Report on French Africa
TAS, SAL
De Gaulle's visit spurs new nationalist toward greater autonomy Report on French Africa By Sal Tas DAKAR PREMIER Charles de Gaulle's tour of the two vast colonial federations of French West...
...French High Commissioners preside over each federation, and are represented in the constituent territories (Chad, Senegal, Sudan, etc...
...Thus, a student in Dakar may be a subscriber to Le Monde in Paris, while his father or uncle may still live, half-clad, in a primitive jungle...
...can that man say no...
...De Gaulle's visit spurs new nationalist toward greater autonomy Report on French Africa By Sal Tas DAKAR PREMIER Charles de Gaulle's tour of the two vast colonial federations of French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa produced a number of surprises...
...After a series of internal fights, they regrouped themselves in the UGTAN, the General Trade Union of Black Africans...
...Most economists agree that, for a long time to come, Europe will have to supply many goods and services to Africa...
...In the Sudan, for instance, the African party asked a retired French official to come back and serve as their Minister of Finance...
...THE ECONOMIC development of Africa, as a whole, is remarkable...
...There the Nationalist movement was created by Um Nyobe...
...Um Nyobe found a safe hiding place there among his own tribe, the Bassa...
...The capital that we used to invest in overseas colonies we can very well invest in France...
...Also, skilled labor will have to be brought over from Europe...
...The French Government provided much internal autonomy in Africa under last year's "framework law," conceived hy the Socialist Minister Gaston Defferre...
...Since then, there have been few strikes in Guinea...
...The network of schools and hospitals built by Catholic missionaries has also had great impact...
...After the framework law had been introduced, elections were held in the Cameroons, but Um Nyobe decided to boycott them...
...Marriage payments remain high, though, as the girls' families attempt to exploit the sexual distress of the city...
...But they are pressing for complete internal autonomy, with all departments in the hands of Africans...
...The result is widespread prostitution...
...Africans have no objection to the word "black," but they detest the word "Negro," which is associated with segregation in the U.S...
...Outside the two federations stands the Cameroons, a former League of Nations mandate and now United Nations Trust Territory, which has a High Commissioner of its own...
...The new Constitution continues in the same direction, and other steps will follow—as de Gaulle has already indicated...
...UGTAN leaders are still strongly influenced by Marxism-Leninism, but they are young, and they are in transition...
...Both these approaches would impose a heavy burden on the present generation...
...the RDA group in the French National Assembly once had a working agreement with the Communist deputies...
...They also want to replace the French Governor with an African Premier...
...And African Islam is not Arab Islam...
...For, Um Nyobe, though an educated person, is a typical sectarian whose writings form a veritable catalogue of what Lenin called the "infantile disorder" of left-wing Communism...
...Clearly, the African leaders will continue to perfect their autonomy and go on to achieve greater freedom...
...Street fights broke out in the key port city of Douala...
...At the same time, on all important political issues, they side with our enemies...
...This promise implied a threat to cut off French economic aid, and de Gaulle was soon besieged by African leaders at Brazzaville and Dakar who demanded neither "integration" nor "secession," but the right to achieve independence within the new Community...
...People become more politically conscious and more radical as one moves from East to West Africa, from the interior to the Atlantic Coast...
...Many nationalist leaders, even today, consult their private sorcerers...
...And, at a luncheon given by the Premier of the Chad, I heard French and African ministers discuss political and administrative problems of the territory with a heartening cordiality and frankness...
...Police beat down the revolt, but the remnants of the UPC escaped to Sanaga Maritime, a poor, inaccessible jungle region...
...There is still a great distrust of them...
...We will never accept the leadership of the fanatics in Cairo...
...Political parties in Senegal, for instance, are more radical than those in the Middle Congo...
...A SPECIAL DANGER has developed in the Cameroons...
...Communist influence is strongest among students who have gone to Paris, where the African quarter of the Cite Universitaire is a hotbed...
...Most of the African industries are brand new and do not fear European competition, though some of them have been heavily protected until now...
...Since World War II, the French have made a tremendous effort through a special fund (the so-called FIDES) to build roads and develop port facilities...
...Under the impact of the conflict between the RDA and the Communists, the unions also began to disengage themselves...
...By simply holding out, Um Nyobe became a legend...
...He is a very good and strict man," the African Vice-Premier told me, and added admiringly: "My God...
...This left the French administration no choice but to outlaw the party...
...It is more accessible...
...A man pays a price for a woman, since he gains a worker while her tribe loses one...
...They declare that many white intellectuals consult astrologers or their priests, and ask: "What is the difference...
...They can also try it through Communism, through a totalitarian regime that would build up heavy industry at the expense of the farmer and consumer...
...And thus she is not an economic asset, but a charge to her husband...
...by Governors...
...In the towns, however, the woman often does not find work...
...When this modern religion replaces the animism of the stone age, it is much easier to teach basic principles of hygiene and technology...
...But this could only be done if the safety of the invested capital is guaranteed...
...African leaders, in general, are very sensible about this...
...Islam is neither regional nor racial...
...The Government has offered an amnesty to all those in the UPC who have not committed crimes, hoping to draw healthier elements away from Um Nyobe...
...Territorial assemblies were elected, and these in turn chose territorial governments...
...In a series of articles, Cartier argued in effect: "All the old colonial countries ask us to invest in their economies...
...New, walled-in villages were built, while the UPC went on raiding isolated settlements and killing people...
...Many villages in the Sanaga Maritime jungles had to be evacuated...
...For their part, African Moslems have not forgotten that the slave trade in Africa was started by the Arabs of the North...
...As one African Minister said to me: "Europe has capital, but it lacks the opportunity to invest its excess capital...
...Important electric plants, using the enormous reservoirs of African waterpower, have been constructed...
...Political leaders in Yaounde, the capital of the Cameroons, fear Um Nyobe's legend more than his party...
...In many youth meeting houses, I found posters announcing lectures by delegates who had come back from the World Youth Festival in Moscow...
...Much damage was done, and a child died in the blaze...
...Though large portions of Africa have barely emerged from the stone age, France used many young Africans as soldiers in World War II...
...Many students, radical in Paris, become quite moderate once they are swallowed up again in African society...
...Between 1948 and 1952, the UPC organized violent demonstrations against the French and in 1955 it proclaimed the Cameroons' independence...
...The framework law was a big step forward...
...An atmosphere of trust exists between the French and the Africans, which is so sadly lacking in Algeria...
...So the fight went on...
...His party, the UPC, formed a section of the federal RDA, headed by Felix Houphouet-Boigny, who is now a Minister of State under de Gaulle...
...Seeking support of his new Constitution in the referendum scheduled for September 28, General de Gaulle told the Africans that a negative vote would mean "secession" from what will now be called the French Community...
...These young intellectuals have even formed their own party, the PAI (Party of African Independence), which demonstrated so vehemently before de Gaulle in Dakar...
...How primitive are the African ideas of unionism may be illustrated by the following story: One afternoon, while I was discussing a tragic-comic strike in a hospital—all the African doctors and their assistants had walked out, leaving the working-class patients to suffer—a phone call announced that a fire was spreading in the African quarter...
...When Sekou Toure, the most radical UGTAN leader, was appointed a minister in Guinea, he immediately warned the trade unions to collaborate with the administration...
...For example, in the villages polygamy is a form of social power—the more women you have, the more work you get done...
...Thus, the fight against the UPC is now the fight of an autonomous African Government...
...it is a pan-human religion...
...And in the trade unions, which have lost almost all their effective leaders to the administration, the second-rank officials seem incapable of coping with the situation...
...This overconfidence on the part of some African leaders got a rude jolt from what is now called "Cartierism," after a well-known editor of the magazine Paris-Match...
...The RDA (African Democratic Rally), the largest and oldest national party, collaborated with the Communists for a long time...
...The third way is industrialization with the help of Western capital which could be paid back over an extended period of time...
...They came home to their villages with exciting tales of the modern world...
...As African industrialization develops, imports will also have to increase, since the climate limits the extent of processing industries...
...The influences of animistic mysticism must make the African variety appear quite impure to the learned Moslems of Cairo...
...But the change from a radical leader to an authoritative minister is not always beneficial...
...Cartier's series had a sobering effect on African leaders...
...and South Africa...
...But the Cameroons Government, under the leadership of the violently anti-Communist Mbida, demanded complete surrender...
...But the firemen refused to intervene: They, too, were on strike...
...We Africans can offer them that opportunity, and therefore we can lay down our conditions...
...But Islam, too, is a great step forward from animism...
...After that, the African can simply put on his white robe and he is considered a Moslem...
...While the French spent only 42 million francs in Africa between 1903 and 1917, for instance, they have already invested 430 million since 1946...
...In Sanaga Maritime, two candidates for the Cameroons Parliament were assassinated...
...Meanwhile, Islam is spreading even more quickly in Africa than Christianity...
...But when Houphouet-Boigny broke away from the Communists, Um Nyobe remained...
...In normal political life, his lack of realism and tactical sense would surely defeat him...
...The event created a tremendous shock in Dakar...
...And the French Government since the war has made a large-scale effort to introduce social and technical innovations...
...The Africans learned their lesson...
...We are Pan-Islamists," one African religious leader told me, "but we are not Pan-Arabs...
...The only solution is the creation of modern community organizations—trade unions, youth clubs and the like—which might eventually produce a new social ethos...
...Communist influence radiates from the Cite Universitaire into the student movements in Dakar and other centers of African intellectual life...
...The trade unions in Africa had been built up with the help of the French Communist CGT...
...The French Governor acts as Premier of the territorial Cabinet, but the Vice Premier is chosen from the territorial assembly...
...They can try to do it on their own, by acquiring needed capital through exports, and limiting imports of consumer goods...
...The African political parties accept this as a starting point...
...They have lost the tribal ties of their village, but they have not yet established new social traditions...
...Large groups of Africans are leaving the jungle and attempting a new life in the towns...
...Beyond schools and medical care, their great contribution is the conversion of large numbers of Africans to Christianity...
...In many cities, the young people accuse the older generation of compromise and surrender...
...A major project on the Kouilou river is under way and electricity will become so cheap that it will be profitable to manufacture aluminum there out of bauxite transported from France...
...A large measure of internal autonomy has already been granted to the Africans, and more seems inevitable...
...The young African who is sent there to live and study is immediately surrounded—and influenced—by people of his own background and age who have already been converted to Communism...
...African ministers receive Cabinet posts, but all inter-territorial questions (police, post, customs, army) are handled by Frenchmen on the Governor's staff...
...Christian, animist and Moslem religious leaders protested violently, and the UGTAN had to reconsider its position...
...But the large majority do not want to separate themselves from France, and still less from Europe...
...Meanwhile, intelligent African politicians in Yaounde have launched an all-out effort to improve the economic situation in the Sanaga Maritime...
...Despite the terror, the masses went to the polls and the UPC lost much prestige...
...Communist influence is apparent among the young urban intellectuals...
...But the PAI has a limited influence, even though it is steadily fed by students returning from Paris...
...Why should we invest in them...
...The impact of missionary work, therefore, is significant...
...Several radical leaders, when entrusted with Government responsibilities under the framework law, turned into strong-handed public servants...
...Though the UGTAN was forced to leave the Communist World Federation of Trade Unions, it has refused to join the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions...
...Nevertheless, French-African cooperation under the framework law has thus far been good...
...Much has also been done to improve agriculture, cattle-breeding and forestry, as well as to build schools and hospitals...
...In French Africa, at least, the West appears to be engaged in a peaceful battle it is going to win...
...The Africans face three choices in development...
...The unions, nevertheless, remained vulnerable to extremist propaganda...
...Animism, however, remains a strong force, which a rising nationalism has tended to favor—as the religion of the black people against the Christian creed of white colonists...
...But this cooperation suddenly ended when the RDA leaders, involved in a hitter fight with the French administration, were left high and dry by the CP at a critical moment...
...But, unfortunately, as long as the fight against the UPC guerrillas continues, there is no normal political life in the Cameroons...
...FRANCE'S African territories have been combined into two great federations: the West African and Equatorial African...
...A mining industry has been created to exploit the rich deposits of phosphorus, iron and other valuable minerals...
...At this point, many observers believe, Um Nyobe should have been given an amnesty and thus forced to play a more democratic game...
...The African leaders seem eager for economic cooperation with Europe...
...When other parties started campaigning, he resorted to terrorism...
...The problem of migration into the cities is grave in many other respects...
...Yet, in the eyes of many nationalist leaders, what the West regards as a humane form of cooperation has taken on the aspect of a Western obligation...
...The Christian missions are more exacting...
...All it takes to become a Moslem is the knowledge of a few Arabic formulas, an expression of belief in one God, and the acceptance of the Ramadan fast...
...A small but vigorous African elite has been created...
Vol. 41 • October 1958 • No. 32
