Timely Token

Less than 48 hours before Christian Pineau outlined his bold "Eurafrica" scheme to the U.N., the French National Assembly hastily supplied him with a timely token of France's good intentions in Africa. In a predawn ballot that suggested that the lessons of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria had finally penetrated the French consciousness, the Deputies voted to give a limited degree of self-rule to the island of Madagascar and twelve provinces of "Black Africa."

A land in which less than 100,000 Europeans rule 27.8 million natives, Black Africa is more than eleven times the size of Texas. Its major regions are 1) French West Africa, whose eight provinces run from the tropical swamps of the Ivory Coast to the heart of the Sahara, are inhabited by nearly 19 million people who speak 120 languages; and 2) French Equatorial Africa, whose four provinces stretch from Libya in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the south, produce a major share of the world's plywood. Unlike Madagascar, whose 4,800,000 inhabitants launched a bloody revolt against France in 1947, Black Africa has just begun to emerge from Stone Age politics.

Biggest and most influential political movement in Black Africa is the Rassemblement Democratique Africain, led by stocky, black-skinned Felix Houphouet-Boigny (TIME, Feb. 13, 1956), an Ivory Coast chieftain who was once ready to fight for independence, but now calls for "self-government within the French Union." A year ago, when Socialist Guy Mollet was named Premier of France, 51-year-old Felix Houphouet-Boigny became the first West African ever to sit in a French Cabinet. Ever since, Houphouet-Boigny and Mollet's Minister of France Overseas, 46-year-old Gaston Defferre, have been working for more autonomy.

Three months ago, thanks to the efforts of the two ministers, the territorial assemblies of the provinces of Black Africa and Madagascar were for the first time elected by universal suffrage. Last week's vote granted these assemblies real if limited powers over local affairs. (Control of defense, foreign policy, justice and higher education was kept by the French government.) And while the provincial governors will still be appointed by France, each governor will hereafter be obliged to clear his decisions on local affairs with a "council of government," or cabinet, whose members will be elected by the local assembly.

Behind the new autonomy in the Dark Continent is the principle laid down by Gaston Defferre, who sees the Algerian rebellion as an ominous object lesson: "To prevent is better than to cure."

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