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| President Obama met with President Macky Sall of Senegal at the presidential palace in Dakar on Thursday. |
DAKAR, Senegal — President Obama plunged into a visit to Africa on
Thursday likely to highlight the continent’s strivings for democracy and
well-being, but the trip is expected to be overshadowed by the fate of
Nelson Mandela in South Africa.
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 Mr. Mandela, South Africa’s
94-year-old former president whose condition is officially described as
“critical” almost three weeks after he was hospitalized with a lung
infection.
Speaking in Dakar on Thursday, President Obama called Mr. Mandela a
“hero for the world,” news reports said as concern persisted in South
Africa about his well-being. After meeting government leaders here, Mr.
Obama is set to to travel to South Africa on Friday on the second stage
of his three-nation foray to the continent.
Late Wednesday, even as Mr. Obama arrived here 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.
But President Zuma said in a statement on Thursday that, while Mr.
Mandela was still critically ill, he had improved overnight and his
condition was now stable.
President Obama’s journey to Africa will 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.
Addressing reporters on Thursday at Senegal’s downtown presidential
palace, Mr. Obama thanked the crowds that had earlier greeted his
motorcade and praised Senegal for having “one of the most stable
democracies in Africa.”
Questioned about African discrimination against gays, in the wake of
Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision — gays are seen as persecuted in
Senegal as elsewhere on the continent — Mr. Obama responded that states
should practice equal treatment for all.
A day earlier, on the back streets of this bustling West African city,
the enthusiasm for Mr. Obama's visit was more muted. There were 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 were 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 will not 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 could not 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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