As Senegal’s former president Abdoulaye Wade turns 100 on Friday, RFI looks back on the life of a man whose century has spanned opposition, imprisonment, triumph and everything in between.
Officially Abdoulaye Wade was born in Saint-Louis on 29 May 1926, the son of a wealthy merchant from Kébémer in the north of Senegal. His father had also been a tirailleur, a colonial rifleman who fought for the French army.
But historians remain divided on whether or not that was his true date of birth. The politician could be evasive when questioned about his exact age, leading some to suspect him of misrepresenting his years in order to prolong his career.
Pressed by French weekly magazine Jeune Afrique in 2014, he replied: “I’m 87. But let’s say I’m 90 – so what? I’m in good health. My father died at 101. He fought in the Great War. My grandmother lived to 121. Longevity runs in my family. But I’m a Muslim, and I know I could go at any moment.”
Political awakening
After studying at French colonial schools in Senegal, Wade won a scholarship to the prestigious Lycée Condorcet in Paris, where he got his baccalauréat in 1950. He went on to study mathematics, physics, law, economics and literature, earning degrees from the Sorbonne in Paris and other French universities.
In Besançon, where he trained as a lawyer, he began a relationship with fellow student Viviane Vert. They would go on to marry and have two children, Karim and Sindiély.
As a young lawyer, Wade became politically active. In Paris he joined the national bureau of the Federation of Black African Students in France, a training ground for future leaders including Alpha Condé, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, Bob Akitani and Laurent Gbagbo.
An anti-colonialist, Wade joined a collective defending members of Algeria's FLN independence movement in Paris. In Dakar, appointed as a defence lawyer for the courts of French West Africa in May 1958, two years before Senegal's independence, he quickly gained a reputation as a formidable courtroom orator.
In December 1962, the new republic faced a political crisis: President Léopold Senghor arrested Prime Minister Mamadou Dia and accused him of attempting a coup d’état. When Dia was tried for treason, Wade was one of his defence lawyers.
But despite Wade’s efforts, Dia received a life sentence in May 1963. Over half a century later, Wade told Jeune Afrique he had been “deeply unhappy” at his failure to prevent what he considered an “unjust and excessively harsh” conviction.
Manoeuvre in Mogadishu
By 1973, Senghor had ruled Senegal unchallenged for 11 years under the one-party system of the Senegalese Progressive Union (UPS).
Wade and four others drafted the “Manifesto of the 200”, a series of proposals for better governance that avoided criticising the government directly. When Senghor pardoned former prime minister Dia in March 1974, Wade saw his chance.
That June, as Senghor attended an Organisation of African Unity summit in Somalia, Wade secured an invitation to Mogadishu as an expert on monetary policy. Taking advantage of easier access to Senghor away from the presidential palace in Dakar, Wade – with the help of Moustapha Niasse, Senghor’s chief of staff, and future prime minister under Wade – managed to meet the president at his hotel.
Wade asked Senghor for permission to form a new party – not in opposition, but “of contribution”. Senghor agreed, and Wade founded the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS), which soon became a rallying point for young people frustrated by the lack of change.
In the February 1978 legislative elections, the PDS won 17 out of 100 seats, and Wade became a member of parliament. In the December 1978 presidential election, he ran against Senghor and secured nearly 18 percent of the vote. He lost, but a long journey had begun.
At a standstill
Senghor's protégé Abdou Diouf succeeded him as president in January 1981, and the UPS became the Socialist Party (PS). Wade ran against Diouf three times – in 1983, 1988 and 1993 – and lost each time.
Unrest simmered in Dakar after the 1993 election, and in February 1994, six police officers were burned alive when protesters set their vehicle alight. Wade was immediately arrested. Many assumed his political career was over.
After five months in prison and a hunger strike, he was released, but his party was losing momentum. “The opposition and the people demand change, but the government refuses to step aside, and we can’t remove them. We’re at a standstill,” he told Jeune Afrique in July 1994.
The charges were dismissed the following month and in March 1995, Wade stunned his supporters by joining Diouf’s new government as minister of state. He held the position for two years.
Triumphant return
After the May 1998 legislative elections, which brought another Socialist victory, Wade seemed defeated.
With his wife, he left his Dakar villa and retreated to Versailles, near Paris. After 25 years of setbacks and financial strain, he hinted that he might retire and make way for younger leaders.
Yet in Senegal, some loyalists still believed in Wade. Idrissa Seck, his deputy in the PDS, shuttled between Dakar and Versailles, presenting reasons for hope: firstly, Senegal had recently established a national election monitoring body that promised to guarantee transparency. Secondly, after 38 years of unbroken rule, the Socialist Party was crumbling.
Wade decided to return, and in October 1999 he was greeted in Dakar by a sea of supporters. The momentum shifted.
Three far-left figures – Abdoulaye Bathily, Amath Dansokho and Landing Savané, who together commanded nearly 10 percent of the electorate – rallied behind Wade’s candidacy, forming the Alternance 2000 coalition.
They overlooked that Wade was a conservative. For Wade's new allies, what mattered was toppling the “PS State” and bringing a breath of fresh air to Senegal.
An unthinkable victory
The 2000 election campaign was electric. As Wade addressed large crowds at “blue rallies”, named for the PDS’s emblematic colour, the rhetoric grew sharp. Speaking to RFI, he warned: “The only arbiter today is the army.”
In private, Wade even accepted the idea of a military takeover, on the grounds that “a transition in uniform is still a transition”.
On 27 February 2000, for the first time since independence in 1960, the ruling party’s candidate was forced into a run-off. Diouf led with 41 percent of the vote, but Wade was close behind with 31 percent.
The third-place candidate, Socialist dissident Moustapha Niasse – who had facilitated Wade’s meeting with Senghor in Mogadishu in 1974 – urged his supporters to back Wade in the second round. Wade eventually won with 58.5 percent to Diouf's 41.5 percent.
On the evening of 19 March, a massive rally spontaneously gathered outside Wade’s villa, where he announced his victory. The next day, after a long night of deliberation, Diouf called Wade to concede defeat and congratulate his successor.
The tide had turned. Wade had defied the odds, and become the first politician to achieve a democratic transfer of power in French-speaking Africa.
Uneasy transition
Tenacious in seizing power, Wade was even more determined to hold onto it. After 12 years in office, he ran again in the 2012 presidential election.
His main opponent was Macky Sall, one of his most loyal lieutenants, who had served as his prime minister from 2004 to 2007. The two men fell out when Sall opposed Wade’s apparent plan to hand power to his son, Karim Wade.
In 2011, Sall told the French daily Le Monde: “It was after his re-election in 2007 that Abdoulaye Wade ... began to lose touch with the people’s concerns – energy, flooding, agriculture. He pursued prestige and glory. Power elevates and isolates. The awakening could be brutal. Wade has always relied on a personality cult.”
Wade's re-election in the first round of the 2007 vote had already raised concerns. The day after the poll, one of his closest advisors told RFI: “Without fraud, there would have been a run-off.”
In 2012, officially 85 years old, Wade returned to the campaign trail, seeking a third term.
After the first round, with 34.8 percent of the vote, he faced a run-off against Sall, who was close behind with 26.5 percent, and had the support of three other major candidates.
In the end, Wade followed Diouf's example. On 25 March, as the second-round results came in, Wade called Sall to congratulate him on his decisive victory – 65.8 percent to his 34.2 percent.
A dynasty denied
It remains unclear why a man as shrewd as Wade gambled on engineering a succession for his son.
In June 2004, Wade entrusted Karim with organising a summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Dakar. In May 2009, two months after Karim lost municipal elections in Dakar, Wade appointed him to a super-ministry overseeing five portfolios.
In June 2011, Wade proposed changes to the constitution that that would have lowered the threshold to win in the first round and created the post of vice-president – for which he could then have nominated his son, placing him in line for succession. Massive street protests ultimately forced Wade to abandon the reforms.
In April 2013, Karim Wade was arrested for corruption. He was sentenced in 2015 to six years in prison.
Abdulaye Wade pulled out all the stops to free his son, enlisting the support of several heads of state, including Congo’s Denis Sassou Nguesso, Côte d'Ivoire’s Alassane Ouattara and Qatar’s Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani.
In an interview with RFI in June 2016, Sall announced: “Karim Wade’s release will certainly happen before the end of the year.” Three weeks later, Karim was pardoned and immediately flew to Qatar, where he still lives today.
Wade had won his final battle: his son’s freedom.
Today, at 100 years old, Wade remains intellectually sharp, according to Jeune Afrique, which visited him recently in Versailles. And no doubt the man sometimes known as the Old Lion is waiting to see which of his former adversaries, allies and successors will wish him a happy birthday.
This article was adapted from the original in French by RFI's Christophe Boisbouvier.
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