Word: togo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Sylvanus Olympio, 60, President of Togo, the nightmare began shortly after midnight. Disturbed by strange sounds in his comfortable house in the capital city of Lomé, Olympio grabbed a pistol and went to the head of the stairs. There, to his consternation, was a crowd of mutinous soldiers crowding the floor below. Barefoot, clad in shorts and sport shirt, Olympio leaped through a window onto the soft, sandy earth of his garden...
...Blow to Progress." Thus last week died the man who was ruler of a postage-stamp-sized republic (75 by 340 miles) on the sweltering West African coast. Chief architect of Togo's 1960 independence from French control, London-educated Olympio practiced stern austerity at home, rejected demagoguery, and sided openly with the West. President Kennedy, whom Olympio visited in Washington last March, mourned his death as "a blow to the progress of stable government in Africa...
...part of his economic austerity program, Olympio had stubbornly refused to expand Togo's flyspeck army beyond its standing strength of 250 men-exactly one company. This angered both the "army" and the demobilized, hard-eyed Togolese veterans of French colonial wars, who had fought from Indo-China to Algeria but could find no place in their homeland's armed forces. Recently, a tough ex-sergeant, Emmanuel Bodjolle, 35, jobless and with a family to support, organized a conspiracy with 30 other noncoms. Last week, after Olympio tore up a final plea to take into the service...
Olympio's successor is Nicolas Grunitzky, 49, his brother-in-law, who was swept out of office as territorial Premier for the French when Olympio took over five years ago. Grunitzky's first act was to announce that Togo would align itself with the Afro-Malagasy Union, the pro-French association of West Africa states. Then he declared free elections would soon follow. But, as so often happens in such circumstances, he decided it would be best to dissolve Parliament and rule alone until things settled down...
...needed cash to balance the budget, and wanted money from Germany, which used to run the place as a colony before World War I. When the Germans refused, the Camerounians held them at the airport for several hours before allowing them to go home. Other African leaders, such as Togo's President Sylvanus Olympic, come to Bonn themselves...