Sure Cure for Sterility

"Sterile agitation," sniffed Charles de Gaulle when tiny Gabon's 400-man army rose against its President last month. The coup, De Gaulle decided, had no popular support, so into the mineral-rich West African republic roared hundreds of tough French paratroopers. Overnight, De Gaulle's old, autocratic friend Leon Mba was back in power. It looked so simple, but. by last week Charles de Gaulle had learned something even simpler: nothing cures an African nation of political sterility like high-handed intervention.

At the outset, Gabon's 450,000 citizens couldn't have cared less about the coup. But the combination of French steel and Mba's flinty threats of "total punishment" once he was back in office finally struck a spark. In Libreville's La-lala quarter, a dissonant mob formed. Fired up on payday whisky, it marched on the capital's central market, screaming: "Frenchmen go home!" The rioters were finally dispersed in a crunching whirl of para rifle butts.

Fearing a full-scale rising, Mba clamped a 6:30 p.m. curfew on the capital, then arrested Opposition Leader Jean-Hilaire Aubame, who had headed the short-lived provisional government. Though Aubame had never been particularly popular, the arrest ballooned him to heroic proportions in the eyes of the aroused public. The riots exploded with new violence, and in the glare of burning shops and houses, Libreville's French population--largely composed of old Indo-China and Algerian colons--noticed that only the Americans were spared the angry mob's violence.

To Gabon's 6,000 Frenchmen that meant only one thing: the U.S. had been behind the abortive coup in hopes of discountenancing le grand Charles. This pied-noir illogic reached all the way to Paris' Quai d'Orsay, where foreign-office officials helped spread the rumor. Last week the anti-American feeling coalesced into violence. A Simca-load of colons cruised past the U.S. embassy in Libreville, peppered the building with shotgun fire. An hour later a bomb exploded in the garden.

In his presidential palace, where he had been hiding since the French put him back in power, Autocrat Mba promised a thorough investigation. But it took no board of inquiry to conclude that Mba and the French have only themselves to blame for allowing "sterile agitation" to blossom into fecund antigovernment, anti-French feeling. It may be a long time before French troops dare pull out of Gabon.

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