Lêkê: the Ivory Coast’s musical sandal
Throughout history, various objects have become symbols of popular culture, from the Mercedes emblem in the 1980s, popularised by the Beastie Boys, to flannel shirts following the grunge explosion. In parts of Africa, particularly the Côte d’Ivoire, another item has emerged as a symbol of youth rebellion and culture: the lêkê, a simple plastic sandal.
Every form of movement or cultural force tends to have its signifiers. In the Ivory Coast, these simple plastic sandals, resembling what Western consumers might call jelly shoes, have come to define the essence of zouglou culture—a type of African dance music symbolising an emergent new era for the country—and have also been adopted by people across society, from grassroots footballers to celebrity figures. However, their significance to zouglou is how it took root in society and remains ubiquitous today.
A national icon, the lêkê started life far away from the country that would embrace them, with its future as part of student marches and late-night zouglou parties still years off. It all began in 1946, in the rural Auvergne region of central France, with a man named Jean Dauphant, a cutler. He had ordered a new type of plastic called PVC to wrap his knife handles, but it proved useless. He did not want to waste the material, so he made plastic sandals, first called the ‘Sarraizienne’ or ‘plastic – Auvergne’.
As this was still the colonial era, it was through a French shopkeeper from Auvergne but based in Dakar, Senegal, that the plastic sandals would make their way into Western Africa. Yet, it wouldn’t be the colonisers who bought the shoes, but the wealthy locals who found that they suited the weather perfectly. By the late 1950s, they were the shoes of the Senegalian elites.
It wouldn’t take long before big business would come sniffing. The established shoe manufacturer Bata, who had managed to survive the war and push its brand further afield outside of Europe, started reproducing the design on a much more expansive scale, selling them to Africans. Reflecting the essence of the times and the new developments in advertising – as popularised in Mad Men – in 1957, Bata cleverly promoted the sandal using the immense pull of the pioneer of Congolese rumba, OK Jazz leader Franco Luambo. He performed the song, ‘Pas Un Pas Sans Bata’ (Not a Step without Bata), which was immensely popular.
Thanks to Bata and Luambo, the lêkê became the shoe of the lower middle class or petty bourgeoisie across Africa. However, as global capitalism started to encroach on the continent by the dawn of the 1980s, they stopped wearing lêkê for supposedly more fashionable shoes. Bata even ceased producing them because many local factories cropped up and supplied them even more cheaply.
During the 1980s, the lêkê’s symbolism shifted and became the shoe of the poor due to its local production, which made it more inexpensive and, therefore, accessible to the masses. Then, in the 1980s, when Ivorian zouk star Monique Séka wore a version of the plastic sandals with heels on stage, it became fashionable again.
When the emergent zouglou dance music was coalescing as a concerted movement during the mid-1990s, the lêkê, which was cheap, became a symbol of this new youthful movement and rebellion against dictatorial authority, tying them both together forever. By pure economic necessity, the genre’s stars, such as Hope 2000 and Magic System, made the sandal iconic, and the shoe had a cultural rebirth. It was the people’s footwear by the people and would soon take on a political nature.
As zouglou was the defining music of the time, when military dictator Robert Guéï barred other politicians from running in the 2000 election, the Ivorian people took to the streets and toppled him. During this resistance, the lêkê was everywhere. Then, after they installed historian turned-politician Laurent Gbagbo, the plastic sandal assumed greater significance than ever. Even Charles Blé Goudé, one of Gbagbo’s ministers, would later wear the lêkê to the International Criminal Court in the crimes against humanity trial that was eventually dismissed. Significantly, many zouglou artists who pioneered the genre and popularised the lêkê now live in exile due to their support for Gbagbo.
As with all cultural movements, things evolve and move on. In the 2000s, zouglou and the lêkê eventually lost currency thanks to other genres emerging, such as coupe-décalé, whose most prominent stars adopted bigger brands and different footwear. However, when one of the biggest-ever Ivorian stars, DJ Arafat, started wearing the lêkê, the masses welcomed it again, and a new manic demand commenced.
New variations of the shoe then emerged, with differently positioned buckles and new colour schemes introduced despite remaining at a remarkably low price. It has continued to be popular with the Ivorian people for various purposes, including its long-term companions, musicians, and even Gucci, who have caught on, producing their own incredibly overpriced version. Regardless of the Italian luxury brand trying to muscle in and its continued universal appeal, though, the lêkê will always be remembered by those who were there as the symbol of zouglou and a new era of the Côte d’Ivoire.
