Sunk in disorder and poverty, many of the newly independent nations of black Africa not long ago seemed ripe ground for Communism. None seemed riper than Guinea, where President Sékou Touré preached a dogmatic Marxist philosophy and a virulent hatred of the West. But in Africa, a local saying holds, "There is no past or future, only the present," and Guinea is a perfect case in point. After years of cozying up to Moscow, Touré has turned against the Reds, and their high hopes of gaining an African foothold in Guinea have all but evaporated.
Floral Paratroopers. Touré's disenchantment with Communism reached its height last December, when he traced demonstrations against his government to the Soviet embassy, which apparently felt that he was not cooperative enough. Moscow's ambassador was sent packing, and Touré began mending his fences with pro-Western neighbors.
During a state visit last week, the Ivory Coast's President Félix Houphouet-Boigny, whom Touré once called a "colonialist puppet." got red-carpet treatment, including an honor guard of paratroopers dressed in improbable raspberry-colored silk uniforms with floral patterns. Before Houphouet-Boigny left for home, a pretty Guinean girl serenaded him with a song in the Malinké dialect that, though it no doubt loses something in translation, told of her yearning for:
Rapprochement with the West,
Especially France and the U.S.
Delighted with Touré's "positive neutralism," President Kennedy last month welcomed him to Washington with elaborate cordiality. In Conakry, a 17-member U.S. aid mission is spending some $20.6 million on food imports, vocational training, and education projects. United Nations technicians, kicked out in 1961, have been invited back.
Overriding Concern. "Don't believe what others say of us or even what we ourselves say, but what we do," says Touré, and by that measure Guinea was beyond reproach during the Cuban crisis. When Touré visited the U.N. in October, he went out of his way to avoid Cuban President Dorticós. When the Russians requested permission to use Conakry's new, 10,663-ft. jet landing strip to service Cuba-bound planes, he turned them down cold, even though the Russians had built the strip themselves for that purpose.
For the moment, Touré's overriding concern is to end his quarrel with France's Charles de Gaulle, who still smarts over the way Guinea rejected membership in the French Community and chose independence in 1958. In retaliation, departing French civil servants yanked phones from the walls, smashed light fixtures, and dumped Guinea's records into the Atlantic. Guinea also quit the franc zone, to its near ruin. Now it hopes to win readmission when a French delegation arrives in Guinea soon for talks. Expected price: indemnification for French-owned banks, insurance companies, trading firms and bauxite mines nationalized after independence.