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Even in Africa, seemingly always in the grip of coups and tribal clashes, there is clear progress if the continent is viewed in the longer perspective. Only six years ago, Patrice Lumumba, Sekou Toure and Kwame Nkrumah seemed the wave of the angry future, raging against the old rulers and demanding homage to their newfound importance. The Communists—Russian, Chinese, East German—swarmed through every new capital, offering ideological sympathy for their rage and flashy economic projects for their egos. Lumumba is long gone, Nkrumah is an exile, and Toure a diminished voice. Today's leading African figures are Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, and such durable elder statesmen as Haile Selassie and Félix Houphouet-Boigny; they range from staunchly anti-Communist to at least warily disenchanted. Ritual feelings about "neocolonialism" are giving way to practical attitudes bent on solving Africa's overwhelming problems. In Ghana, the new military government has replaced "Down with Neocolonialism" signs with others reading, "Ghana Welcomes Foreign Investment," and has invited Communist advisers to go home. In Tanzania, growing numbers of thinking Africans are unwilling to swap one imperialism for another.
Nowhere is there a sure guarantee of continued progress. The disparity between the world's rich and poor, underlined by the Pope's encyclical last week, remains a threat to the world's domestic tranquility and badly needs practical measures rather than emotional slogans. Bloodshed, revolution and disorder may erupt anywhere at any time. But rarely in recent decades have the signs been so relatively hopeful in so many places.