Foreign News: Black Partner

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At 50, Houphouet-Boigny feels himself a man of destiny. "When my people are free I will return to my plantation, like Washington," he says. A Roman Catholic in a family whose other members still believe in black magic, he is a self-styled ascetic, gave up mangoes at the age of 13 because he liked them too much, has since given up tobacco, alcohol, sports, music, movies, even the coffee which he grows on his plantation. "Every year I force myself to give up something I like." This still leaves him a good deal. In Paris he wears expensive European suits, is driven around town in his black Cadillac by a white French chauffeur, lives in a luxurious apartment. In Abidjan he wears cotton native robes, keeps a black Chrysler, maintains a house there and in his native village of Yamoussoukio, where he has torn down the straw huts and replaced them with 500 new concrete houses.

People Without Patience. Houphouet-Boigny's idea of a new French Union is some variety of federation, and his model is Britain's neighboring Gold Coast, run by his fellow tribesman Kwame Nkrumah. But Houphouet-Boigny is well aware of the difficulties of providing "freedom" for a territory that is 13 times the size of France, divided among more than 1,000 tribes speaking 600 different tongues, many of them still so primitive that only five years ago a native elected to the French Senate was murdered and eaten by his Ivory Coast constituents. (Most tactless wisecrack of the week: outgoing Premier Edgar Faure's quip that Guy Mollet had included seven Senators in his government "to keep Houphouet-Boigny well fed.")

With the lessons of Morocco and Algeria before them, the French are gradually becoming aware that 97,000 white men cannot indefinitely rule Black Africa's 25 million natives in the old way. And they have had warning. Last May Day, Communist-led nationalists touched off weeks-long rioting in the Cameroons; their exiled leader Um Nhobe is already claiming the title of "The Cameroonian Ho Chi Minh."

"People have confidence in me, but they don't have patience to wait," said Houphouet-Boigny last week. "Unless the French act quickly, I will lose control of our people—and blood will flow in Africa."