"Togolanders Go Home!"

In ugly bands of 200 and 300, the black mob surged through the streets of Abidjan (pop. 128,000), capital city of the Ivory Coast, shouting against the black "invaders" from Dahomey and Togoland. Armed with knives, clubs and broken bottles, rioters smashed down any Dahomeyans or Togolanders they met. Houses were looted and set afire and as women fled into the streets, they were dragged off and raped. Native Ivory Coast policemen stood by and watched. Only the Frenchmen in the police force tried to restore order.

At the bottom of this outburst of African against African last week lay a deep-seated envy and distrust. All through France's West African territories the best positions in government, business and industry are held by industrious citizens from Togoland and Dahomey. Nearly 100% of the Ivory Coast fisheries are in their hands. As more and more Frenchmen leave technical and administrative jobs, Dahomeyans and Togolanders win the competitions to replace them. Explained a French businessman: "The truth is that the people from Dahomey and Togoland are more intelligent, better trained and educated, more disciplined and harder working than the Ivory Coasters." .

The riots exploded when the government moved against the chauvinistic League of Ivory Coast Nationals, arrested 25 of its rabble-rousing leaders. As uprooted Dahomeyans and Togolanders, many of whom have lived on the Ivory Coast for years, huddled in makeshift shelters, Premier Auguste Denise lamented "the inhuman, painful spectacle of men, women and babies piled one on the other in the sun and the rain, running daily the risk of epidemics."

Another loser in the riots was the Ivory Coast's Political Boss Felix Houphouet-Boigny, who lives in Paris as the only black African in Charles de Gaulle's Cabinet. He has long ruled the Ivory Coast as a personal fief, and when he ordered it to vote yes in the De Gaulle referendum, 99% of the voters obligingly did so. As he prepared last week to fly home, Houphouet-Boigny sent a message ahead of him that was read to a public meeting.

Said Houphouet-Boigny: "In tears, disgraced, I ask you not to proceed with the expulsion of our brothers from Dahomey and Togoland until I shall be with you. Then we shall talk and find a solution to this problem." Roared the crowd with one voice: "No! No!" Only the presence of police and army reinforcements from other territories prevented the riots from bursting forth again.

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