Uncle Shad's Jubilee

They laughed when William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman was inaugurated as the 18th President of Liberia back in 1944. He had a reputation as a playboy, and it was freely predicted that within six months he would be impeached or simply resign from office. But "Uncle Shad" has endured. Now in his sixth term, he has been busy the last two weeks celebrating his 25th anniversary as chief executive of Africa's oldest republic. TIME Correspondent James Wilde went to the party, a ten-day long binge of dinners, dances, agricultural exhibitions, parades and fireworks. His report:

The streets of Monrovia, the capital, were jammed with parked cars that spilled over into the alleys. Inside the Centennial Ballroom, a babel of people in long white Moslem robes and colored bubus (tribal gowns) mingled with those in formal tie and tails wearing rows of medals. Guided by Tubman and his daughter Coocoo, they marched, then switched to a rumba, a quick step, the Lindy hop, a quadrille. "Faster, faster!" shouted the President, roaring with laughter. For 50 minutes the crowd of nearly 1,000 stomped to John Philip Sousa marches. Leaving most of his guests wilted, the 73-year-old President finally strode back to his table, lit up a Havana, took a drink of Scotch and Perrier, and was ready for the next dance.

Tubman and Liberia have come a long way since his first inauguration. Monrovia, now a city of 100,000, at that time was a town of scarcely 15,000 people sporting only four blocks of paved streets, no sewage system, no streetlighting, no radio nor telephones. Liberia's annual budget came to $750,000, and government departments were quartered in shabby, corrugated-metal reproductions of Southern U.S. ante-bellum mansions. An Americo-Liberian elite, descendants of the American slaves who declared Liberia independent in 1847,* was in power, ruling with little regard for the tribal people of the bush, whom they called aborigines. The economy was dominated by the Firestone company, whose rubber plantations stretched deep into the hinterlands. There was, in short, no infrastructure, and Tubman used to apologize wryly by observing: "Liberia never had the benefits of colonialism."

In Name Anyway. Today, Monrovia is still a provincial town, but it has nonetheless changed considerably. A splendid, glittering presidential palace, looking like a cross between a Hilton hotel and New York's Museum of Modern Art, overlooks the town--and some of its slums. The John F. Kennedy Hospital in Monrovia, built with U.S. aid and now nearing completion, will be one of the most modern in all of West Africa. Some 2,000 miles of road, paved or not, are open, three railway spurs lead to rich inland iron-ore mines, and low shipping-registration fees (which netted the government $3,000,000 last year) give Liberia, in name anyway, the world's biggest merchant fleet. Although only 5% of the population is literate, some 1,600 youngsters have been or are being educated abroad, and Tubman says ruefully: "I'm committing political suicide. These boys will come back experts, and I know nothing but the Bible."

The President credits his successes and 25 years of stability to two basic policies. One is an open-door policy in regard to foreign investment. The other is his Integration and Unification Program, an effort to erase divisions between Americo-Liberians and the tribal people and to stop intertribal warfare. To still tribal rivalries, Tubman traveled far and wide through the bush to attend palavers with local chiefs, even became grand master of the secret Poro societies, to which all of Liberia's 28 tribes belong. He has extended the vote to the tribal people and banned the term Americo-Liberian. Says he: "We are all Liberians."

Even after 25 years, "Uncle Shad" seems to retain genuine popularity with his people. He has the common touch. In the old days, he would sit on the back porch of the then ramshackle executive mansion and call out to passersby to stop for a chat. Even now, at a public function, he is not above grabbing a snare drum and playing it, to the delight of the crowd. There is also an almost Victorian courtesy about him, to visitors as well as to his own people. Like the quadrilles he enjoys dancing, it is touchingly out of date. But it goes over well with Liberians. Not long ago, he fired one of his district commissioners because the man had insulted a cripple. At banquets given during his visits into the hinterlands, he will occasionally take the last place in the line--to make sure that everyone gets something to eat.

The Great Tree. His open-door economic policies have brought relative progress to Liberia. Foreign investment now amounts to nearly $750 million--mostly in iron ore, rubber and commercial banking. Tubman checks economic performance continually: an old law still on the books has it that all government expenditures of more than $200 must be approved by the President, and the President spends hours every week poring over the ledgers. As a result, important government work tends to be held up.

There are more serious complaints: despite Tubman's economic gains, a large number of Liberia's 1,000,000 people still eke out all too meager an existence while the heirs of the old elite and government officials live handsomely. The 1969 austerity budget of $61 million, for instance, sets aside $37 million for government expenditure, including salaries, but only one-tenth that amount for development. Tubman's own annual salary as chief executive is $25,000. Agriculture has so far been given short shrift in economic planning. Graft and corruption abound, and Tubman's True Whig Party permits no organized opposition. In that sense, Tubman is the traditional African patriarch, the great tree under which all healthy opposition wilts. He is as sensitive to criticism as he is alert to potential opponents (there is no free press), and he may very likely be Liberia's President for as long as he chooses.

* Liberia was actually founded in 1822, after agents of the American Colonization Society bought land near the present capital, Monrovia, and settled a number of freed slaves from the U.S. there.

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