Guinea

ON THE outskirts of Conakry there is a government storeyard where you can pick up some excellent French statuary at bargain prices these days. The statues are those of former French governors and other officials prominent in Guinea during the period of colonial rule, which has just ended. Until recently they graced the neat little squares which the French laid out in this capital city.

With the coming of African rule, however, the statues have been shrouded and carried quietly away to storage. Their empty bases await new, and presumably African, statues. Thus has revolution come to Guinea — quietly and peacefully via the ballot box, and not by force of arms.

The revolution began on September 28 last year, the date of General Charles de Gaulle’s referendum throughout metropolitan France and its overseas territories. Guinea was one of those overseas territories, along with seven others in West Africa: Senegal, Mauretania, Upper Volta, Niger, Sudan, Dahomey, and the Ivory Coast. Another four states in French Equatorial Africa — Gabon (home of the famed bush hospital of Dr. Albert Schweitzer), Middle Congo, Chad, and Ubangi-Shari — completed France’s vast empire in black Africa, stretching from Dakar at the westernmost tip of Africa in a great arc to the banks of the Congo River: an area nearly the size of the United States.

Millions of Africans in these territories chose their future in the referendum, and voted either to maintain the status quo as departments of France, or to become republics self-governing in internal affairs but with membership in the new French “Community” replacing the old French Union, or to sever their ties with France and become sovereign nations.

The third choice — complete independence — was a drastic one. Few of the French African territories were economically self-sufficient. Most enjoyed considerable aid from France and preferential treatment in matters of trade. Independence would mean the end of French aid, subsidies, and favored treatment as well as the departure of key French personnel.

The price of freedom

In Guinea the dynamic young African leader, Sekou Touré, had clashed sharply with General de Gaulle in Conakry during the general’s prereferendum tour of African territories. For a weekend before the referendum Touré secluded himself in deep thought. At the end of it he announced his decision: Guinea would vote for complete independence.

Following the pattern of African politics today, in which personalities rather than policies swing the vote, the 2.5 million people of Guinea gave their leader a resounding 95.4 per cent vote favoring immediate independence. As the results flowed in from far-flung corners of the French empire, it became clear that Guinea alone had plumped for independence and emerged as a sovereign nation.

French reaction was sharp and swift. Determined to make an example of Guinea and underline the disadvantages of secession from the French Community, Paris announced that all French personnel would leave just as soon as they could be flown out. All French equipment was to be removed, and French financial and other assistance would cease immediately.

Guinea had been plunged into seeming chaos overnight. Government departments were whittled down, some disappearing almost completely as French administrators took their leave. The Guineans today claim bitterly that the French took with them everything of value: stationery, furniture, all technical equipment and movable machinery, and even the telephones and electrical wiring. Initially there appeared some doubt whether France would even recognize the new state or permit it to remain within the franc zone.

The Communists move quickly

This was the situation which confronted Touré upon his accession to the presidency of this brandnew African nation. A tough and tireless African politician, he hurled himself into the task of restoring order and building a new administrative machine to replace that of the departing French. Reared in the hurly-burly world of African trade unionism, he gathered about him his supporters of the past. Thus unionists, the schoolteachers, and other men from humble ranks found themselves catapulted into ministerial jobs.

Swiftly the government sought out Guinea’s handful of university-educated Africans, brought back other Guineans from their studies overseas, and recruited wherever they could to fill the gaps left by the French. Some Frenchmen sympathetic to Touré stayed on as servants of the new African government. Among the new recruits there appear to be a number with strongly leftist, if not Communist, leanings.

In fact, one striking feature about the early months of independence in Guinea has been the speed with which the Communist world has attempted to exploit the situation for Communist ends. In contrast to a certain tardiness on the part of the West to come to Guinea’s aid, the Communists have been quick to recognize Guinea’s sovereignty and to bring in diplomatic, trade, and cultural missions.

While the United States and Britain both are currently maintaining two-man embassies in Conakry, each headed by a chargé d’affaires, a number of Communist countries have established well-manned missions, some of them headed by ambassadors and some of them including Russian-speaking officers.

The East Germans maintain a twelve-man trade mission in Conakry. The Czechoslovakians flew in an eighteen-man military mission headed by a full general. The mission arrived simultaneously with two shipments of Czechoslovakian arms, which included eight thousand rifles, several thousand pistols, machine guns, two armored cars, antitank weapons, field radio equipment, and numerous cases of hand grenades.

Meantime the Guineans have mortgaged an estimated 60 per cent of their agricultural exports to the Communist world by means of four barter and trade agreements with the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.

As final evidence of the high degree of Communist interest in Guinea at present there is the statement made by President Touré in an interview that certain Communist countries had offered to help build Guinea’s projected Konkouré Dam. This is a hydroelectric project, reputedly two thirds the size of the Egyptian Aswan Dam scheme, which might cost up to $300 million. The scheme is considered highly important by the Guinea government, for it is part and parcel of its plan for exploitation of Guinea’s vast bauxite reserves and for the overall industrialization of the country.

Whether such a Communist offer of assistance has, in fact, been made and whether the offer is as specific as Touré apparently believes are moot points. From all the evidence it does appear, however, that the Communists are expending considerable energy on the new state of Guinea and that they conceivably plan to make it their first beachhead in black Africa, an area in which they apparently have had little success to date.

How far to the left?

Perhaps Communist hopes have been raised too by the Marxist bent of Touré, who has visited Warsaw and Prague from time to time on union business. Touré maintains stoutly that he is not a Communist. He says Guinea’s new independence is too precious to be thrown away and replaced by enslavement to any other system, whether it be that of Moscow or not.

But at the same time he frankly admits he has studied Marxism, leans toward it, but has “Africanized" it and adapted it to the needs of his own continent. “We have,” he says, “adopted Marxism to the extent that it is valid for Africa. We formally reject the principle of the class struggle, but instead we have substituted the anticolonial struggle for the class struggle.” All hinges on the skill with which Touré can hold the Communists at arm’s length. For the moment he appears supremely confident of his ability to do this and desperately anxious that the world should understand Guinea’s neutrality and nonalignment with East or West.

Touré explains the high degree of cooperation between Guinea and Communist countries to date by saying that France left his country in a desperate plight, that it was compelled to accept aid from every quarter, and that the Communists have to date been more interested in helping Guinea than have the powers of the West.

“We would just as soon,” says Touré, “have accepted arms from the West. Western countries knew that the French had stripped our army, but they did not help us. The Czechoslovakians sent us these arms as a gift. We did not pay for them. Why should we not accept them?” The President ridicules the suggestion that arms mean instructors and technicians in their wake, and claims that Guinea is well aware of the prospect of subversion, whether it be from a Communist or any other source.

Although relations between France and Guinea are much more cordial now than a few months ago, and the two have exchanged diplomatic representatives and even signed some cultural and educational agreements, it is evident that the Communists have done their best to exploit the vacuum left in Guinea by France’s withdrawal.

West African federation

One other source to which Touré turned in his hour of need was Ghana. After a visit to Ghana’s Prime Minister, Kwame Nkrumah, the two African leaders announced that they had agreed to unite their two countries in a nucleus of a greater United States of West Africa, hoping to attract other West African countries in the course of time. This West African federation, or association of states, is dear to the heart of Dr. Nkrumah, and in return for his cooperation, Touré was able to go back to Conakry with the news that Ghana would lend Guinea $28 million to assist with development.

In fact the Guinea-Ghana union has not yet taken concrete form, and there appears to be some contradiction in the outlook toward it between Conakry and Accra, the Ghanaian capital. Touré apparently envisages a much looser form of association than Dr. Nkrumah, who, it has been suggested, would like to see a close-knit merger modeled on that of Egypt and Syria in the United Arab Republic.

If there is some contradiction between the two, however, there is no doubt that Touré is just as intensely interested in independence for Africans elsewhere on the continent, and in African unity, as is Dr. Nkrumah. But Touré is perhaps more interested in grouping about Guinea other African territories which arc currently in the French Community but which he would like to see follow Guinea’s lead in seeking sovereignty.

Certainly he is a ruthless politician who pursues his goal relentlessly. In Guinea itself his power is virtually absolute, and he has immobilized both tribal chiefs and political opposition. The legislature is a rubber stamp, and the real decisions are taken in the political bureau of party leaders which Touré heads.

Discussing new anticrime tion, extremely harsh judged by Western standards, he has said: “If the people’s interests were to require that one or two thousand persons should be killed, we would do it without hesitation in order to permit the masses to live in happiness, honor, and dignity.”Furthermore, he has hinted at forced labor and suggested that if all other alternatives fail, Guinea may build the Konkouré Dam with its own African labor patterned on Communist China’s notorious people’s communes.

Guinea’s industrial potential

Konkouré is the project around which all of the government’s hopes revolve. Already some companies and combines are exploiting Guinea’s bauxite. Notable among these is FRIA, an international consortium at work on a $150-million project. The American Olin Mathieson Chemical Corporation is contributing about 50 per cent of this, while other contributors are Pichiney Ugine (French), 26.5 per cent; British Aluminium Co. Ltd. (British), 10 per cent; Aluminium Industrie Aktiengesellschaft (Swiss), 10 per cent; and Vereinigte Aluminium Werke AG (German), 5 per cent.

With hydroelectric power from the projected Konkouré Dam, the Guineans envisage the establishment of a vast aluminum plant and the development of an industrialized society using cheap power from Konkouré.

Guinea also has extensive iron deposits, and thus its economic potential is considerable. For the moment, however, its economy is agricultural, and it will need extensive injections of foreign capital and technical know-how if this potential is to be realized.

Touré has made it clear that he is stalling on the Communist offer to aid with Konkouré and that he looks first to the Western world for help. He gives the impression that he is puzzled, and not a little hurt, by the relative absence of Western interest in Guinea to date, especially against a background of enthusiasm and intense activity by the Communists.

This, then, is the man with whom President Eisenhower must deal when the Guinea President makes his planned visit to Washington this month. And although Touré is the leader of only a small West African nation, his importance must not be underrated. Wooed by the Communists, he is a dynamic political figure whose influence is not contained within the borders of Guinea. His interest in the rest of French Africa remains keen, and Conakry might yet prove the pole of attraction for other French African republics which the new French Community cannot hold.