Guinea: A Reason to Worry

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Stepping regally from his Citroen, Guinea's President Sékou Touré marched to the podium through a squad of women police in white breeches and gleaming boots. A din of drums and balaphon music filled the square, while gales of girls in green, red and yellow hand-printed dresses waited eagerly for the word. Sékou's speech was "to women in prisons all over the country," whose sentences, he announced, would herewith be reduced by a year — except for those held for criminal offenses.

That meant there were plenty of female (not to mention male) political prisoners in Guinea, and that Sékou was just a bit worried about his seven-year grip on the government.

Expunging PUNG. There was reason to worry. In November, his Politburo announced details of an abortive coup d'état that aimed at the murder of Sékou and the overthrow of the regime. Chief local plotter: Mamadou (Petit) Touré, a distant cousin of the President who was fired last year from the directorship of a national textile firm for embezzlement. Last week Little Touré was rumored to be under sentence of death, along with two former government ministers, an army battalion commander and a slew of petty traders — all members, apparently, of an outfit known as PUNG (Parti de I' Unité Nationale de Guinée), which Big Touré feels must be expunged.

Discontent is understandable in Guinea. Potentially one of the richest of the French West African states, it is now going to seed as only a nationalized African state can. In the capital city of Conakry, the nationalized Printania store displays empty shelves, broken windows, and East European canned goods (gulyás, pickled pork, beans), as well as toy Chinese Communist trucks at $8 apiece and East German pliers for $4. Women queue up for soap powder, tin buckets and sandals cut from old bicycle tires.

Muffled Herd. Despite five American generators, Conakry suffers from a permanent power shortage. Nightfall in the Medina, Conakry's most populous quarter, is barely dispelled by flickering candles and the dim yellow of underpowered bulbs. Hard pressed for power, the Chinese Communists who staff Peking's aid program recently put to use an American electric generator (provided to Guinea by U.S. aid) in their cigarette factory at Wassawassa—until U.S. officials demanded its removal. Last month Sékou Touré's prestigious but overextended Air Guinée had to cease operations: only one of its four routes was paying its own way, and its Soviet Ilyushin transports were breaking down regularly, along with a few American-supplied DC-4s.

An assembly plant for Mack trucks has a capacity for 800 vehicles annually (ranging from municipal garbage trucks to 15-ton freighters), but only 80 have come off the line since last May. Conakry has yet to get a taste of the milk from cows at the Russian-built dairy at Ditinn, where mosquito nets muffle the lowing of the herd. A West German slaughterhouse in Conakry kills no more than one steer a month, though its capacity is 40 tons of beef a day. Even the East German printing plant—once humming with Sékou's propaganda—has been reduced to printing labels for imported Chinese Communist beer.