Report From Africa: Morocco, Liberia And Six African Leaders (1957)

The United States has a stake in Africa that extends from the plains of Marrakesh to the shores of Tripoli. American technicians are helping new governments to walk, new citizens to read, swamping Africa with training manuals on everything from malaria control to copper smelting. But at the same time, American technicians are also teaching US Air Force pilots how to fly a jet made of titanium 1,000 mph. Check your gun stabilizer doors. Check the friction lock on your scissors. Check the skid. This is a base at Sidish Lmain, Morocco as it received its new F-100 fighters. Notice the large dive brake, which is different from any of the other series aircraft that you have flown. We need this di brake in order to slow us down at these supersonic speeds that we get into. Notice the back end of your aircraft here. Notice the titanium. Check to see that your titanium is not cracked. President Eisenhower recently indicated that until we perfected the B-52 and developed the intercontinental missile, the B-47 jet bombers would be our chief method of massive retaliation. We built four B-47 airfields in French Morocco at a cost of a half billion dollars. We have equipped them with vast hangers, oil depots, and in all likelihood, a few atomic bombs. Until the B-52s are ready, the Strategic Air Command needs these bases, which put the B-47s within 4 and 1/2 hours of Russia. The United States built these bases when Morocco was a colony of France under an agreement negotiated. So the Sultan is now the political as well as the religious leader of Morocco and the United States hopes that it can continue to keep him as an ally. But it has been reliably reported that our State Department has not yet officially notified him of our arrangement with the French or begun to negotiate a new one with the now independent Moroccan government. [Music] Go. There are also guided missiles over Africa. This is Wheelis Air Force Base in Libya. The Air Force maintains a Matador guided missile squadron in Germany, but there is no suitable testing range in densely populated Europe. The Libyan desert, twice as vast as Egypt with a population of only 1,300,000 people, is ideal country for testing weapons. Libya once got its revenue from pirates and slave traders. More recently, all it had to sell the world were its strategic location. Thus, the names Tripoli, Tobuk, and Benghazi in so many history books. Libya has not been self-sufficient since the 7th century. The Turks squandered millions trying to colonize it. The Italians and Iluche had spent about a half billion dollars before they were driven out in World War II. When the victorious allies couldn't agree on what to do with Libya, the UN created it as a new nation, which got its sovereignty in 1952. Critics of this decision claimed that unlike Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia, which recently won independence, Libya, with an average income of $35 per year, cannot survive as a nation and will tear itself apart. [Applause] Currently, the British are giving the Libyan government an outright subsidy of $10.5 million a year and in return are using a large air base and station an armored division in the country. This year we are giving Libya $9 million. Next year 11 million also 5,000 tons of grain. The point4 program and American private capital are bringing in oil drilling equipment and helping to build harbors, dams, and schools. The two-mile strip at Wheelis has a plane landing or taking off every 45 seconds. 10,000 US airmen and their families live there. Many of them in a weird caravan of trailers out in the desert. Wheelless air force base employing thousands of Libyans plus the weekly American payroll is the core of Libya's economy. We interviewed Prime Minister Ben Haleim at his office in Tripoli. Mr. Prime Minister, what has been the effect of this huge air base on the economy of Libya? Well, many thousands of Libyan are being are being used there are are working there. Many hundreds are being trained there. Uh the effect of debates on the economic side is also tremendous. Uh many millions of dollars are being spent each year in Tripoli. Uh workers who are uh employed on the base are trained uh and uh this add to the skill in my country also. they go there in the base and they see a better uh standard of living and this gives them uh new ideas. They try to to to to uh to achieve those standards and it gives them more hope. Well sir, how do you feel about recent developments in French North Africa? Well, if you want my frank opinion, it's one of the biggest shame of the free nations. Uh, one cannot admit that a a people who are trying to get their independence uh to be treated the way they are treated now. This carnage of Algeria is not the solution of the problem. There must be another solution by peaceful ways. And I do hope that the French will will not forget will remember their uh principles of their re revolution. the principles of freedom of equality, fraternity and liberty when designed, they were not designed only for the European or American nations. I hope they are designed for all the nations of the world. I have heard rumors that some arms are passing through Libya on the way to Algeria. Well, these are rumors. There there is nothing to support these rumors but these rumors will continue as long as the slaughter and carnage of Algeria is existing. We don't permit any traffic of air though we do sympathize very much very strongly the Algerians we do hope that they will obtain their independence but we cannot permit traffic of arms. Recently you declined to accept economic assistance from the Soviet Union. Yeah. Would you tell me why? Well, uh we've studied uh the Soviet economic aid and we found that it does not help us in accelerating in accelerating our development program and we found that we better stay where we are in good relations with our western country. We don't like to make changes in our policy. We like to remain with our friends and these are the main considerations which made us uh to thank the Soviet government and to tell them that we will not accept the offer. Do you see Africa as a continuing struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of communism? Well, up to now there is no trace of communism in in in Africa or to be correct there is very slight trace of communism in Africa. It entirely depends on your attitude. If you will leave things as they are now in Algeria, if I am an Algerian leader and I lose face in you western people, I will I will I repeat make any arrangement with even the devil so as to get my independence and my self-determination and most probably this devil will be communism. We began the first of these two 1-hour reports on Africa by stating that the most powerful and explosive word in Africa was freedom. We would conclude tonight's report by briefly summing up the opinions of six African leaders on the state of freedom. First, Enruma of the Gold Coast. You said that uh you saw the end of colonialism. When do you think the end will come? It's complete liquidation. its complete destruction will depend upon the the the the nationalist movements in the various territories. The extent to which they press for their own political emancipation and I don't think anybody can do it for them. They have to do it themselves. President Tubman of Liberia, when do you think all Africa will be free? That is hard to predict. as difficult to predict as it is to tell when and when will be judgment day. Michael Blundell of Kenya. In my view, the most outstanding thing about America when you go there is everybody is an American first and he puts his background second. Well, that's what I want to achieve here. I want to make every African, every Asian, every European feel eventually that Kenya comes first and their origin second. Lord Melbourne of Rhdesia. The people who would advance the African too rapidly and treat them rather like a performing animal are just as dangerous as those who would try to keep them back. To understand that, you must realize that 65 years ago, hardly any of them had ever seen a European. They had no written language. They didn't know the use of a wheel. They've made enormous stride since the European came here. And now they've got to the stage and which is essential to give them some representation in the governing body. No other policy to my mind can succeed. You could keep them down by force for a period, but that could be no permanent solution and would ultimately lead to the expulsion of the Europeans themselves. Father Trevor Huddleston, the Anglican minister whose church recalled him from South Africa in the midst of one of freedom's darkest hours. But even Father Huddleston sees signs of hope on the great South African day, the day of the covenant as it's called out here, when generally the ministers of the of the government tend to make rather arrogant speeches about uh the white race and so on. This year for the first time the whole tone of those speeches and in fact the substance of them too uh was very different. From the prime minister downwards, they were concerned with relationships with the emerging self-governing territories of Africa, the Gold Coast, Nigeria, and the like. And in fact, the Minister of External Affairs uh took the trouble to announce that he was creating a special department of state to deal with these African territories. Now, that may not sound very exciting, but it is tremendously significant really. It means that the Union of South Africa is beginning to realize that she is completely isolated from the whole of the continent of Africa and that unless she gets on terms with these states, things are going to be pretty bad. But when you recognize that there are 200 million Africans on the continent of Africa and only 2 and a half million white Europeans in South Africa, I think that's a cause for hope. That is the end of Seiet Now's second report on Africa. We hope to have persuaded you of only one thing and that is the urgent necessity of the western powers devising a method of dealing with the peoples of Africa in equality, decency and dignity. Good night and good luck.