This is the final leg of the story of Ahmed Sékou Touré, the founding Father of Guinea. As was recounted in the previous articles Sékou Touré was a staunch pan-Africanist who fought neo-colonialism and Western influence head-on. He wanted to mobilize the entire African continent to continue for the struggle of achieving a free united Africa.
From 1970 onwards Guinea’s relationship with the USA and France continued to darken and the CIA continued to organize revolt within Guinean and active Guinean dissidents in Senegal and Ivory Coast to oust Touré from power. Believing that the West wanted to depose him and stop his pan-African efforts of liberating the whole of Africa and the achievement of a united Africa; he directed arrests, detentions, and some executions of suspected opposition leaders in Guinea who he thought were foreign collaborators.
By 1971 political tension in Guinea grew and Touré was increasingly becoming a dictator as he believed that he was ordained to wedge a permanent struggle for economic freedom for Guinea and for the entire Africa.
To show his determination to continue fighting for the African ultimate freedom Sékou Touré was once quoted in the Black Scholar Journal in 1971 saying: “People of Africa, from now on you are reborn in history, because you mobilize yourself in the struggle and because the struggle before you restores to your own eyes and renders to you, justice in the eyes of the world.”
His rule seemed under constant barricade and in May 1976 it was alleged that a plot led by Diallo Telli, a cabinet Minister and a former first Secretary General of the OAU was underway to assassinate him. In response Telli was arrested and sent to prison and died in prison in November 1976.
However, in 1977, protests against the regime’s economic policy intensified furthermore and he was forced to take a U-turn by relaxing restrictions on trade; offering amnesty to refugees whom they returned home from exile in neighboring countries and releasing hundreds of political prisoners. Relations with the Soviet bloc then deteriorated, as Touré sought to increase Western aid and foreign private investment to revive a declining Guinea economy.
Touré was elected unopposed to a fourth seven-year term as president in 1980 and in May 1982 after several months of negotiations a new constitution that supported capitalistic policies was adopted. He then visited the United States and while in Washington, Toure urged for more American private investment in Guinea, and claimed that the country had “fabulous economic potential” for investment.
On the 26th March 1984, President Touré suddenly died of a heart attack while undergoing an emergency heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio in the USA. Prime Minister Louis Lansana Béavogui became President, pending elections that were to be held within 45 days. On the 3rd April 1984 the Political Bureau of the PDG ruling party was due to elect Touré’s successor; and under the Constitution, the PDG new leader would automatically be elected to a seven-year term as President.
Just hours before that meeting took place, the armed forces seized power in a coup d’état. They denounced the last years of Touré’s rule as a bloody dictatorship. The Military Junta suspended the constitution, dissolved the National Assembly, and abolished the PDG party. On the 5th April 1984, Army Coronel Lansana Conté, leader of the coup, heading the Military Committee for National Recovery (CMRN) assumed the presidency.
Irrespective of his failure Touré is remembered as a charismatic figure and although his legacy as President is often scorned in his home country, he remains an icon of pan-Africanism; a pan-Africanist and African liberation forefather in the wider African community.
His strident pan-African thoughts makes Sékou Touré widely celebrated by many across Africa as a hero of African liberation struggle and identity. Though he died without realizing his dream of a united Africa; the end of his era points once again to a “Failed Vision of a United Africa”.
Dr Kafumu is the Member of Parliament for Igunga Constituency
