It is a sea serpent that has reappeared at regular intervals for almost forty years. And the poet Amadou Lamine Sall, secretary general of the Gorée Foundation, was moved by this in recent days in an open letter to Senegalese President Macky Sall that was widely circulated on Senegalese websites and social networks.
“I made patience and self-sacrifice my mission companions. Large projects such as the Gorée memorial cannot be implemented without the prince's consent. We have lost this kind of validation of political power for almost twelve long, anxious years,” he writes.
personal business
The project is old. And Amadou Lamine Sall made it a personal matter. Since the 1980s, the idea of building a memorial dedicated to Gorée in Dakar, on the western edge of the Cap-Vert peninsula, has gradually taken hold. An island memorial enclave, at the same time a showcase for Senegal, located 3 km off the coast of Dakar, the island of Gorée – classified by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site since 1978 – has in fact become a sanctuary dedicated to the memory of slave exchange.
But today in Paris, where he is recovering, Amadou Lamine Sall is embittered. And he made a point of making this known by writing a column in which he criticized the Senegalese authorities, guilty, in his opinion, of having left this noble project dormant.
If Macky Sall, who came to power in March 2012, continues now, he is only the last of the Senegalese presidents who will have been associated with the endless gestation of this monument. It was, in fact, under the command of Léopold Sédar Senghor, in 1975, that the embryo of the project germinated, which should respond to a desire expressed throughout the world by artists and intellectuals. derivative continent and the diaspora, of which the Senegalese linguist and historian of civilizations Pathé Diagne was then a spokesperson. The poet-president then takes advantage of this idea and throws in the first fruits. The objective will be to “build a monument in honor of Africa”.
slave triangle
Abdou Diouf, who succeeded in 1981 as head of state, assumed responsibility. In 1986, he decided to realize his initial ambition, giving it more scope. The building should therefore include a cultural complex dedicated to human rights and dialogue between peoples.
“During the 1980s, the idea of symbolizing the slave trade triangle between Africa, the United States and the West Indies was imposed”, recalls Amadou Lamine Sall to JA. While Abdou Diouf is in power, a cosmopolitan architectural project was born between New York, Guadeloupe and Senegal.
Starting in 1989, the international community joined the dance. In turn, the UNESCO General Conference, the first Islamic Conference of Ministers of Culture and then the Francophonie Conference of Ministers of Culture expressed their enthusiasm and support for the memorial project.
However, it was only in 1997 that the designer chosen for its construction was appointed, following an international architectural competition. Chosen unanimously by the jury, the Italian Ottavio Di Blasi is responsible for giving substance to this complex whose ambitions never stop growing. From now on, the “International Center for the Memories of the World” must extend over a vast perimeter: 11,640 m² of external area and 4,600 m² of internal area.
There you will find, disorganized, a black garden, an African crafts market, a circular open-air terrace, a parking lot with 164 spaces, spaces for exhibitions and seminars, a library specializing in the history of slavery, a cultural store, a room projection...
embryonic project
But when Abdoulaye Wade succeeded Abdou Diouf as president of the Republic in 2000, the complex complex was still embryonic and only existed on paper. It will be confined there during the two terms of the Head of State, who will prefer to pay homage to the continent through the African Renaissance monument, a bronze statue that dominates Dakar from one of the Mamelles hills, and has also been transformed to the Americas.
After his election in 2012, Macky Sall took the project into his own hands and breathed new life into it. He gives new life to the Gorée Foundation and strives to mobilize the funds that would make the creation of the memorial possible. “He called me to say he was committed to making the construction of the memorial a reality,” said Amadou Lamine Sall. Let us have the courage to say things as they were imposed on us: a patron made himself known, the bearer of a new model of this project, with a financing offer worth around 13 million euros. It was when the singer Youssou Ndour was Minister of Culture [April to October 2012]. »
Part of the architectural work must, therefore, be built on land, to represent those who remained, and another in the ocean, to honor those who left... The project is as planned as its cost. Valued in 1997 at 40 billion CFA francs, it will later be revalued at 80 billion.
But, according to Amadou Lamine Sall, president Macky Sall rushed to seek international funding, claiming he would waste time on the site. As main contractor, it used a Turkish company that already had proven experience in Senegal in matter great works: Summa.
In August 2021, the Presidency of the Republic announced, via Tweet, that the projects will begin in early 2022. Hope is reborn... but it will last a long time.
The construction deadline is now December 2023, just weeks before the presidential elections in February 2024. Summa gives a guarantee to the head of state, says Amadou Lamine Sall, according to whom the company should work together with Apix, the Agency for o Promotion of Investments and Major Works.
An impasse then began between the presidency (voluntarist) and the Ministry of Finance (which is locked in by four irons for budgetary reasons), it continues. The decrees are linked, as are the promises, but the ball often bounces on the pool tables without ever reaching the hole. Summa, however, takes out a loan to meet his commitments.
On the western cornice of Dakar, between the western tip of West Africa and the American continent, a local has been waiting for several decades for a monument that supposedly symbolized the memory of the slave trade.
As a consolation prize, Italian sculptor Ottavio Di Blasi is nominated for creating a miniature replica of the memorial atop the island.
Until the day when, at the end of his patience, Amadou Lamine Sall picks up his pen to proclaim his impatience mixed with bitterness. “The legacy left by Macky Sall will have nothing cultural”, he irritates, without fear of distorting the balance of the outgoing head of state. Contacted by young Africa, Minister-Councillor El Hadj Hamidou Kassé, responsible for Arts and Culture, did not respond to our requests for clarification on the progress of the project.
project review
“It has been almost forty years since Ottavio Di Blasi won this competition”, summarizes the Senegalese architect Pierre Goudiaby Atepa, who then supported the initiative. Four decades later, however, he considers that “this project is very old” and that “it should be reviewed today”.
Amadou Lamine Sall indicates that, despite promises received from the Head of State and Apix that the project would be completed before the end of Macky Sall's second term, a state agency informed him of “serious problems” that perpetuate the curse that appears to pair about this project formed so long ago.
However, on September 7, the Collectif des amis du patrimoine responded, via an invited forum, that “this memorial project of Gorée [n'était] useless, given the eminent role played by the island of Gorée and the House of Slaves in collective and historical memory”. And remembering other work carried out in Senegal in recent years is more than enough to honor this memory.
“However, on the same corniche in Dakar, there is the Place du Souvenir-Africain, the monument of the African Renaissance, opened in 2010, which fulfills its national and pan-African program. The Museum of Black Civilizations opened its doors on December 1, 2018. The Théodore-Monod Museum of African Art has been in operation since before independence. The island of Gorée, classified as a World Heritage Site, is home to the mythical House of Slaves. Memory Island welcomes hundreds of thousands of citizens from around the world every year. In this reduced confines, dotted with infrastructures that remind us of our history, Gorée's memorial project loses its relevance and becomes obsolete, and should therefore be buried”, write the authors of this text.
However, Amadou Lamine Sall does not give in. “I'm just a little man who has been carrying out this project for over thirty years and who believes in it”, concludes the poet. And in my heart there is from now built. »
