Word: houphouet
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...policy of granting independence upon request, France hoped to keep the friendship of the 13 new states that until this year comprised the French empire in western Africa. As its staunchest ally in the area, France counted on Felix Houphouet-Boigny, 55, the sly old pro who sat in five French Cabinets and is now Premier of the Ivory Coast. Last week Houphouet-Boigny assembled five Presidents, three Premiers and three ministers plenipotentiary* for a conference in the Ivory Coast's boomtown capital of Abidjan, and emerged just 48 hours later to announce "unanimous agreement" on foreign policy questions...
Limited Area. The statement sound ed more expansive than was the actuality; the delegates' area of agreement was limited to Algeria and the Congo. Houphouet-Boigny swore the delegates to secrecy until he could fly off to Paris to press the results on his good friend Charles de Gaulle. But the gist of the policy leaked. Houphouet-Boigny will urge De Gaulle to soften his terms for an Algerian ceasefire. In the U.N. the eleven states will doubtless oppose any condemnation of France on Algeria, but will support a U.N.-supervised referendum to determine Algeria's future...
Strong Voice. A French-educated tribal chieftain with a Tammany sachem's flair for politics, Houphouet-Boigny became a member of the French Assembly in 1945, joined forces with the Communists, but broke with them in 1950. He eventually parlayed his role as an African spokesman into a three-year succession of Cabinet posts in Paris, beginning in 1956. For the Ivory Coast, Houphouet-Boigny has wangled from France an ambitious aid program ($16.5 million this year). As a result, Abidjan is completely electrified and may be the only city in Africa where every dwelling has running water...
...Houphouet-Boigny runs his piece of Africa through the African Democratic Rally (R.D.A.). Guinea's Sékou Touré once led a powerful opposition of the left within the party, but Touré opted Guinea out of the French Community and into relative quarantine. Houphouet-Boigny men from the R.D.A. now rule in the French Congo, Niger, and Upper Volta, and his voice is strong in the other states that joined in last week's conference...
Driven to this step by the fact that France has already accepted bids for independence for the other seven members of the Community, the Ivory Coast's Felix Houphouet-Boigny, who would have preferred to keep closer ties with France, bitterly commented: "For a marriage two people are needed, and France never made it as far as the church...