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Coming to power last May, Charles de Gaulle made his dramatic offer to the French African territories: they could have the choice between 1) complete independence, 2) autonomy within the French Community, or 3) the status of a department of France. Toure charged that the whole idea of a French Community—which came close, but not close enough, to the British Commonwealth—would only continue "our status of perpetual dependence, our status of indignity, our status of insubordination." When De Gaulle stopped off at Conakry on his swift tour of Africa before the referendum, Toure thundered in his presence: "We prefer poverty in liberty to riches in slavery." Angrily, De Gaulle canceled a diner intime he was to have had with Toure, and the split was final. A few weeks later, 95% of the people of Guinea voted no to the De Gaulle constitution.
Go Away. "We do not wish," Touré had said, "to settle our fate without France or against France." But De Gaulle at first was quite willing to carry on without Guinea. Paris announced that all French functionaries would be withdrawn within two months. Toure's brash reply: Remove them in eight days. While French shopkeepers and businessmen stayed on, 350 officials and their families began moving out. French justice stopped. A ship heading for Guinea with a carload of rice went to the Ivory Coast instead. Radio Conakry temporarily went off the air. The Guineans charged that the departing French were taking everything—medical supplies, official records, air conditioners, even electric wiring.
The governor's palace was being stripped when Guineans found that some of the furniture that was to be shipped to France actually belonged to Guinea. Thereupon a comicopera, two-way traffic began at the palace, with the French hauling things out and the Guineans hauling things in. When Toure and his willowy second wife (daughter of a French father and a Malinké mother) moved into the palace, they did not even have a telephone.
Though the people of Guinea rejoiced, Touré banned all demonstrations, announced: "This is no time for dancing." More than any other African state, Guinea was on its own. The British had bequeathed to Nkrumah a prosperous Ghana. President Tubman. who runs Liberia as Boss Pendergast once ran Kansas City, has the Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. as the biggest employer in his land. The Sudan, after getting its independence, is calling back British technicians. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia has Swedes training his air force, Indians running his state bank, Americans running the airline, and French Canadian Jesuits running the state university.
Over Conakry, a city of sleepy charm with its thick-walled, whitewashed houses, its cool green mango trees, its shops and bars that bear the stamp of France (Le Royal St. Germain, A la Chope Bar, Chez Maitre Diop), an air of harassed improvisation fell. For lack of help, ministers had to do the secretarial work while visitors clogged their waiting rooms. Telephones did not work, clerks scuttered about looking for the only copy of the diplomatic list. Messages were sent in to the Minister of Health while he was performing surgical operations.