This week's visit by Ségolène Royal to her native Senegal revealed more of the woman who may lead France, reports Lara Marlowe in Dakar
It was Ségolène Royal's second foray into the slums of this west African capital in as many days. The alleys of Thiaroye had flooded with the previous night's rain, so the glamorous French presidential candidate negotiated her way through nearly a kilometre of ankle-deep, rubbish-strewn mud, jostled by a horde of some 60 television cameramen, photographers and reporters. France is so fascinated by Royal that her personality and message are often obscured by the media frenzy.
Royal had changed her bright pink sandals for beige loafers in the car. (French journalists mocked her when she wore fancy shoes to a slum in Bogota last winter.) But the "Madonna of the opinion polls" was still an apparition, wearing a lemon-coloured chiffon skirt and flowered top trimmed with black lace. In humid, 32-degree heat, her entourage were drenched in sweat. Not Royal, who showed herself to be impervious to heat, dust, mud, mosquitos, noise, crowds, hunger or fatigue. One has the impression she would walk through hot coals, smiling, to reach the Élysée Palace.
IT WASN'T DIFFICULT to understand why the young men of Thiaroye, population 30,000, flee such poverty, paying €2,000 to traffickers in the hope of landing on the Canary Islands in a wooden boat. One hundred and ten young men from Thiaroye have drowned this year in the endeavour. At first, their mothers sold jewellery to help them. As the death toll mounted, the women formed an association to persuade their sons to stay.
Yayi Bayam Diouf burst into tears when Royal approached her in the muddy street outside the group's headquarters. "My son died in March," Diouf repeated as tears flowed down her cheeks. Royal, herself a mother of four, knew how to comfort the African woman. The two women leaned towards each other until their foreheads touched. Royal held Diouf's arms. "It is good, what you are doing for other people's children," she murmured. "We are thinking of him."
Inside the courtyard were dozens of women whose sons died at sea. "Some of them say to me, 'When I walk on the beach, I hear my son calling to me. I don't want to go to the beach anymore'," Diouf recounted. The local women's co-operative is trying to create jobs, to prevent their sons leaving. They asked for new fishing equipment, a refrigerated lorry and a mill for grinding millet.
"We will follow up," Royal promised, introducing the French embassy official responsible for development aid. "What you are doing is exemplary - proof that you can determine your fate, that there are always solutions," she added.
Polygamy, Diouf said, is the root of the problem. In this predominantly Muslim country, "Men have four wives. Each wife has nine children. So the women count on their sons to get a job in Europe." It was too politically incorrect a topic for Royal. When some on the French right claimed last November's race riots were related to polygamy, they were branded racists and the subject was dropped.
Senegal was the perfect place for Royal to expound her theories on a new approach to development and immigration. With little other than peanuts to sell, this country of 12 million ranks 177th out of 185 countries on the United Nations Development Programme's poverty scale. France spends €300 millioannually to keep the former colony afloat.
President Abdoulaye Wade has jailed a few opponents, but Senegal remains one of the more democratic African countries, with presidential elections scheduled for February. Senegalese footballers, artists and musicians are known in France. And Léopold Senghor, the country's founding father, was a member of the Académie française and a founder of "La Francophonie", the association of French-speaking countries that convened in Bucharest this week.
Last but not least, Royal was born in Ouakam, a suburb of Dakar where her father, a French army colonel, was based. The Senegalese greeted her as "sister" or "daughter". In a rare private moment this week, she returned, alone, to the house where she was born.
When Senghor died at Christmas 2001, neither the French president nor prime minister attended his funeral. Now every French visitor tries to repair the omission by visiting his grave.
The interior minister and right-wing presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy tried to upstage Royal by travelling to Dakar two days before her, signing an agreement that will enable France to repatriate illegal Senegalese immigrants. Sarkozy's wreath was removed from Bel Air cemetery before Royal arrived to place her bouquet on Tuesday. Nor did Sarkozy benefit from a prayer by the president of the chiefs of the villages Leonard Eklou: "You who are the song of humanity," Eklou said at Senghor's tomb, "your daughter Ségolène has come from France to salute you, so the spirit of our ancestors will protect her. In the name of the village chiefs, I ask you to support her."
Royal then visited the bronze statue of the Tirailleur Sénégalais. African infantrymen fought for France in two world wars, yet received only one quarter of the pensions paid to French veterans. After seeing the new film Indigènes, released in France this week, President Jacques Chirac promised to right the injustice.
"Unfortunately we had to wait for this very moving film for the issue to come up," Royal said, standing in front of the statue. "There was a certain hypocrisy in waiting for it to settle itself (through the deaths of the veterans); 70,000 Senegalese gave their lives (in the second World War); 80,000 veterans are waiting for their pensions." If for any reason Chirac's promise is not fulfilled, "I shall do it, if one day I am in a position of responsibility," she said. The phrase "when I am in a position of responsibility" crops up often in Royal's discourse.
Jean-Louis Bianco, the socialist president of the Alpes de Haute-Provence region - and, like Royal, a deputy in the National Assembly - has known Royal since she worked for him at the Élysée Palace during Francois Mitterrand's first term, 25 years ago. Bianco is one of the socialist "heavyweights" who has joined her campaign, and acted as her spokesman during the trip to Senegal.
Royal has always been characterised by "curiosity, an original approach to problems and extraordinary tenacity", Bianco says. But since she won the presidency of the Poitou-Charentes region, a stronghold of the right, in 2004, "she has taken on a whole new dimension. She is inhabited by incredible inner strength," he adds.
ROYAL AVOIDS TALKING about Sarkozy, whom she is likely to face in the run-off next May. His immigration accord with Senegal incorporated several of her ideas, she noted, including co-development, decentralised co-operation (where projects are financed directly by French regions), and multiple-entry visas so that Africans are not forced to stay in France rather than risk not being able to return.
Sarkozy's visit to Mali and Benin last May was marred by street protests; Royal was received in a cacophany of tam-tam drums and songs of praise. For Africans, Sarkozy's immigration policy is summed up by the charters he uses to deport illegal immigrants.
Royal annoyed the press by refusing to say how she would deal with illegal immigrants who are already in France. Throughout her journey, she repeated that economic development and immigration are inextricably linked, that "the immigration of poverty" will not cease until inequality between Europe and Africa lessens, that it is impossible to "surround Europe in barbed wire". An ecologist and feminist, she promoted a plan to manufacture solar hot-plates, to free women from the task of gathering cooking wood, and to slow deforestation.
Royal's personality was formed through opposition to her domineering artillery officer father, who considered his three daughters inferior to his five sons, just good enough to be given a Catholic education and be married off. Though Royal has lived with Francois Hollande, the head of the socialist party, for 25 years, they have never married. Beneath her intense femininity lies a will of steel, and absolute determination that women be treated as equals.
This week in Senegal, Royal proposed that half of all development aid be ear-marked for projects run by women. As Madjiguène Cissé, a Senegalese teacher who heads an organisation for the empowerment of women, commented in Royal's presence, "You know women aren't going to gamble the money away or use it to take a second husband."
RIVALS ON THE French left accuse Royal of a drift towards the right. She has created her own woolly ideology based on what she calls l'ordre juste ("just order") and la république du respect, in which every individual is treated with dignity.
To some, Royal's calls for discipline in French schools and hard work sound dangerously right-wing. Others suspect she's a doctrinaire socialist who would shrink from reforming France. In Dakar, she approved President Wade's proposals to confiscate the "super profits" of oil companies for investment in renewable sources of energy.
"Comrade Ségolène" received a rapturous welcome at a meeting of the Senegalese socialist party. The speech she delivered without notes might have been written by south American leftists Lula or Hugo Chavez.
"The world we share deserves better than this unbearable deepening of inequality between rich and poor countries," Royal said. "If the gap widens, all mankind is threatened." The socialist mission, she continued, must be "to struggle against this unbearable financialisation of the economy, against the ravages of liberalism that heighten inequality, exploit labour and accumulate profits where they are least needed."
Empty rhetoric? Perhaps. Unlike the straight-talking Sarkozy, Royal is often criticised for refusing to provide specific, ready-made answers to complex questions. "Her method is to elaborate her programme gradually, like a jig-saw puzzle," her spokesman Bianco explains.
In similiar fashion, the character of the woman who may soon lead France is slowly being revealed.
Royal reign: so far
Sept 22, 1953 Marie-Ségolène Royal is born on a French military base in Dakar, Senegal and has an unhappy childhood in the Vosges mountains of eastern France.
1980 After graduating from the École Nationale d'Administration (ENA), Royal and her partner Francois Hollande join Francois Mitterrand's election campaign.
1981 Mitterrand is elected president of France. Royal and Hollande become his aides.
1988 Royal is elected deputy for the Deux-Sèvres department.
1992-1993 Royal serves as environment minister.
1997-2001 Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin disappoints Royal by giving her junior ministerial portfolios. He disapproves of her high media profile and tendency to go it alone.
March 2004 Royal elected president of Poitou-Charentes region.
Autumn 2005 Royal emerges as a possible socialist presidential candidate.
This week An opinion poll in L'Express magazine shows 54 per cent of socialist sympathisers want Royal to be their presidential candidate. Jospin, her closest rival on the left, scores only 21 per cent and withdraws. Royal formally declared her candidacy last night.
November 2006 Socialist primary to designate the party's presidential candidate.
May 6, 2007 Second round of French presidential election.