Obama Begins Africa Tour in Senegal
Mr. Obama’s main purpose in Senegal is seen as highlighting Senegal’s democratic culture.
Arriving in Senegal on Wednesday night, President Obama kicked off a weeklong trip to Africa. Ari filed this report from Dakar: "The streets here in Dakar are full of posters proclaiming, 'Welcome Obama.'" They show the U.S. president next to Senegal's recently elected president, Macky Sall. The posters almost make it look like the two are running mates in a campaign. "The images are plastered on walls, trees, fences, even statues. President Obama's visit here provides credibility to the Senegalese government. NPR's Ari Shapiro, who is traveling with the president, will keep us up to date on the president's visit. |
| President Obama reviews an honor guard on Wednesday outside the presidential palace before meetings in Dakar. |
The twin narratives — highlighting the achievements of one nation’s democratic culture in Senegal even as South Africa frets over the looming post-Mandela era — have set the bookmarks for a voyage planned for months but overtaken by the health of South Africa’s former president, whose condition is officially described as “critical” almost three weeks after he was hospitalized with a lung infection.
Late Wednesday, even as Mr. Obama arrived there from Washington, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa announced that he was canceling a one-day trip to neighboring Mozambique because of Mr. Mandela’s condition. Mr. Obama is to fly to South Africa on Friday after meeting with government leaders here. News reports on Thursday quoted a South African government spokesman as saying Mr. Mandela’s condition had “gone down” in the past 48 hours.
President Obama’s journey will also reach back into earlier times when Africa struggled against slavery and white domination, represented in planned visits to the island shrines of Gorée Island near Dakar, considered by some a symbol of the slave trade, and Robben Island off Cape Town, South Africa, where Mr. Mandela, along with other political prisoners, spent much of a 27-year imprisonment that ended in 1990.
Some of Africa’s modern reality, though, has been obscured. In advance of the president’s visit, beggars, hawkers, crazily-parked cars and paraplegics have been cleared from Dakar’s main avenue, replaced by small American flags fluttering from light poles and police patrols along the Atlantic Ocean.
Mr. Obama’s main purpose in Senegal is seen as highlighting Senegal’s democratic culture: There has never been a coup d'état here, and last year an incumbent was turned out by voters. Dakar’s newspapers have been grumbling for days about the security headaches brought on by the president’s visit — a matter of pride for government officials but something else for citizens bearing the brunt of closed main avenues and impromptu roundups by the local police.
The visit will thus offer a partly sanitized vision of this chaotic African metropolis.
“Obama is stifling us,” La Tribune reported on its front page Wednesday. “The Americans are imposing extreme measures,” Le Pop complained. “Dakar, under the hammer,” said L’As. “The Americans take over Senegal,” said L’Observateur.
On the back streets of this bustling West African city, the aggravation, and the enthusiasm, was more muted. There are no American flags, and the posters of Mr. Obama and Macky Sall, the Senegalese president, that were hastily plastered by the government along the oceanfront are nowhere to be seen. Four years ago newly painted “Obama” barbershops and corner markets were common, here and all over West Africa; today they are far harder to find.
Some on Dakar’s streets shared in the official pride, but others doubted that the American they won’t see will make a dent in their daily worries. “The Senegalese are fed up, and we are hungry,” said Fatoumata Ndiaye, a housewife, standing with her empty shopping bucket outside a busy open-air fish stall in the Ouakam district. She couldn’t afford the fresh fish — albeit covered in flies — that she coveted, but instead would have to settle for the pungent dried version.
“We are asking him to help us,” Mrs. Ndiaye said, commenting on the visit of the president. “There’s no work here.” A pepper vendor, Samba Top, who said he was on his feet 12 hours a day and made $1.25 on a good day, walked up: “He’s got to help us, and quick,” said the 27-year-old father of four, carrying his load of little pepper sacks.
Still others warned that it made no sense to wait for a helping hand from the Americans. “I’m not expecting much from him. The Americans elected him to develop America, not Senegal,” Amadou Diallo, a building contractor, said outside an open-air pots and pans stand as a young man studied the Koran inside.
But pride — a recognition of this African nation’s special status as an unfaltering democracy since independence — was close to the surface on Dakar’s streets. Over two years, in 2011 and 2012, the citizens rejected, through street protests and then the ballot box, an elderly president who refused to recognize his constitutional mandate was at an end. Now the son of that former president, Abdoulaye Wade, has been jailed on corruption charges by Mr. Sall’s government.
“The government has been saying, he’ll give us this, he’ll give us that,” Mr. Diallo said. “But we are not going to be beggars in front of Obama.”
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