Revolutionaries Adrift

Africa's prophets of revolution have come on hard times. They once dreamed of bringing the whole continent under the leftist banner through subversion, sloganeering and bullying, but it is becoming apparent that a growing majority of moderate African states want no part of their plans. Only a fortnight ago, the Organization of African Unity, the league they had hoped to dominate, rejected the radicals' demands for a hearing for the Congolese rebels, and last month a bloc of 13 former French colonies met in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott to give their official support to the legitimate Congo government of Moise Tshombe.

Last week four of the noisiest radicals -- Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sekou Toure of Guinea, Algeria's Ben Bella and Mali's Modibo Keita--met in the dusty West African capital of Bamako for an emergency conference to see what could be done. Answer: not much.

Job 600. From the start the meeting was a scene of confusion and cross-purposes. It began without an agenda, ended without a communique. There was, in fact, barely any meeting at all. Ben Bella arrived late--only half an hour before Sekou Toure had to leave. And Nkrumah had been in Bamako less than five hours when he suddenly decided he had urgent business elsewhere and flew home. That left only Ben Bella and Keita, who could not leave because he was the host. They talked alone for two hours, and one of their subjects, presumably, was Mali's Tuareg nomads, who, with Ben Bella's support, recently staged an abortive rebellion against Keita. Next day, the two flew down to Conakry for another brief chat with Toure.

Nkrumah's main worry was a rebellion of another kind. To promote his sagging pretensions as Africa's leader, he has invited the heads of all African states to a giant pan-African summit conference in September--and is pouring more than $4,000,000 into a project called "Job 600," a complex of halls and theaters being built in Accra to accommodate the conference. But his reputation for subversion has put him in such bad odor that many moderate Africans now threaten to boycott the summit.

Chorus of Critics. At Nouakchott, the former French bloc went out of its way to condemn "certain states, notably Ghana, which welcome subversive agents and organize training camps on their territories." Two of Nkrumah's neighbors accuse him of "interference in their internal affairs," a third recently captured a band of Nkrumah-trained guerrillas; and for the past five years little Togo has had all it could do to keep Nkrumah from annexing it. After a Nkrumah-sponsored student demonstration outside the Nigerian High Commission in Accra this month, the Prime Minister of Africa's most populous nation resolutely joined the chorus of critics.

"There is a certain madness in Ghana at present," Nigeria's Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa told a press conference last week. "We should not boycott the conference because of Ghana's puerile attitude but rather because it is difficult for the heads of state to meet in Accra, where the undesirable elements of their own countries are harbored by the Ghanaian government."

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