Word: houphouet
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Until recently, Cote d'Ivoire had been considered the haven of political stability amidst the turbulence that has surged in neighboring countries. Located on the southern edge of West Africa, it gained independence from the French under the leadership of Felix Houphouet-Boigny in 1960. He oversaw an economic boom but suppressed opposition and imposed a one-party system controlled by the Democratic Party for 33 years...
Since the death of Houphouet in 1993, however, Cote d'Ivoire has undergone accelerating political and economic instability. Henri Konan Bedie, then president of the National Assembly, succeeded Houphouet and continued his predecessor's autocratic ruling style; winning election in 1995 following an opposition party boycott and a period of intense violence and unrest. Turmoil rose within the army due to unpaid salaries and poor living conditions, and student riots were brutally crushed by the Bedie regime...
...largely contained during the first 30 years of independence. Whether Cote d'Ivoire can heal from the emergence of ethnic clashes is questionable. The path to political power appears to pass through a forest of ethnic rivalry rather than cohesion, and the political parties remain divided along ethnic lines. Houphouet's success in leading Cote d'Ivoire lay in his understanding of the ethnic diversity of the country. His successors have instead played up ethnic tensions in their bids to retain power, and the disenfranchisement of the vast majority of Ivorians in this electoral process has been ignored in favor...
...symbol of the Ivory Coast's profound cultural disjunction is a huge edifice that rises from flat green fields at Yamoussoukro, Houphouet's native village: the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, which cost some $175 million, a gesture of lifeless grandiosity. Amid the grazing goats and the lagoons, the basilica looks like an ill-shapen mushroom, massive from a distance and strangely sterile up close. Ismail Serageldin, director of the technical department at the World Bank, observed during a recent Cairo lecture dealing with culture shock that there were "certain symbols of a society dissociated from its own people...
...Houphouet-Boigny is old. Forty-three percent of his country's population is age 15 or younger, and most are uneducated. Last year university students rioted, and an elite military assault team attacked their dormitories. The army sees the students as pampered rich kids. Class differences are rising. The future may belong to the educated young -- or it could be dictated by the embittered, uneducated masses from which the army and the gendarmerie draw their recruits. As elsewhere in Africa, there are two deadly races: economic growth against population, and basic education against ignorance...