Newest Nation

"Late jam sessions, midnight until unconscious," advertised one nightclub. In Freetown's magnificent harbor, gaily painted paddle boats carrying names like God Never Hurries staged a regatta. To the beat of tom-toms, 150 bare-breasted girls snaked past Sierra Leone's Prime Minister, Sir Milton Margai, and his guests of honor: Britain's Duke of Kent, Liberia's William Tubman, Nigeria's Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, U.S. Special Representative Thurgood Marshall. At midnight some 15,000 celebrators jammed Freetown's stadium, sang the hymn Lead, Kindly Light, watched as spotlights dimmed on the Union Jack atop the flagpole, cheered ten seconds later as a new green, white and blue flag fluttered in its place. At that moment, little Sierra Leone (slightly larger than West Virginia; pop. 2,500,000), Britain's first colony in Africa, became independent.

Sierra Leone got its start as a colony in 1787, when an agent of British Anti-slavery Crusader Granville Sharp leased what is now Freetown from a local tribal chief and set it up as a haven for destitute freed slaves from England. The British thoughtfully provided the new settlers with a boatload of white British prostitutes to get the population under way. In 1808 Sierra Leone formally became a British colony, and rule was gradually pushed inland to embrace the indigenous tribes as well. The British discovered diamonds in Sierra Leone's river beds in 1930, and the nation now supplies one-fourth of the world's diamonds to the great De Beers diamond trust.

A retired physician, wily, wiry Sir Milton, 65, has his work cut out for him. For all Sierra Leone's wealth in diamonds, some 85% of the population is illiterate, and per capita income is a meager $56 a year. Eight of ten Sierra Leoneans eke out a living on the land, but the nation must still import foodstuffs. "We will need help to develop our natural resources," says Sir Milton, adding pointedly, "and we would like to look first to our old friends." Firmly pro-Western, Margai has already made Sierra Leone the twelfth member of the Commonwealth. Conspicuously absent from the festivities were his left-leaning neighbors, Ghana's Nkrumah and Guinea's Toure. The chief opposition party is heavily backed by Nkrumah, and when its leaders threatened to disrupt the freedom celebration, Sir Milton forehandedly jailed 31 of them.

As the first Western aid contribution, Britain has pledged the new nation some $21 million to help improve agriculture and to develop Sierra Leone's iron and diamond resources.

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