Ignoring the People
KWITNY, JONARHAN
Ignoring the People FIRST AMERICAN AMBASSADOR TO GUINEA By John H. Morrow Rutgers University Press 219 pp. $9.00. Reviewed by JONATHAN KWITNY Former instructor, Western Boys High School....
...Toure is as dynamic and articulate as Morrow suggests...
...While the Soviet ambassador was sent to distribute $35 million worth of aid and credit, Morrow's main mission seems to have been to provide a pleasant facade for a policy of indecision...
...the house arrest of the American ambassador in 1966...
...But one must question Toure's devotion to his people in the light of events such as his 1966 offer of the co-presidency of Guinea to the deposed dictator of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah (who could not even speak French), without consulting the electorate...
...He blames the vengeful flight of French assistance and America's lack of commitment for Guinea's close association with the Communist bloc countries...
...Beyond this...
...That Guinea did not become a satellite state is due, he says, only to a combination of Russia's overconfident, dogmatic, condescending attitude and Toure's own watchfulness...
...The United States, on the other hand, did not want to offend de Gaulle and apparently was afraid to reject his forecasts of doom for those new countries that left the protective wing of their colonizers...
...Washington adopted—whether by design or by procrastination is not clear—a wait-and-see policy...
...Morrow, however, largely ignores Guinean village and street life, equating the national will of Guinea with the words and actions of its national politicians...
...Nowhere does Morrow condemn the Guinean leader for his wrongs, although he readily catalogues them: the repression of free speech: the questionable nature of the treason trials...
...Indeed, Toure is presented quite favorably as a man whose nationalistic motives were consistently misunderstood by the State Department...
...To the mortification of Charles de Gaulle, the West African coastal territory of Guinea voted instead for complete independence...
...Few will be interested in his lengthy recapitulations of insignificant conversations, or his computations of how many goose bumps climb his spine whenever a band strikes up The Star Spangled Banner...
...The most revealing point in the book is Morrow's belief that Washington intentionally kept him in the dark about its unwillingness to supply meaningful aid to Guinea during the period of his stay—July 1959 to March 1961...
...Probably nowhere in the world is the gulf between political leaders and their constituencies greater than it is in black Africa...
...Morrow responded with enthusiastic promises, but Washington subsequently dispatched one English teacher for that country of 2.5 million people...
...To preside over this waiting and seeing, the Eisenhower administration named John H. Morrow, then a North Carolina college professor and, by no coincidence we can be sure, a Negro, as the first American ambassador to Guinea...
...Morrow comes out strongly for channeling American aid through international organizations such as the World Bank...
...Every year brings new evidence of how misled were those who over-attended the words of Nkrumah or Azikiwe, ignoring the true conditions in Ghana and Nigeria...
...Significantly, Toure is today often mentioned in West Africa as a prime candidate for a similar coup...
...Chairman of the Foreign Language Department at Rutgers since 1964, Morrow has now published his diplomatic memoirs...
...Morrow's book is burdened with the trivial and the banal...
...Nigeria In September 1958, all but one of the French overseas territories voted to join the new French Community under the Constitution of the Fifth Republic...
...Thus he was led to string along the government in Conakry while officials at home cynically ignored his recommendations...
...When meaningful aid did become available, the International Cooperation Administration managed to mis-time the offer, and was so rigid about the terms of agreement that it offended the Guineans' passion for independence...
...The year before, the Soviet Union and China had both moved swiftly to establish their influence in post-colonial black Africa when Ghana became independent from Great Britain, and each hastened to incorporate the new Republic of Guinea into its plans...
...President Sekou Toure, for example, personally appealed to him for American help in making English the third language of Guinea...
...and the subsequent expulsion of the Peace Corps, "the one group that had so much to offer his country...
...Morrow writes: "The Guineans stood ready to forego Western aid rather than lose their jealously guarded self-respect and dignity...
Vol. 51 • February 1968 • No. 5
