The former South Africa’s president and
Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Nelson Mandela, passed away yesterday at the age of
95. As British PM David Cameron said, “A great light had gone out”, the world is
mourning his death. It seems a pity that not only South Africa and around the
world lost a symbol of peace, humility, and forgiveness, but also it reflects
the hopes of the African renaissance, to whose attainment Mandela dedicated his
whole life, have faded. I mean, despite tremendous amount of foreign aids
toward the continent for nearly half of a century, Africa’s fortunes have been
improved? From what I’ve learned from our class so far, it is still difficult
to say “yes” to the question.
There’s a slightly different story of
another Africa leader at the western tip of Africa in Dakar, Senegal. Have you
guys ever heard of “The African Renaissance” statue? Surprisingly, it is Africa’s
tallest statue with a gigantic 52-meter high bronze Stalinist-style monument,
even bigger than the Statue of Liberty[1] in New York and Christ the
Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. In April 2010, then president Abdoulaye Wade
unveiled this mammoth, celebrating Senegal’s 50 years of independence from
France. The statue is supposed to represent the vigor of the African continent
as it breaks the chains of colonialism. Most critics, however, call it the work
of power-drunk president, with some rumors suggesting its male face was crafted
to resemble Mr. Wade. Unfortunately, the monument continues to drain money from
the national budget today, with only a handful of daily visitors. More
troublingly, Mr. Wade allegedly announced that he would collect 35% of the
revenue generated by the monument as a royalty for designing it.
With 54% of his countrymen living below
poverty level, Mr. Wade has chosen to build the monument despite wide criticism
as a huge waste of money. The estimated costs range from $28 to $70 million,
which is paid for Mansudae Overseas, a company from North Korea. Yes, the
company’s primary task has been to churn out propaganda paintings, posters,
billboards, and Soviet-style monuments to praise the Kim family dynasty (you
can see more about this from Businessweek article[2]). But the
amount was estimated a proportion of 0.2% of its national income, so if same
thing happened in richer country, the total cost would have skyrocketed. Sadly,
the statue symbolizes how little has changed in the last decades and
corruption, nepotism, mismanagement, and decay still abound in the ‘motherland’.
It is no wonder that world opinion to pour
resources into Africa has changed. In the G8’s 2006 Gleneagles Summit, world
leaders promised for more aid, but it turned out the trend is downward in the
very next year’s Heiligendam Summit.[3] One of aid critics from
Africa, Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo, also known as best-selling book author
of “Dead Aid”, claim that most aid to
Africa should be stopped because it feeds dependency and corruption, actually
hurting the continent.[4] In the 1980s, many celebrities paid
attention, for example, Live Aid concert and popular song “We are the world” by
USA for Africa. But aid to Africa is no longer chic, except Bono.
Surely the direct blame lies with corrupt
leaders. Unfortunately, however, corrupt regimes were at the heart of the
continent’s postcolonial problems and without any reformation the true African
renaissance will never come. Mandela criticized bad governance in Africa at the
Organization of African Unity in 1994: “we
… must face the matter squarely that where there is something wrong in the
manner in which we govern ourselves, it must be said that the fault is not in
our starts, but in ourselves that we are ill-governed.[5]” Rest
in Peace
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