Left Turn

Though the distinguished visitor would not officially achieve the rank of head of state until his country withdraws its allegiance next fall to the British Crown (though not the Commonwealth), his hosts in nearby Conakry, the capital of Guinea, decided to give him a 21-gun salute anyway. In a few minutes, a cane-swinging Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana strode down the gangplank of his chartered freighter to embrace, somewhat stiffly, the President of the Republic of Guinea, youthful (37) Sekou Toure. Later, when the two men stood side by side to review the tiny, 2,000-man Guinean army, a banner waved over their heads saying: "Vive I'Union Guinee-Ghana!" But last week, as Nkrumah started his long, 21-day conference with Toure, the big question was: How much life is there in their union?

When the two men, "inspired by the example of the 13 American colonies," joined forces last November, scarcely a month had passed since Guinea cut itself loose from France. To Nkrumah, the union seemed an auspicious first step toward an eventual United States of Africa, and he promised a $28 million loan. Of this sum, $11 million has been paid--half of it just before Nkrumah's arrival. Otherwise, the union has been largely talk. Toure, the junior partner, has been moving off in some alarming directions of his own.

Target No. 1. Out of concern for ruffled French feelings, the U.S. and Britain held off from recognizing Toure's independent state. Communist Bulgaria sent Guinea its first full-fledged ambassador. The Soviet Union followed soon after. By last week, things had gone so far that a U.S. State Department official grimly told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Guinea had become Communism's No. 1 target in Africa. Toure has channeled at least a third of his total trade (chief exports: bananas, peanuts and coffee) to Eastern Europe.

Last March Toure received a shipment of arms from Czechoslovakia that included 3,000 rifles and automatic weapons. Last week another shipment (the third) arrived on a Polish vessel. When Paris expressed alarm at the deals, Toure angrily denounced the "hostile attitude of French diplomacy."

"To the Martyrs." In the beginning, miffed at Guinea's lone vote of no to the De Gaulle constitution, Paris had been guilty of petty harassments. But since then, Paris has stood patiently by, ready to help, though annoyed by a new motto the Guineans inscribed on a monument dedicated to the dead of World War II: "To all the martyrs of colonialism."

Nkrumah, too, was obviously distressed by the turn events were taking in Guinea. Toure, though capable of cracking down on those in his entourage who seem to be getting too cozy with Eastern Europe, operates like a Marxist. The two leaders, conferring through interpreters (Nkrumah speaks English, Toure French, and they have no common African language), pledged themselves to find ways of "re-enforcing" their union. But actually they were far apart. While Ghana is so flush with its latest cocoa crop that it is embarking on a $930 million five-year development program, Guinea has had to slash government salaries and adopt a budget that leaves no funds at all for development.

And last week the country was confronted with the first serious crack in Toure's official family. After a stormy night session, the Council of Ministers announced that Camara Faraban, once a Minister of Education and one of Toure's close friends, had hopped a plane and fled the country. A Paris-trained lawyer who is married to a Frenchwoman, Faraban had no liking for the direction in which the nation was going; but the Council had a classic Marxist explanation for his flight. It was, said the government, tied in with the "whole network of spies and agents at the service of the colonialists, whose activity will be unmasked and severely punished without delay."

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