(SBU) Visionary Monument or Bromdignagian Folly?

UNCLAS DAKAR 000288

SIPDIS
SENSITIVE

DEPT FOR AF/W, AF/RSA, DRL AND INR/AA
PARIS FOR AFRICA WATCHER

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINS KDEM ECON SG
SUBJECT: (SBU) Visionary Monument or Bromdignagian Folly?


1. (SBU) SUMMARY: Between December 1-14, 2009 Senegal will host the
World Festival of Negro Arts (FESNAM). The event will focus on
African renaissance and is also meant to coincide with the unveiling
of a fifty-meter high "African Renaissance statue" commissioned by
President Abdoulaye Wade. Wade conceived of this monument to cement
his cultural legacy, but for many people the statue's 16 million
dollar price tag confirms their belief that, despite the deep crisis
in Senegal's public finances, the President is most interested in
grandiose projects that the Senegalese people have little use for.
End Summary.

Need for a monument
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2. (SBU) According to the Department of Cultural Heritage of the
Ministry of Culture, the idea for the monument came from Wade's
conception of what "Africa's destiny should be." The monument is
being built on an extinct volcano on Dakar's western tip. It is
described by a GOS document as: "The monument represents an African
man emerging from a volcano, facing the West, with his wife and he
is holding his child up as if to show him to the world. It
symbolizes Africa, freed from centuries of imprisonment in the dark
abyss of ignorance, intolerance and racism; Africa regaining its
place in the world bathed in light, air, and freedom."

Poor artistic quality
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3. (SBU) According to a senior figure at the Ministry of culture, it
is Wade himself who made the initial drawing of the statue after
which the North Koreans finished the design but with a distinctly
Stalinesque feel. The Ministry of Culture and a private architect
later stepped in to rework the design of the woman to return to it a
touch of "female sensuality, especially in the way they had covered
her and her thighs." "Still," the rather disappointed contact said,
"the features remain definitely Soviet."

A grandiose, costly project
--------------

4. (SBU) The Director of Cultural Heritage at the Ministry told
Embassy staff that, in a recent visit to North Korea, he saw that
all the pieces of the statue had been molded. He said that the
structure will be almost 165 feet high. Given its placement on the
extinct volcano, its highest point will essentially match that of
the Statue of Liberty in terms of elevation above sea level.
Underneath the plinth there will be a three-story building that will
include three large conference rooms and exhibition halls. At the
tune of an additional three billion CFA (USD six million),the site
plans include a privately built shopping center and a hotel.
Financing the project has been murky and the subject of much
discussion. Originally, it was reported that the GOS had offered
the North Korean builders and enormous tract of prime development
land outside Dakar. It is now rumored that the offer was declined.
Instead, a businessman and political ally of the Mayor of Dakar, is
said to have been given a tract of land in an upscale district in
Dakar with instructions to develop it and use the proceeds to settle
the bill.

Comment
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5(SBU) The monument is meant to be part of President Wade's cultural
legacy to his people. However, in the minds of many this is nothing
but a pharaonic project commissioned by an aging President obsessed
with history and his place in it. In many respects the monument,
conceived by Wade as symbol of African emancipation, is more
symbolic of what is wrong in Senegal - wasteful spending, an opaque
deal, cronyism run rampant, relations with a pariah state; all
happening while people stretch their meager budgets to be able to
eat once a day.
Bernicat