Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.
They did not disdain chiefly backing; indeed during the July 1955 interterritorial RDA meeting in Conakry President Houphouet made it his special task to stretch out the hand of friendship to the chiefs. 1 These were but temporary expedients. The close connexion between official chiefs, traditionalists, and the BAG served to discredit them in politics, and most PDG militants shared the ideas of Diallo Sayfoulaye:
the chieftaincy degraded by the colonial administration no longer represents the tradition which gave rise to the office. Many chiefs betrayed their functions by making themselves the servile instruments of the state, against the permanent interests of the people. Most were designated illegitimately and hold their posts only because they made themselves spokesmen and defenders of the colonial authorities… Traditional chieftaincy as such no longer exists … and nothing can replace it 1.
In most places it was clear the chiefs had lost their authority, and administrators were troubled. 'In each canton there is the problem of relations with the population, the transmission of orders and all the points of detail which are our work; right now we have great difficulty contacting nearly 100,000 people without intermediaries' 3. One of the first actions of the PDG government was to call a conference of administrators to study how to eliminate the chefs de canton from local administration. On 31 December 1957 the change took place, administrators nominated from Conakry took the place of the chefs, and in May 1958 the PDG had a majority of 87.8 per cent. in elections for local advisory councils or conseils de circonscription 4.
These elections eliminated 'chiefs' from local administration, but did not wipe out the influence of traditional leaders whose authority people still admitted. The PDG leaders made a deliberate attempt to integrate these into the party. One example was the family descended of Al Haji Umar Tall, the Toucouleur emperor who had used Dinguiraye as a base 5. The PDG elected one member of this family, Habib Tall, vice-president of the assembly. Another, also the most important of the African trading community, Baidy Guèye, became president in 1960 of the conseil économique. The PDG used a related technique with Lamine Kaba. After 1956 they would no longer accept that he use his party position to strengthen his claims within the Kaba family. In 1957 the PDG sponsored his election from Kankan to the territorial assembly, and there elected him a vice-president; but they also undercut his position in Kankan and insisted he remain in residence in Conakry 6.
1. Citation from interviews, 1955.
2. La Liberté, 5 June 1956.
3. Conférence des commandants de cercle, op. cit., Commandant de Siguiri, p. 45.
4. Beaujeu-Garnier, op. cit., p. 317.
5. Conférence de commandants de cercle, op. cit., Commandant de Dinguiraye, p. 27.
6. He died shortly after independence.
