Robert Mugabe, we learn, is to be immortalised by Mansudae Art Studios of North Korea, those designers-by-appointment to dictators, autocrats and tinpot tyrants everywhere - but especially in Africa. After the Joshua Nkomo statue in Bulawayo, built by the same people who trained the troops responsible for the massacre of his followers, it's now the turn of the great man himself:
North Korea is set to earn US$5 million after producing two statues of Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe, Radio Free Asia reported on the 25th.
Citing a Zimbabwean news outlet, it was alleged North Korea’s Mansudae Art Studio was tasked with creating a 10 meter tall bronze statue in addition to a smaller likeness of the current leader in celebration of his 90th birthday.
The larger, $3.5 million statue will stand in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare, and the smaller, $1.5 million statue will be erected in a soon-to-be-completed memorial hall in Mugabe’s rural home of Zvimba.
North Korea is known to have constructed various buildings and monuments throughout Africa as part of the cash-strapped regime’s drive to bring in foreign currency.
Notably Senegal's kitsch extravaganza, the African Renaissance Monument.
It'll soon be hard to tell Harare from Pyongyang.
Maybe Putin will be putting in an order for a bronze of himself as the conquerer of Crimea. Or is he a bit more subtle than Mugabe?
Posted by: Bob-B | March 25, 2014 at 08:45 PM