Wall Street Journal
written by Christina Passariello
Thursday January 28, 2010
DAKAR, Senegal—New York has the Statue of Liberty. France has the Eiffel Tower. Now Senegal is about to get the "African Renaissance"—built by North Korea.
This month, workers from Mansudae Overseas Project Group of Companies, a North Korean design firm, were putting the finishing touches on a giant copper sculpture of a family. Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade will inaugurate the African Renaissance Monument in April to mark the 50th anniversary of the country's independence from France, a ceremony he expects the president of North Korea's Parliament to attend.
"Only the North Koreans could build my statue," says Mr. Wade, sitting in a red velvet chair in his palace. Moreover, they offer monuments at a good rate, he says: "I had no money."
North Korea is mainly known for a totalitarian regime overseeing economic failure. But it has also produced a successful export business—building monuments to freedom and independence. The statues' selling point: They are big, simple and cheap.
Over the past decade, Mansudae has built dozens of statues and monuments for cash-strapped African countries. Botswana cut the ribbon on a memorial to three tribal chiefs in 2005. Neighboring Namibia boasts a bronze of its founding president wielding an AK-47.
The African Renaissance is Mansudae's biggest work yet, measuring 164 feet high and crowning two barren hills in Dakar called "Les Mamelles" at the westernmost point of Africa. That makes it taller than either the Statue of Liberty (151 feet) or Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer (100 feet). The statue depicts a father holding a baby in his left arm. The man's right arm is around the waist of the baby's mother. The three are reaching out to the sky and out to the ocean.
"Its message is about Africa emerging from the darkness, from five centuries of slavery and two centuries of colonialism," says Mr. Wade.
Africa's rash of nationalistic monuments, statues and shrines has made Mansudae's signature aesthetic of socialist realism fashionable. In Benin, for example, a statue of a 19th-century king holds his hand up, symbolically forbidding the French to enter.
Socialist realism is popular "because people can access it easily," says Mary Jo Arnoldi, curator for African Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution. It is easy to understand for illiterate populations, she says. "But aesthetically, it's not going to win any prizes."
In Senegal, however, the statue has been a beacon of discontent, sparking angry newspaper editorials and protests from religious leaders. The statue's sultry mother figure, dressed in a wisp of fabric that reveals part of a breast and a bare leg, has offended imams in this majority-Muslim country.
Financing details for the project have been murky, and some taxpayers are outraged by the very idea of it when power outages occur daily and university students strike over rising fees. Mr. Wade had no budget for the African Renaissance, so instead offered a prime chunk of state-owned land in exchange, which North Korea has since resold at a large profit, he says.
However, a panel near the base of the monument lists the official budget as $25 million, though foreign government officials estimate its cost at around $70 million. Mr. Wade says he plans to keep 34% of the profit from entrance fees and merchandise for a personal foundation.
The North Korean role is of less concern, though labor unions do lament that Mansudae got the job when an estimated 49% of the population is unemployed: 150 North Koreans are building the statue, helped by just 50 Senegalese. Mamadou Diouf, the head of the Confederation of Autonomous Unions of Senegal, says the project doesn't look African.
"If [building the statue] was a priority for our country, it could have been done by Senegalese workers in a manner much more in line with our values," he says.
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