Stature of controversy

 New African - May 2010 - Is Senegal brand-new ‘African Renaissance Monument’ a triumph of African liberation or a monumental gaffe? Critics have condemned it but its supporters have praised the man behind it, President Abdoulaye Wade. Sheriff Bojang Jnr reports from Dakar.

At the top of a 300-foot-high hill along the western coast near the Senegalese capital, Dakar, now stands a gigantic bronze statue called the ‘African Renaissance Monument’. The 164-high statue, a few feet taller than the Statue of Liberty in New York, USA depicts a muscular man, a fatherly figure triumphantly holding a woman with his right hand and with his left hoisting a child aloft, who is eagerly pointing to the sea.

The $27 million monument was built by a North Korean firm based on the ideas of Senegalese president, Abdoulaye Wade to mark Senegal’s 50th independence anniversary. The president wanted the monument to ‘symbolise the fight against racism’. 

After much controversy over the merits and demerits of the monument, it was finally inaugurated at a lavish ceremony on 3 April, attended by 19 African heads of state, a group of 100 African-Americans led by famous civil rights activist, Rev Jesse Jackson and hundreds of other dignitaries from other parts of the world.

President Wade told his guests and jubilant supporters that ‘there is a Statue of Liberty in the United States, an Eiffel Tower in Paris. I wanted to give flesh to African Renaissance so that people know that we came through nearly six centuries of darkness, and we are going towards the light’.

He said the monument symbolised the triumph of African liberation from centuries of ignorance, intolerance and racism. And he hopes ‘the statue will rival the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower as a tourist destination’.

Echoing the sentiments, the Chairman of the African Union and Malawian president, Bingu Wa Mutharika, said the monument was a symbol of hope for the African child. To the former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, ‘the stature is a message to the world that Africans were born free’. For Jesse Jackson, his hope is that the monument ‘will attract tourists from all over the world’.

But critics of the monument have accused President Wade of excessive spending on ‘prestige projects’ while ignoring urgent economic issues. Senegal is one of the countries hit hard by the global financial crisis and rising food prices. Unemployment is high, the health and education sectors are in crisis, and the economy is declining.

Sokhna Fatou Thiam, a middle-aged jewellery seller in Dakar and an ardent critic of the monument says: ‘This statue is an example of our president’s disconnection from the common people, the people who stood by him through thick and thin during the years of his struggle as an opposition leader, the people who voted him into power. Give me $27 million and I will spend it on upgrading hospitals and schools, and providing water and food for the needy rather than building a statue.’

Many Senegalese feel the same way as Thiam. While President Wade’s supporters see the statue as an investment that will generate income for the country, many others see it as a misplaced priority. The high cost of living, frequent power cuts and the high unemployment rate have resulted in regular street protests across Dakar and in the suburbs over the past two years. Besides, thousands of Senegalese youth take to the sea each year in a ‘do or die’ trip to Europe by flimsy boats. Most do so because of the lack of economic opportunities at home.

Abdoulaye Bathily, opposition leader and university professor, has accused Wade of spending ‘millions and millions’ on prestige projects while his people are struggling to eat one meal a day. Bathily has vowed to defeat Wade in the next elections in 2012 after which ‘we will dismantle this statue the same way Saddam Hussein statue was dismantled in Baghdad.’

According to the local Le Quotidien newspaper, the cost of the monument is equivalent to the debts of all the public hospitals in Dakar, where many sick people are sent away daily because of lack of enough beds to accommodate them.

But the monument has its own supporters too. Mame Mbacke Saine, an independent architectural consultant (who once served as an unofficial consultant for the monument), says the statue will bring long time benefits. ‘When the media tries to make a fuss out of the controversy surrounding this project, it baffles me. Come on, where in the world is there a national statue without problems and controversies? This statue represents hope and optimism, love and affection for our women, and a sign of positive change for our politicians.’

His views are echoed by Ouleye Sidibe, a high school teacher in the suburbs of Dakar. According to her, ‘there is nothing sexist about this statue. The fact that there is a woman present is enough proof that women are a priority of this government. The problem in Senegal is not what is done right or wrong by the government. It is that a lot of people hate President Wade for nothing, and no matter what he does, they will always have something horrible to say about it

My idea, my share

President Wade shocked the nation when he announced that he would personally take 35 percent of all tourist revenue from the monument. He claimed intellectual property rights as he said the project was his own idea. The remaining 65 percent share of the revenue, Wade said, would go to the state.

His announcement caused furore and anger among many Senegalese who felt strongly that he should not be entitled to any share. But experts in intellectual property rights had mixed opinions. While some said the president was entitled to the share as a man who conceived the idea, others argued that as a sitting Head of State, he cannot claim intellectual property rights for the project.

‘By claiming intellectual property rights, President Wade is acting more like a businessman than a leader elected by his people’, said one property rights analyst.

The monument has also been criticised by local feminists for what they see as ‘an attack on the fight for gender equality in Senegal.’ They don’t agree with President Wade that, put together, the three figures of the statue represent ‘victory and renaissance’. Whose victory and whose renaissance?’ the women ask.

Fatou Kine Camara, a Senegalese law professor, feminist and visual artist does not think that the statue represents any kind of victory for women. According to her, the statue is ‘an insult to all women, and men who are respectful of women in this country because what it symbolises is the triumph of patriarchal values in our society’.

According to the critics, the monument portrays a child in the arms of his father while his mother is swept along by the father.

Prof. Camara said ‘when there’s a sculpture of a couple and a child, that child is always with the mother, usually at her mother’s breast… to show that she’s the giver of life, she’s the nurturer’. What baffles Prof. Camara is that the father has the child on his muscular arm ‘as if the child will be fed by physical strength… no, he should know about love, mother’s love and tenderness, human values’.

Aissatou Laye, a newspaper columnist wrote that the statue ‘represents a singular idea and specious renaissance that places man at the heart of the problem and reduces woman to a subordinate status that can be crushed or raised depending on the mood of the man’.

The portrayal of the woman with bare thighs has also come under criticism from women’s rights activists and Muslims. The architect of the statue has hinted that the woman’s body might be covered to appease women who feel insulted by the bare thighs.

Some critics have claimed that the woman is naked from neck to waist, but an objective look reveals a torso wrapped in a light apparel or ‘sea-though’ material. She is, therefore, not naked.

Other art lovers in Senegal have rejected President Wade’s claim that the monument represent African victory. Many of them say the statue has no African appeal.

When Imams and other Muslim leaders in Senegal called for the statue to be knocked down because it was ‘idolatrous’, President Wade accused them of hypocrisy and ignorance. 

He told a public gathering that ‘in churches, Christians pray to Jesus and he’s not a God. Everybody knows this, but nobody has ever said we have to knock down churches. Nobody has ever objected or cared what the people do there’.

The Catholic community in Dakar took umbrage and called a rally in which the Archbishop of Dakar, Adrianne Theodore Sarr said the Christians were ‘insulted and humiliated’ by the president’s comment.

Violence erupted between hundreds of young Christians and the Senegalese police when the Christians took to the streets to express their disgust at the president’s comparison of the statue to Jesus.

On the eve of the inauguration of the statue, a group of Muslim clerics issued a fatwa against the project and prayed that ‘God should punish anyone who attended the inauguration’. A fatwa is a ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognized authority. It is popularly associated with negative things, such as a death sentence on a person or a severe punishment.

But despite all the criticisms, the African Renaissance Statue is open for business. So far, the critics have failed to look at its long-term benefits, and how the monument will pay for itself over time. They have not asked themselves how much revenue the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty or the London Eye accrue each year, or have accrued over the decades since they were built.

‘One hundred years from now, when President Abdoulaye Wade will be no more, this monument will still be earning money for Senegal to be put into poverty-eradicating projects’, said a supporter of the monument.

That notwithstanding, the monument might well mark a turning point in Senegal’s 2012 elections.