Afro-Asia's Intellectuals-I Guinea and African Unity:
WALLERSTEIN, IMMANUEL
Afro-Asia's Intellectuals—I GUINEA AND AFRICAN UNITY By Immanuel Wallerstein This is the firs of a series of articles on the role and nature of the intellectuals in the emerging countries of...
...There was a general movement of intellectuals from all French Africa to offer their services...
...France tried to restrain some—in one case offering a Guinean the post of High Commissioner of another African territory—without notable success...
...later, after breaking with the French CGT, it evolved into the UGTAN, the General Union of Black African Workers...
...Everything that is political falls within its domain...
...This process of consolidation was to cause a certain hesitancy among some intellectuals...
...Conakry today is a haven not merely for many political refugees, but for intellectuals of various stripes...
...Guinea had almost no university graduates, and very few students at universities...
...In the day by day struggle in Guinea itself, therefore, the leadership of the party was not drawn from the ranks of these intellectuals...
...The party answered the letter of the students, stating: "The students must understand that if they wish to pass off the PDG as just another political organism, they are gravely mistaken and risk serious disillusionment should they, as Guineans, try to ignore a fact now universally admitted, that is...
...In 1945 Guinea produced bananas, palm oil, rice—and little else...
...To measure this achievement, and the role that Guinea's intellectuals have played in it, we must look back to the immediate postwar period which marked the beginning of Guinea's political development...
...but if they are in Conakry, all are African, pan-African, first...
...The French Government had withdrawn all its civil servants and almost all of its technicians...
...The difficulties posed by France in recognition of Guinea's independence reinforced these bonds of national unity...
...Several members of the cabinet, including Minister of Interior Keita Fodeba and President Toure's brother...
...It was this group which sponsored the two Congresses of Black Men of Culture...
...The reverse is true, however, when one remembers their common struggle for a united Africa...
...In such a case, the meeting will be organized by the JRDA itself and all expenses will be carried by the PDG...
...The shock and the elation of independence caused everyone—peasants and trade unionists, younger, radical intellectuals and older, more conservative civil servants—to rally round the party and its leader...
...To be sure, there were some intellectuals who sided with the PDG as well as some civil servants, often posted elsewhere in French Africa, whose agreement of the heart could seldom find open expression: and there was also the newer generation of intellectuals, the students in French universities, who were, however, far from Guinea...
...Guinea desperately needs the willing cooperation of its 100-odd university graduates and its 2,000-odd students now receiving a higher education in France, Eastern Europe and the U.S...
...There were almost no job opportunities in Guinea other than those offered by the colonial Government...
...Furthermore, intellectuals play a key role in advancing the cause of pan-African unity, central to the political thinking of the PDG...
...The truce between the RDA and the colonial Administration assured free elections in Guinea for the first time in 1956 and the PDG was finally able to come to power in Guinea...
...The students at first demurred, asserting the syndical character of the AEGF, and stated: "The AEGF, while planning to take positions on political questions, is nonetheless independent of any political party...
...These were the same students who had often privately and publicly criticized the PDG during the period 1956-58 for being too conciliatory toward the French Administration...
...The old party cadres are concentrated in the political posts...
...In the critical years of its struggle with the colonial power, the PDG was led by a group of men who, for the most part, had had only a primary-school education, and many who were active in the trade union movement...
...In 1946, at Bamako, the inter-territorial Rassemble-meat Democratique Africain (RDA) was formed, and the PDG became its Guinea affiliate...
...Consequently, any nationalist political activities on the part of these intellectuals could subject them to swift and meaningful reprisals by the French Administration...
...Intellectualism itself is not under attack, but it is important to demonstrate the depersonalization of the African intellectual, a depersonalization for which no one holds him responsible, for this was the price at which the colonial regime taught him the universal knowledge which allowed him to become an engineer, doctor, architect or accountant...
...In any case, the enthusiasm of this latter group, very radical in its terminology, waned in the period of the loi-cadre (1956-58), when they thought Sekou Toure was making too many compromises with the French Administration...
...Independence, then, led to a reconciliation between Guinea's political leaders and her intellectual cadres...
...But he added one qualifying remark: "But [the comrade] committed one small error in saying that judicial action is separated from the actions of the executive branch, from external action, and that consequently it is never permissible, even for political reasons, for a party worker to interfere with the action of a magistrate...
...The opposition movements, reduced to two groups, could win only four out of 60 seats to the Guinea Territorial Assemblv in the 1957 elections...
...These difficulties are sometimes reinforced by memories of pre-independence differences...
...Because Guinea is truly preoccupied with African unity, relations within Guinea should continue to remain reasonable, unless the drive for greater African unity receives severe setbacks in the near future...
...Such a meeting was held in the summer of 1959...
...The task of solidifying a nation, of building its economy, of pursuing its international objectives—what Toure has called the task of "reconversion"—was large enough, difficult enough, to absorb the energies of all persons disposed to work...
...The intellectuals tend to be concentrated, naturally enough, in governmental positions, making use of their technical qualifications...
...For example, in early 1959 the council of youth organizations dissolved itself to form a single youth group, the JRDA...
...The PDG had a different approach to Guinea politics than did the other parties at that time, as Toure made clear in a report to the PDG in January 1958...
...It was to fill this gap that intellectuals from Senegal and Dahomey, from Upper Volta and Niger, from Martinique and even from France, offered their help...
...The more he realizes the necessity of liberating himself intellectually from the complex of the colonized, the more he will rediscover our original virtues and the more he will serve the African cause...
...The JRDA called on the Guinea students' group, the Association des Etudiants Guineens en France (AEGF), likewise to dissolve itself and become the university section of the JRDA...
...THESE INITIAL differences could be seen not only in the debates over the structure of the party and its affiliated organizations, but also in the ways in which party primacy over administration would be carried out...
...Toure maintains close links with a number of intellectuals grouped around the journal...
...The Ballets Africains, whose original impresario was Fodeba, is an outstanding example of the reassertion of African culture...
...The RDA was the expression of nationalist feeling and, at the time, contained most of the representative parties in French Africa...
...Guinea, on the eve of its independence, was in great difficulty, especially in its school system, because of an acute lack of qualified personnel...
...Obviously, in the daily operations of a society with a dual structure, political and governmental, there arise differences of interpretation...
...As a result of the decisions of the Brazzaville Conference in 1944, Guinea—along with the rest of French Africa—was called upon to elect members to the two Constituent Assemblies of postwar France, and subsequently, until 1958, to France's parliamentary bodies...
...It was not that the Guineans could not have used their services, but they thought it morally and politically dangerous to deplete all the rest of French Africa...
...The relationship of the party and the intellectuals in Guinea is, therefore, a question that must be considered at two levels...
...Most of these parties were led by the intellectuals, sometimes in alliance with traditional chiefs...
...and the Soviet bloc, obtained external credits and investments, reorganized the administrative structure of Guinea and harnessed popular energies to a campaign of mass voluntary construction of roads, schools and bridges...
...It is by means of such decolonization that the African intellectual will bring to Africa worthwhile and precious assistance...
...It would be false to claim a dichotomy between intellectuals and political leaders in Guinea today...
...Toure himself combined the roles of Secretary General of the PDG and of the largest trade union federation (then the CGT...
...Some are Marxists, some Catholic...
...With the proclamation of independence, the two opposition groups dissolved themselves and their leaders joined the new cabinet...
...The "intellectuals" were those favored few who had had a secondary school education, either at Ecole William-Ponty (Dakar, Senegal), which trained French West Africa's elite, or at one of the few technical schools...
...In a speech closing the sessions, Toure singled out for praise one member who had had the political courage to discuss certain current problems...
...Many of them were members of the Parti Africain de I'Independ-ance (PAI), a small party of Marxist intellectuals with headquarters in Dakar...
...Less than two months after independence, on November 27, 1953, the PDG convened a national conference of its cadres, to discuss the role of the party in the new nation...
...This article on the intellectual community of Guinea was written by Immanuel Wallerstein, an assistant professor of sociology at Columbia University and a contributor to West Africa and Presence Africaine...
...If one considers the internal tensions in Guinea, one might see the possibility of a split between political cadres and intellectuals...
...The theme of the "complex of the colonized"—an illness to which intellectuals, reared in French culture, are particularly susceptible—is one to which Toure returns regularly in his speeches and his interviews...
...The RDA, he said, was different: "Unlike the ethnic groupings which underestimated the action of the masses and misunderstood that of women, the RDA refused to be the party of a minority of intellectuals...
...When de Gaulle made his circuit around Africa in August 1958 to win support for his Constitution, it was in Conakrv, addressing Sekou Toure in public, that he offered to consider as the avenue to independence a "no" vote in the forthcoming referendum...
...Perhaps the profession of the comrade —he is a magistrate—has prevailed over his political judgment, but in this question, we say to him, as we have said before, the political party is interested in everything without exception...
...But it was not only Guinea's intellectuals who rallied...
...Guinea proceeded to consolidate its various organizations into four national networks: the PDG, its women's section, its youth section, Jeunesse du Rassemblement Democratique Africain (JRDA), and a trade union federation, the Union des Syndicats de Travailleurs de Guinee (USTG), affiliated to UGTAN...
...Thus, the leadership of the PDG has never ceased to assert that 'youth for youth's sake does not exist...
...So many volunteered to come—including some of the most prominent—that the Guinea Government had to discourage many...
...The key to this task of reconversion, in the eyes of the PDG, was the party itself...
...The PDG decided to call for a "no" vote and 99 per cent of the people voted no...
...This is why the decolonization of the individual must be especially pushed in the case of those who have been trained by the colonial regime...
...Almost all the intellectuals found employment in the Administration as clerks, teachers and medical men...
...He has visited Africa twice and studied Africa's emerging nations while living in Ghana and the Ivory Coast for two years...
...We persist in believing that adherence to a political party is a question for each individual's conscience...
...His message highlights both the problem as seen by the party and its solution...
...FROM ALL OVER French Africa and France, Guinea's intellectuals rushed home, placing their services at the disposal of the new republic...
...During this period, many political parties were formed, mostly with a tribal-regional base...
...Yacine Diallo, the leader of one party and deputy from 1945 until his death in 1954, did attach himself to the Socialists in the French National Assembly, but his party can hardly be said to have been a socialist party...
...The party, and its leader, Sekou Toure, have coldly and soberly taken the country in hand, maintained friendly relations with the U.S...
...SINCE ITS independence, Guinea has been under the rule of a single, disciplined party, the Parti Democratique de Guinee (PDG...
...The only meeting which you will be permitted to hold during school vacation will be one whose object is to study the concrete ways of integrating your association into the JRDA, whose university section has jurisdiction over all those activities normally the concern of students' organizations...
...The loi-cadre adopted in 1956 granted limited autonomy to French African territories...
...Afro-Asia's Intellectuals—I GUINEA AND AFRICAN UNITY By Immanuel Wallerstein This is the firs of a series of articles on the role and nature of the intellectuals in the emerging countries of Africa and Asia which will include future reports on Burma, Malaya and Indonesia...
...The supremacy of the party, the priority of political over technical or procedural considerations, the existence of a disciplined, popular, pervasive machine, would make possible rapid political and economic advance...
...the complete identity between the PDG and the Guinean nation...
...The party is intent on reducing friction by reconverting intellectuals to a new social consciousness...
...Public Works Minister Ismael Toure, attended the university...
...Cattle were raised in the Fouta-Djalon plains...
...Presence Africaine, who are dedicated to a renaissance of Negro culture, and politically committed to the pan-African ideal...
...The iron and bauxite production, so important to Guinea's current economic development, were only postwar phenomena...
...Perhaps the clearest statement of this viewpoint is the one he sent to an international gathering of Negro intellectuals, the Congress of Black Men of Culture, in Rome in March 1959...
...Perhaps some wished to retain their links with the PAI even after the independence of Guinea...
...Speaking of the early fluctuations of Guinea's political life, he gave one of the principal reasons: "The political movement had as its social base only intellectuals, mostly civil servants, more preoccupied with advancing their personal position than with bringing substantial aid to the masses of the population, especially the peasants...
...None of these parties was aggressively nationalist...
Vol. 43 • May 1960 • No. 21
