Wawa Moves East

Old Africa hands are painfully familiar with the phenomenon known as "Wawa." It stands for West Africa Wins Again, and summarizes the frustrating inability to mesh modern methods and ancient habits. Wawa crops up at cable offices, where either the Telex or the telegrapher are inevitably out. It turns up at the airport, where engines, customs officials or both are missing just when someone is desperately in need of a flight. Wawa hovers miasmatically in hotel rooms, turning a once placid shower into a veritable Victoria Falls, or switches telephone calls from one trunk line to another. Africa is progressing in many fields against great odds, but Wawa is still spreading, and last week its first symptoms were revealed in Tanzania.

Wawa, it seems, had a role in the recent mysterious ouster of two American diplomats from the fledgling East African republic (TIME, Jan. 22). Some weeks ago, it now appears, Frank Carlucci, U.S. consul in Zanzibar, was talking by telephone with Robert Gordon, U.S. embassy counselor in Tanzania's coastal capital of Dar es Salaam. Their conversation was, of course, being tapped. At one point they expressed mutual regret that the State Department had not sent good wishes to Zanzibar's Boss Abeid Karume on "the twelfth"--the first anniversary of the coup d'etat that gave him power on Jan. 12, 1964. Carlucci explained that celebrations of the coup had been postponed because of Ramadan, the Moslem month of fasting. Answered Gordon: "Well, make sure Karume gets the message on the second twelfth."

To the Tanzanian telephone tappers, this dialogue clearly meant that the U.S. was plotting an anti-Karume coup for either January or February 12. Out went Carlucci and Gordon. Wawa had won again.

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