Three Dikgosi Monument shows true �fake� colours
Thalefang Charles | Friday March 6, 2015 19:00
The Three-Dikgosi Monument in Central Business District (CBD) in Gaborone is embroiled in a fresh controversy.
Hardly 10 years since the unveiling of the P10.5 million project, the statues of the three chiefs, Khama III, Sebele I and Bathoen I are showing unusual peeling off and decaying, raising fears that they were made from substandard material.
Strong allegations made by professional sculptors and metallurgists who have spoken to Mmegi suggest that the Dikgosi sculptures may have been made from a cheap material and not real bronze as per the tender specifications.
The statues are also showing “odd” colours that professionals’ say is unusual for a genuine bronze material.
The Mansudae Overseas Projects from North Korea sculptured the Dikgosi statues. The company is part of the state owned Mansudae Arts Studio from Phyongchon District, Pyongyang, North Korea.
Mansudae controversially won the Dikgosi tender in 2003. The cost of the Project was P10.5 million, P7.5 million for the design, moulding and casting of the statues and P3 million for civil works.
At one point the controversy regarding the awarding of the tender reached the then Vice President office of Ian Khama as local sculptors cried foul.
Mmegi is in possession of a letter signed by the then Private Secretary to the President, Isaac Kgosi to K W M Oake of Game Studios who had lodged a complaint with the Office of the President on behalf of citizen sculptors.
The sculptors were protesting the decision to award the multi-million-pula tender to a foreign company. In the letter Kgosi dismissed the local artists as ‘bitter losers’.
“Citizen artists are without the requisite wherewithal to meet and satisfy the requirements of the project,” he wrote.
Ten years later the local artists, the so-called “bitter losers” are among the whistleblowers that are questioning the quality of the statues.
Masilonyana Radinoga, who was part of the losing bidders, told Mmegi that he has been suspicious from the onset at the way the North Korean company handled the project.
Radinoga is the sculptor of Kgosi Bathoen I statue in Kanye and his other works include Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula statue at Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula International Airport in Livingstone, Zambia. Both statues are cast in bronze.
Radinoga said there is something wrong with three Dikgosi statues. He said they have discovered that the statues have been painted on.
“You can’t paint bronze unless you are hiding something,” he said, arguing further that the statues’ sound character is not that of bronze.
According to Radinoga, bronze produces a high-pitched sound when struck with metal.
“Those statues on the other hand sound different. They don’t produce a high-pitched sound as it is expected from a bronze material,” he said.
He believed that the reason why the Korean company did not include a local partner in the project was part of the plan to cheat government.
He further claimed that authorities at National Museum were aware of the sub-standard quality of the sculptures and that was why they restricted people from touching the statues.
Radinoga told Mmegi that he suspected the Mansudae used the same cement-like material they used for the animal sculptures that are displayed at the Sir Seretse Khama International Airport in Gaborone.
SA Metallurgist says material is suspicious
A South African metallurgist Daniel Nell engaged by Mmegi was suspicious of the material used. After studying the images sent by Mmegi, Nell who is the founder and owner at Sculpture Factory based in Pretoria sent a brief report saying the colour is very odd.
He said, “They seem like well-made monumental bronzes, actually very beautiful sculpture. What I do however notice is that the colour is very odd.”
Although Nell admitted that his report is not conclusive because “…it is very hard to make a complete analysis from only photos”. But he noticed a number of suspicious elements on the statues.
Commenting on the Bathoen I statue Nell observed, “The colour on closer view looks even more odd as if painted on. What is further suspicious is around the collar.
“There are what appears to be paint peeling from over-exposure to the elements, or it may also be that the sculpture is bronze or another metal, but that this specific area may have a badly cast area that was patched with a non-metallic material such as fiber-glass or epoxy resin that now causes the paint to deteriorate. I would say that my best guess would be that it is a possibility that it is only paint peeling off.”
Nell also gave his opinion on the round patch on Khama III’s chin that appears like it has a hole in the centre.
“It looks as if the hole is a small casting imperfection caused by a piece of mould material that broke loose and got lodged in the bronze when cast.
“This created a hole in the metal. It’s for condensation or rainwater getting in from somewhere else. The core mould material that may have not been adequately removed is seeping out, which is a regular accordance on many bronze monuments and it’s nothing to be alarmed about.
“What is however alarming is once again the colour [of the statues] and that there is paint peeling off around this wet spot and hole,” he posited.
The metallurgist further commented that looking at the part of metal exposed underneath the paint, the colour appears to have a greenish tint, which is a good sign.
“When copper alloys such as bronzes oxidize, it will either discolour green, brown or black depending on the atmosphere where it is situated. Therefore it appears to be a copper alloy possibly bronze.”
On why there are marks of some substance leaking from the statues, Nell said it is normal for statues to have holes on them.
He said, “I would not at all be concerned about the few little holes and cracks and the slight bit of investment seeping out since there is hardly a bronze monument in existence that does not suffer this problem and in time such character of a bronze contributes to the overall aged aesthetic of the nature of such a monument.”
Nell’s concern however was the painting of the sculptures. He wrote, “painting a bronze sculpture is not a technique a purist sculptor would ever advise.
“It’s not suited to a monument and may be considered a shortcut that either is hastily done to save time or to hide something else such as the fact that sub-grade bronze was used.
“It can be a tactic of a dishonest foundry to save cost to improve profit by using a sub-grade alloy of bronze that cost them cheaper.”
It’s bronze, but we never verified it - National Museum
Mmegi talked to Stephen Mogotsi the deputy director at the Botswana National Museum, which takes care of national monuments in the country.
Mogotsi was the coordinator of the Three Dikgosi Monument project and part of the adjudication team comprising of officials from government departments like Architecture and Building Services, Lands, Town and Regional Planning, Culture, Tourism, as well as The House of Chiefs, Gaborone City Council, Botswana Society and University of Botswana.
Mogotsi revealed that the project was “in the region of P10million”.
He further disclosed that the committee did not have an expert metallurgist to advice on quality standard nor did they verify the authenticity of the bronze delivered by the Koreans. He said, “We trusted them because, Mansudae is a state-owned company and we did not expect them to cheat us. We were dealing with a reputable international company that has undertaken much bigger projects than this. And we also signed a binding agreement with the artists.” Asked to explain the peeling off, Mogotsi, who admitted this week that he has not observed the decay, said the Koreans might have applied some seal substance to protect the oxidation - a practice that experts said was strange.
Mogotsi however said their middleman and translator with the Korean company has since died and they have not contacted Mansudae in a long time saying he believed they still have an office in Namibia.
Mansudae built monument in disrepair in Namibia
In 2002 Mansudae Overseas Projects built The Heroes’ Acre - an official war memorial in Windhoek Namibia.
Reports from Namibia indicate that Mansudae was given a N$60 million contract to build the 2.96 km2 monument. The contract was awarded without any competitive tendering process, and eventually the construction cost doubled. The Namibian, a leading daily newspaper in Namibia reported in 2005 that, “already the eight-metre high bronze statue of a soldier in combat - and the plinth on which it stands - is in disrepair.” The report further said, “The broken lettering (words attached to the plinth) shows that, while it appears to be gold in colour, it is far from being made of metal.
“Instead, it was made of a cement-like substance, which had been painted gold and then glued to the plinth. Mansudae Overseas Projects is also building the new State House in the capital, at an estimated cost of some N$445 million. Once again, it was awarded that contract without an open tendering process.” For the last three weeks Mmegi has unsuccessfully tried tracing the company. Repeated efforts to locate the company even in North Korean and even Namibia where it was domiciled when it won the Three-Dikgosi Monument project have failed.
Despite controversies, the company has received praises in some quarters for producing one of the best sculptures in Africa at a cheaper or reasonable price.
The company has built cheap statues or monuments in Zimbabwe, DRC, Namibia, Ethiopia, Benin and many other countries in Africa and Asia.