‘Democracy has been thrown out the window’: paranoia stalks the streets of Dakar after ‘constitutional coup’

“The undercover police are everywhere,” warns Moma Diouf, lowering his voice. “They dress like civilians, pretending to sell coffee, striking up conversations about politics. The next thing you know, they’ve called officers nearby. You’re taken away, beaten and thrown in jail indefinitely.”

Speaking in the private upstairs room of a cafe in Médina, a district of Dakar, Senegal, Diouf, 30, is describing the fresh realities of life in a country that until recently was seen as a beacon for freedom in Africa’s increasingly turbulent Sahel region.

Six days have passed since President Macky Sall stunned the nation by abruptly postponing elections scheduled for this month, plunging the west African state into a tense standoff between an unpopular president and many who accuse him of a constitutional coup.

Related: ‘The youth will fight’: why children have joined Senegal protests

International pressure, led by the EU and US, has had no apparent impact. Instead, Sall’s government has doubled down, and is alleged to have been secretly rounding up dozens of pro-democracy protesters it wants silenced.

Diouf, a volunteer with a grassroots human rights movement, has already identified and visited 36 individuals in Dakar’s jail who have been detained in the days after Sall’s decision to cling on to power. Of these, just four had been released by Thursday night.

What’s new, says Diouf, is that the police have started arresting and imprisoning older people for the first time. “They’re now jailing 60-year-olds. Their operation has cranked up,” he says.

Yet in a country where the median age is 19, both sides accept it is how the country’s youth respond that is likely to define Senegal’s near future.

North of Médina lies Guédiawaye, a suburb that traditionally is the first place to protest when civil unrest flares in Dakar. Beneath the fume-filled underpass of the motorway that races through Guédiawaye, Ahmed Mbaye is among those predicting a bloody, treacherous period ahead.

An Islamic leader in the suburb, Mbaye has sought the views of many in his community and concludes that unrest is inevitable. “I fear an outbreak at any time, tensions are very high,” he says.

Although Sall says he is not seeking a third term, a highly contentious vote by Senegal’s parliament pushed back the elections until December, allowing the president to stay in office for months beyond 2 April, when his mandate was due to end. Mbaye says there is ample time for places such as Guédiawaye to erupt in anger.

“If Sall stays it’s going to get very complicated. People think he has played us. Soon the shit will hit the fan,” the 45-year-old says.

Sall’s strategy so far appears to be to carry on as normal. Yet a drive through Dakar’s sprawling northern neighbourhoods offers ample evidence of the tension Mbaye has identified. Roads are blackened at key junctions with scorch marks from flaming barricades erected by demonstrators after the vote to push back the election date.

Normally busy public squares are empty, blocked off by police to prevent crowds gathering. Elsewhere, riot vans are parked outside Sall’s expensive new bus stations, despite no actual buses running because of fears they could be targeted.

In Guédiawaye, on the top floor of a six-storey building, Cheikh Fall believes that Sall’s behaviour will seal his downfall. The director of a pan-African online network of pro-democracy activists, he says the government’s decision to cut internet access to mobile phones at the start of the week to prevent sporadic protests from taking of has infuriated many.

“It was a clear intention to shut down our voices, restrict our liberties. People do not accept this,” he says.

Fall’s organisation has a reach of one million Senegalese, an influential online force. At some point he expects Sall to target his operation and attempt to shut it down.

Back at the underpass, framed on one side by the white sands of Malibu beach and a rubbish tip on the other, new mother Assy Kebbe says the Senegal she cherished is dying.

“It is a very painful death. Democracy has been thrown out of the window. No election means Sall now gets to decide without limits. He becomes king and we, his slaves,” she says.

She gestures towards her five-month-old son, Mohammed. “What is his future? Everything is in jeopardy.”

Her economic circumstances, she says, are similar to most of her peers. After her husband’s carpentry work dried up, Kebbe was forced to start work. Selling coffee and fish paste sandwiches below the underpass brings in 3,000 CFA franc (£3.90) a day. The family rent is 150,000 CFA franc (£195) a month.

It is Sall’s record on education where the 30-year-old feels that the president ought to have had his popularity tested at the ballot box. “I don’t want my son to sell food like me on the street. I want him to go to school and realise his potential, but education here is a mess,” she says.

Nearby, Saliou Seck, a 23-year-old plumber, agrees the future feels bleak, blaming Sall for compromising Senegal’s tradition of democracy and law.

“A coup is not in our makeup, it’s a country of peace.”

Upstairs in the Médina cafe, police sirens wailing outside, Diouf says that peace – and democracy – may yet prevail. Despite the rising number of arrests and complaints of police abuse, he remains hopeful. “We will win, the people will win. We need to hold our nerve.”