First ColumnAuthor(s): NTUSource: Africa Today, Vol. 12, No. 8 (Oct., 1965), p. 2Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4184657 .

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first column...

WE NOTE, WITH FASCINATION, yet another addition to the Marvin Liebman stable of organizations dedicated to the pursuit of Communists in Africa: The American-African Affairs Association, Inc. (AAAA). Liebman is a New York publicist and fund-raiser frequently associated with right-wing causes. In scope, the new group falls somewhere between two other Liebman enterprises: that earlier triumph, the American Committee for Aid to Katanga Freedom Fighters ("Katanga is the Hungary of 1961," proclaimed a full-page ad in the New York Times of that year), and the quietly persevering American Afro-Asian Educational Exchange, Inc. (AAAEE).

The MM, like the AAAEE, appears to be fairly low-keyed. The prospectus warns us that just as "American understanding of China was pretty much in the hands of the Institute of Pacific Relations," and hence was betrayed to the Communists, so today, in the case of another "sleeping giant-Africa . . . [it] is largely in the hands of semi-professional 'liberals!' Through various 'scholarly' publications and organizations-such as the American Committee on Africa-they repeat the same intellectual blunders -in regard to development in Africa...

There follows a rather fragile and long-winded outline of the new group's "Purpose": ". . . winds of change . . . no political experience . . . future of all mankind . . . vacuum left in Africa . . . impenetrable jungles . . . Communist onslaught ... poverty and barbarism. . . ." This tender-minded approach made us fairly ache for the robust and happy ignorance of, say, the New York Daily News which can dismiss Africa in two paragraphs headed "Cannibals and Communists."

The spirit of Christian forbearance is continued in the proposals for the group "program." An ambitious series of publications is foreseen, including some of a "scholarly" nature (New York right-wingers have this thing, this yearning, this penis envy for scholarliness; one is tempted to let them in on the secret that it really isn't such a Big Deal). There are to be conferences, ex- changes of individuals, and even "informational liaisons."

Liebman enterprises are always very strong on future programs at launch- ing time. One expects so much (some people might even say, "one fears so much"), but one receives, in the end, so very little. A few reprints-one of the AMEE's first acts on adding Africa to the two other A's was to send out a reprint of an Eric Louw speech-an article in the National Review or the Reader's Digest. . . . One trusts he will do better this time; he should: he's trying to raise $161,000!

Our feeling of deja-vu is only increased on reading the Illustrious Names rounded up to push off this third right-wing crusade into the "impenetrable jungles" of Africa. There's Rusher and Yergen, Molnar and Kirk, Dos Passos, Bozell and, of course, apartheid's Praetorian guard, Ernest van den Haag. National Review editors and contributors all, and repeats from the other two crusades. We regret to note that the new war's alarm has yet found no response from reservists- Bert Wolfe, Max Eastman, Senator Eastland and that indefatig- able Africanist, General James A. Van Fleet.

We have little fear that the AAAA will do much harm in Africa. The Ameri- can stock over there is already so low that twenty Liebmans could go un- noticed. But while we have no fear, we cannot forbear from being slightly ashamed at seeing these grown men, with their lunatic phantasies and invin- cible ignorance, about to prance around in the name of America before a con- tinent which once expected so much of us.

NTU

Please send us your zip code on a postcard if it does not appear in your address on the back page. The Post Office has announced that after January 1, it will refuse to deliver any bulk mail that does not bear a zip code. And we can't afford to send Africa Today by firs-t class.

October 1965-Vol. XII, No. 8

Editor: Collin Gonze Assistant Editor: Catharine Raymond Contributing Editors: Robert Browne, Mary Benson, Mark Cohen, Stanley Diamond, Elizabeth Landis, Sheldon Weeks, Peter Weiss.

Between Two Worlds ................... 6 Anthony Vigo

Mauritius: L'lsle-de-L'lnde .................. 8 Allen J. Rawick

Albert Schweitzer: Facts and Fancies ........ ........... 11

Russell Warren Howe

Debunking Howe ........... ........ 12 Donald Szantho Harrington

BOOKS

Four on the Congo ............... .... 13 Marvin D. Markowitz

The View From Jatat ................... 17 Sheldon G. Weeks

Apartheid: How Will It End? .............. 18 Winifred Courtney

Sylvia Roth designed this month's cover.

Published monthly except July and August by the American Committee on Africa, Inc. Subscriptions: One year, $5.00; two years, $9.50; three years, $13.50. Students: one year $2.00. Foreign (except Canada and Pan Amer- ica) add $1.00 per year. Sterling zone checks accepted. Advertising: Rates on request. Change of Address: Notify four weeks in advance, advising old and new address. Un- solicited manuscripts will not be returned un- less requested and accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Second class postage paid at New York, NY. Copyright i) 1965 by American Committee on Africa, Inc., 211 East 43rd Street, New York 17, N. Y. TN 7-8733

2 AFRICA TODAY

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