Four for Togetherness

During the Middle Ages there rose in West Africa a kingdom of warlike tribes that came to be known as the Empire of the Mali (rhymes with Bali). Among its greatest rulers was a crippled boy named Sundiata Keita, who survived the murder of his eleven brothers and ascended the throne in 1230, to build a realm that was eventually to cover what is now Guinea, Senegal, the French Sudan and Ghana. Last week one of Sundiata's descendants, the Sudan's Modibo Keita, was in Dakar, capital of Senegal, as one of the architects of a modern revival of the old empire. Along with Senegal, Dahomey and the Voltaic Republic, the French Sudan completed the formation of the Mali Federation -an area of 680,000 square miles and 10 million people, with headquarters in Dakar.

In the push and pull that has taken place in Africa since France's territories voted on the De Gaulle constitution, the federation was an answer to the fear of West African leaders such as Senegal's Leopold Senghor that the newly autonomous states within the French Community might become "Balkanized" and one by one fall prey to the ambitious new rulers of Guinea and Ghana.

The federation might well have been larger, had it not beea for the opposition of another ambitious African ruler -Felix Houphouet-Boigny, strongman in the Ivory Coast, and the only African of ministerial rank in De Gaulle's government. Houphouet-Boigny is afraid that his Ivory Coast, the richest country in the area, might have to foot most of the bills. He not only kept the Ivory Coast out, but persuaded Niger to stay out, too. His lobbyists were less successful in the Voltaic Republic, though they had recently sent a truckload of wedding gifts to the emperor of the country's Mossi tribe.

Though the four members of the Mali Federation will retain control of their own economies, they will have a common language (French), flag (red, black and gold), federal government (two ministers from each state plus a Parliament of 48 assemblymen), and will remain in De Gaulle's new French Community.

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