Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.
The struggle confirmed the PDG militants in the conviction that they were on the side of history. It discredited French institutions. The PDG militants came to regard the formal constitution, laws, and decrees as the European, alien façade and only their party as truly African. The struggle helped unify people against the colonial system and propelled the leaders to adopt a frankly nationalist platform. The official record of tampering with the elections gave the PDG a solid moral advantage and made possible a representation of the rivalry between BAG and PDG as between truth and falsehood, nationalism and colonialism. The PDG leaders could claim their adversaries were disloyal to the real African tradition, and so could discredit as un-African both the 'intellectuals' who were the BAG élus and the 'chiefs' who were the local BAG representatives.
The struggle prolonged the period when the PDG was in opposition, and therefore in harmony with the revolutionary forces in the countryside. These forces knew no frontiers. Where the 'diamond fever' was spreading, in and around Sierra Leone, the Sily Baga Society took root; the PDG leaders called it RDA 1. Outside the Fouta Djallon most people, often for contradictory reasons, were against all authority, and as Sékou Touré explained, 'anarchy itself served the emancipating movement, to the extent that it was directed against the colonial system' 2. Party finances benefited from resistance against paying taxes, party justice was sometimes acceptable when that of chief or French judge was not. For a few years the PDG could concentrate on building a party organization while free of the responsibilities of keeping order, roads open and telephone lines functioning.
Electoral success by the PDG brought a sense of liberation. The PDG claimed 300,000 members in 1955; 3 by 1959 it was 800,000, 4 and in 1960, 857,000 5. People volunteered their labour and it was not unusual for villagers to construct a road so that party organizers could reach them, or a shelter so that they might come to the main road to hear itinerant PDG spokesmen. Volunteer labour, dubbed investissement humain, was at the disposal of the new PDG government, which tried to harness the burst of popular enthusiasm to the building of roads, bridges, schools, party headquarters, and mosques 6. Though perhaps not very efficient, voluntary labour indicated how close to the people the party had become.
1. After the citizens of French Guinea had been explled from Sierra Leone in 1956, Sékou Touré and Diallo Sayfoulaye led a delegation to Freetown. A most interesting account of their voyage is in the 15 January 1957 issue of La Liberté'.
2. Touré, Sékou. 'Allocation de clôture de la conférence des cadres du PDG', of November 1958, L'Action politique . . ., tome ii, op. cit., p. 237.
2. Afrique Informations, 15 April-1 May 1955.
3. La Liberté, 4 March 1959.
5.< a> Touré, Sékou. La Lutte du Parti Démocratique de Guinée pour l'émancipation africaine, tome vi, République de Guinée, Conakry, 1961, p. 334 (report to Conakry conference).
6. Touré, tome vi op. cit.. pp. 163-97; see also Touré, L'Action du PDG…, tome i, op. cit., p. 52; Touré, Le Cinquième congrès national . . ., tome iv, op. cit., pp. 136-7 and p. 41; Touré, Sékou. La Planification éonomique, tome v, République de Guinée, Conakry, 1960, p. 68,
