised in a traditional upbringing and then drawn into a European-style middle class never fully blends the two. Instead it picks from each whatever serves it at the moment, claiming custom when that grants privilege and modern ways when that grants profit.
A personal humiliation, a newly rich man suddenly unable to perform with his new wife, stands for the powerlessness of a whole ruling class. The author calls the sexual problem 'only a springboard': the pampered elite that took over after independence is impotent culturally, economically and politically, and the weakness runs through all three.
After colonial rule ends, local people move into the top posts of institutions built by the old rulers and celebrate it as a historic first. The machinery underneath stays the same and is now run for a new set of insiders. The hoped-for liberation stalls in corruption, and the gaps between those with access and those without grow deeper.