Anti-American Week

The three East African states of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have one thing in common: they are all giving aid and comfort to the Communist-inspired rebel armies of Christophe Gbenye in the neighboring Congo. Since the U.S. backs the legitimate Congo government of Moise Tshombe, who is a bete noire in the eyes of the black nationalists. East Africa was once again celebrating anti-American week.

In UGANDA, Prime Minister Milton Obote claimed that some of Tshombe's U.S.-made airplanes had bombed two Ugandan border villages last week, and charged that the craft were piloted by U.S. citizens or Cuban rebels (Gbenye's Congolese rebels are always "nationalists," but anti-Castro Cuban exiles are "rebels"). Obote was using anti-Americanism in hopes of pulling his own country's warring factions together, and his government radio urged employers to give everyone a day off for protest riots. Sure enough, next day a holiday crowd brought in by trucks from the provinces surged around the U.S. embassy in Kampala. The mob brandished signs proclaiming TO HELL WITH AMERICA--BLOODTHIRSTY GO HOME! While Cabinet ministers and parliamentarians beamingly watched from the plinth of the Obote Freedom Arch, two rioters scaled the embassy's roof and tore down the American flag.

In KENYA, 300 scarlet-gowned students from the largely American-financed Nairobi University marched on the U.S. embassy with even more inventive examples of postermanship,

such as TSHOMBE, THOU ART A DOWNRIGHT RASCAL, BEST YANKEE IS A DEAD YANKEE, GO HOME TO BLOODY AMERICA, PEACE CORPS SPIES, AMERICA UNDER JOHNSON IS WORSE THAN GERMANY

UNDER HITLER, and a tantalizingly obscure number that simply asserted

CIVILIZATION IS RETALIATION.

In TANZANIA, President Julius Nyerere, just before taking off for a state visit to Peking, got into the spirit by recalling the Tanzanian Ambassador to the U.S. Reason: the U.S. had asked for the recall of a Tanzanian attache from Washington in retaliation for the expulsion of two U.S. diplomats by Tanzania on patently ridiculous charges (TIME, Feb. 5). "We are a small country, but we are as much sovereign as the U.S.," explained Nyerere in martyred tones. "We do not bully and we do not like being bullied."

Amid all this ritualistic anti-Americanism came a surprising grace note. Meeting in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott, 13 former French colonies formed the Commune Africaine et Malgache and roundly condemned interference by anybody--notably including other Africans--in the internal affairs of other African states. Lest there be any doubt what they meant, they "solemnly affirmed the urgent necessity to bring peace to Congo-Leopoldville and aid to its legal government." It was the first kind African word for Moise Tshombe in a long time.

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