Culled from Black planet.
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Leopold Sedar Senghor, an African statesman
and poet who led Senegal to independence in 1960 and
became the West
African nation`s first president, died at his home in
France on Thursday.
He was 95.
President Abdoulaye Wade announced the death in Senegal`s
capital,
Dakar. He did not give the cause of death. Senghor
reportedly suffered
from heart trouble and spent three days in a hospital last
week.
Senghor often said he wanted to be remembered as a poet
rather than a
statesman. But his mild, unassuming manner concealed an
iron will.
When he was elected president in 1960, he pledged to
govern honestly
and with justice, but added: ``A country cannot be
governed without
prison walls.`
On a continent where heads of state are frequently ousted
in military
coups or cling to power for life, Senghor resigned from
office voluntarily
in 1980.
He denounced what he saw as the arrogance displayed by
younger
leaders of some other African countries. Though his
impassioned African
nationalism emerged in his poetry and his politics, he
refused to reject
the European culture brought to Africa by colonial powers.
His poems were written in French and his native Serere
dialect. He
frequently advocated a ``cultural merger` and was a pillar
of the
Francophone movement to unite the world`s wholly or partly
French-speaking peoples.
``Poetry has lost a master,` French President Jacques
Chirac said
Thursday of Senghor. ``Senegal has lost a statesman,
Africa a visionary,
and France a friend.`
Some militant Africans regarded Senghor as a
neo-colonialist and a
puppet of France, the country that colonized Senegal. He
shrugged off
their attacks, pointing to Senegal`s stability, progress
and peace.
Opposition leader Moustapha Niasse, who headed Senghor`s
presidential
staff for nine years, described him as ``a man of great
spirit, a head of
state who had a vision.`
Niasse also praised Senghor`s success in peacefully
leading a country
where 90 percent of the inhabitants are Muslim. Senghor is
a Roman
Catholic.
Senghor was born in the coastal region of Joal, south of
Dakar, on Oct. 9,
1906. His father, a prosperous trader, was a Serere, one
of the smaller
groups in the tribal patchwork of Senegal. His roots,
without links to
major groups competing for power, helped Senghor keep the
peace after
French colonial rule ended.
He studied in a convent school in Senegal and won a
scholarship to the
Louis-Le-Grand college in Paris. A classmate and lifelong
friend, Georges
Pompidou, was to become president of France.
Another friend was Claude Cahour, the daughter of a French
country
doctor whom Senghor introduced to Pompidou. She became
Pompidou`s
wife.
Senghor`s studies centered on classical languages and
literature. He was
professor of French in several French cities from 1935 to
1948.
He took French citizenship during World War II and
volunteered to join
the French army. He was taken prisoner and spent 18 months
in a
German prison camp, but turned the time into a triumph,
writing some of
his most poignant poems.
Senghor tried to awaken African consciousness and dispel
feelings of
inferiority. He coined the word ``negritude` as a proud
slogan of African
cultural tradition, and conceived the first World Festival
of Negro Arts in
his capital, Dakar.
``Chants d`ombres` (Songs of Shadows), his first volume of
poetry, was
published in 1948. One poem describes his desire to ``rip
down all the
Banania posters from the walls of France.` Banania was a
breakfast drink
whose symbol was a laughing caricature of an African.
His poetry often displayed what he called ``this double
feeling of love
and hate` regarding the ``white` world. In one poem he
wrote:
``I will not emerge, oh Lord, from my reserve of hatred,
``For these diplomats who show their canine teeth and who
tomorrow will
trade black flesh.
``Yet my heart melts like snow on the roofs of Paris in
your gentle sun,
``It is sweet to my enemies, to my brothers whose hands
are white
without snow.`
While in France, Senghor became involved with the French
branch of the
Socialist International. On his return to Africa, he
formed his own
Senegalese Democratic Bloc, the start of his attempt to
create African
social democracy.
When the constitution of the French Fourth Republic was
approved after
the war, allowing for African representation in
parliament, Senghor was
elected deputy from Senegal. He served from 1946 until
1958.
Senegal achieved independence from France in April 1960,
and Senghor
was elected later that year without opposition as his
country`s first
president.
After crushing an attempted coup by his prime minister,
Mamadou Dia, in
1962, Senghor tolerated no overt challenge to his
otherwise moderate,
pro-Western policies.
Senghor spent much of the last several years of his life
at his second
home in the chilly northern French region of Normandy.
He held honorary doctorates for his contribution to
literature from Paris,
Oxford and a dozen other leading universities. In 1968, he
received the
West German Peace Prize for his ``lifelong dedication to
friendship and
peace among nations, races and religions.`
He divorced his first wife and later married a
Frenchwoman, Colette
Hubert. They had one son, Philippe.
Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced
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