Trouble in Erewhon

"An African statesman," allows Guinea's President Sekou Toure, "is not a naked boy begging from rich capitalists." On the contrary, many of his country's well-dressed officials own sumptuous villas and cars, favor French food, American cigarettes and Scotch whisky (at $18 a bottle). Conakry, Guinea's sweltering capital, has plans for two new luxury hotels--one to be built by the U.S., the other by the Russians. But 'Guinea (pop. 3,300,000), once one of French West Africa's richest countries, after five years of independence has become one of the poorest. This week, a mission headed by Economic Development Minister Ismael Toure, Sekou's halfbrother, is due in Washington, expected to plead with the Administration to double the $15 million in aid that the U.S. has funneled into Guinea this year.

Sears, with Credit. Despite diversified agriculture and abundant natural resources (notably, bauxite, iron, diamonds), Strongman Toure's blend of xenophobia and socialism saddled the country with severe food shortages, inflation and gaping trade deficits. The trouble, as one Western visitor puts it, is that Guinea's government has long viewed foreign aid as "one big Sears, Roebuck store, with unlimited credit."

Alone among France's black African territories, Guinea chose total independence rather than Charles de Gaulle's offer of continued "association." When French aid was cut off, Toure turned instinctively to the Soviet bloc, whose economic embrace rapidly made Guinea a kind of cold-war Erewhon. In re turn for its prized pineapples, bananas and other produce, Moscow sent tropical Guinea overpriced, superannuated snowplows, prefabricated housing units that its workmen cannot assemble, and a plant to produce shaved ice, which melts instantly in Conakry's savage heat.

As elsewhere, the Communists concentrated on showy prestige projects, such as a sports stadium (still unfinished after three years), a vast brick factory, a printing plant capable of producing 40,000 newspapers an hour, though at most one in ten Guineans can read. Experts discovered that a Russian-built radio station, designed to beam the Voice of Toure the length of Africa, had been sited on an iron lode that badly interferes with transmission.

Miffed Mammies. Toure learned to fear Russians bearing gifts; Soviet loans petered out soon after he expelled the Russian ambassador for fomenting anti-Toure demonstrations in 1961. In one of his more astute aidmanship gambits, he later snubbed Moscow by strengthening his ties with Peking, whose technicians have already built a match factory and a cigarette plant. But Russian-dictated "reforms" and Toure's own policies persisted. On Moscow's urging, Toure had divorced Guinea's currency from France's monetary system, flooded the country with new paper francs embellished with his portrait, which were almost valueless outside Guinea. As a result, cattle, coffee and bananas --and U.S. Food for Peace supplies--were smuggled into neighboring countries to be sold for hard currency. Toure also nationalized virtually every business in Guinea, including the once-lucrative diamond mines.

Soon every commodity from tap water to beer-bottle caps was in short supply. Once-docile Guineans reacted by staging an angry series of food riots this year. Though Toure prides himself on his emancipation of womenfolk--he has also insisted that traditionally bare-breasted banana porters cover up--it was Guinea's vociferous market mam mies, miffed at perennial shortages and soaring prices, who finally forced the President to make his first drastic eco nomic reforms by threatening to march on Conakry. Fearful that he might be overthrown, Toure last October hastily dismantled dozens of state monopolies and allowed private retailers to buy up their stocks.

In repeated broadcasts, he confessed that his nationalization of the economy had been a colossal flop. Said he: "The private trader has a greater sense of responsibility than civil servants, who get paid at the end of each month and only once in a while think of the nation or their own responsibility." But Western businessmen are wondering whether Toure's apparent conversion to free enterprise is sincere--and .whether it comes too late to do much good.

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