webGuinée / Etat & Société

La première décennie du régime PDG

Claude Rivière
Guinea: The Mobilization of a People

Ithaca. Cornell University Press. 1968. 260 p.

Foreword

Since the West African countries became independent some fifteen years ago, it has been more difficult to obtain reliable information about Guinea than about any of the others. Its president, Ahmed Sékou Touré, has been particularly suspicious of outside contacts, especially while the Portuguese controlled adjacent Guinea-Bissau, whose liberation movement, the Partido Africano da Independencia da Guine e Cabo Verde (PAIGC), he supported, and from which, allegedly, Guinea was invaded in November 1970. After the PAIGC was recognized as the legitimate government of Guinea-Bissau, following the coup of April 1974 in Portugal, Sékou Touré has shown less apprehension of possible external threats to his country. Guinea is still less accessible to most outsiders, however, than are its larger neighbors. Claude Riviere's study is therefore especially valuable, for it not only reflects his firsthand observations in Guinea but also embodies the results of long-term and recent research by this eminent French scholar, who is internationally recognized as an outstanding authority on the country.
The center of power in Guinea is the president, a striking but controversial figure because of his unpredictable and, in some instances, brutal actions. An outstanding champion of Pan-Africanism, he led his country in 1958 to a formal break with France by opting for independence at a time when all other Francophone states remained associated with the former colonial power. Growing tension between Guinea and France culminated in November 1965 in the rupture of diplomatic relations, which were not reestablished for nearly ten years. Toure has quarreled with his Francophone neighbors except Mali, whose political ideology approximates his own. In particular, he has frequently accused President Leopold Senghor of Senegal and President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of Ivory Coast of plotting to overthrow his government, and in November 1971 he withdrew from the OERS (the organization for development of the Senegal River valley), of which, along with Mali, Senegal, and Mauritania, Guinea was a charter member. Beginning in 1975, he moved to improve relations with all his neighbors and sought to rejoin the OERS. But his unpredictability, the conditions he posed, and his attempt early in 1976 to form an organization of « progressive » African states as a rival to the Organization of African Unity (OAU), as well as the discovery of still another plot against him, have done little to lessen his isolation. More successful, however, has been his recent role in helping to settle disputes between Mali and Burkina Faso (then called Upper Volta and between Togo and Benin (formerly called Dahomey).
Toure's revolutionary stance and his promotion of state agencies characteristic of Communist countries seem to imply close relations with the Soviet Union, but in fact a bitter controversy arose between the U.S.S.R. and Guinea in 1961 regarding an anti-Touré plot in which the Soviet ambassador appeared to be implicated. In this instance, relations were successfully patched up, but Guinea has been careful to balance Soviet aid with aid it has received from China, and relations with both countries now seem cooperative. Not surprisingly, Touré has been less successful in winning the confidence of liberals in Western countries because of his arbitrary imprisonment and, in some cases, execution of prominent Guinean opponents, and because of their sympathy for the thousands of Guinean exiles now living in France, Senegal, and Ivory Coast.
Despite Guinea's revolutionary socialist postures and policies, its relationship with the United States has been fairly smooth. Guinea's rich mineral deposits, chiefly bauxite and iron, have attracted considerable American private investment, and this fact, coupled with its strategic location, makes it one of the more important countries of West Africa
On the whole, Guinea's socialist experiments have not been outstandingly successful, notably in the agricultural domain, partly because of inadequate planning and probably even more because of inefficient administration. There is little evidence, however, that socialist experimentation has been abandoned in Guinea; hence the country continues to serve as an interesting and, to sympathizers, disconcerting example of the difficulties associated with such efforts on the part of a developing country.
The pages that follow provide a careful, scrupulously fair account both of Guinea's weaknesses and failures and of its strengths and achievements. Whether one is in favor of or opposed to what President Sékou Touré is attempting to accomplish, Guinea is a sufficiently important country to warrant concern. It is likely to become even more so in the future.

Gwendolen M. Carter
Indiana University