Africa Without Glamor
BEICHMAN, ARNOLD
Africa Without Glamor THE NEW FACE OF AFRICA By John Hughes Longmans, Green. 296 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by ARNOLD BEICHMAN Press representative, ICFTU; contributor, New York...
...Today the whole Continent is a potential Sarajevo...
...He is no sentimentalist about the new Zion which Africa has become for so many Americans, nor is he an apologist for the autocracies which today flower in independent Africa...
...that his warning is directed—there is much to be done if Africa is to become more than a batch of proud mendicant states...
...I waved my U.S...
...But the glamor of independence for Africans is wearing off, and soon the glamor of Africa for Americans will begin to wear off...
...Read John Hughes' book and see why an independent but an increasingly pauperized Africa must be extended more than compassion, more than the Peace Corps, more than lectures about tribalism, more than White House receptions...
...Hughes says there is still hope...
...Wild animals were a five-mile drive from a civilized city like Nairobi...
...It was close and it is still close...
...I remember an incident in July 1960...
...It was delightful to travel in Africa and be called bwana and mwana instead of Mr...
...A few years ago, Ernest Hemingway could lyricize about Africa's green hills and use the snows of Kilimanjaro as a backdrop...
...A small riot was brewing on the streets of Leopoldville because a Belgian patrol had parked an armored car in the native quarter...
...The African revolution has been a miracle, says Hughes, despite Angola, the Congo and South Africa, because it has been a peaceful revolution...
...Their faces lit up, they shook my hand and laughed...
...The author, African correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, has been on a 15-year safari over the vast Continent...
...Surely it is time to undertake an Alliance for Progress for Africa...
...And if the Russians had then responded to Patrice Lumumba's radio plea for Soviet troops, those huge Air Force Globemasters, which during early July were ferrying refugees out and food supplies in, would have become troop transports...
...and Mrs...
...His is an objective report, yet where judgment and interpretation of facts are called for—as on South Africa, Ghana or Belgian behavior in the Congo—he speaks with icy candor...
...If after his next commuter ride to Africa, Williams would only bring back with him, say, 20,000 African young men and women to get an education...
...passport at them and shouted hopefully, "Je suis Américain...
...and if, say, we could persuade 20,000 Americans now unemployed because of automation and a generally sloppy economy to go to Africa's independent countries and do some useful work at a decent wage, then the Africa for which John Hughes has such hope might begin to believe that its independence is more than just a soul-satisfying slogan...
...Well...
...contributor, New York "Times," "Encounter," "Columbia Forum" This is another in the deluge of books about Africa south of the Sahara designed for popular consumption—but it is not just another book...
...However, he also warns—and it is primarily to the U.S...
...Hughes' grand tout stretches from Ghana to Nigeria and ex-French Africa, into the Congo and Central Africa, down to South Africa and up into East Africa...
...I echo his hope, but it will take more than Soapy Williams touring Africa as if it were the Michigan campaign trail...
...Several Congolese headed for me with an unpleasant look of determination on their faces...
...It has never been widely reported that when the USS Wasp cruised the waters off the Congo coast in July 1960, it was not only to take on refugees if necessary but also to scramble jet-fighters off its angled carrier-deck, at a word from the American Ambassador in Leopoldville...
...you could take movies and color shots right from the car of a pride of lions digesting the morning kill...
...Then one Congolese asked me: "Why doesn't America help us...
...Wherever he goes, he illumines the scene and the personalities with a pleasant intelligence that makes his book easy yet valuable reading...
...Until a decade ago, Africa hardly existed in the consciousness of Western man...
...And now look at it...
...John Hughes has looked at it— the green hills, Kilimanjaro, the wild beasts and a good deal more...
Vol. 45 • January 1962 • No. 2
