Word: togolands
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...marriage, even if the price is right? This question, which is significant in bride-buying Africa, was one of many debated last week by 300 Roman Catholic women from ten African countries who met under UNESCO sponsorship in Lome, steamy capital of the French West African autonomous Republic of Togoland. Balancing the imperatives of religion against the demands of custom, they found bride buying acceptable-if rising prices do not shut out Christian suitors...
...Relatives. In Africa, they expect even greater care from a wife than she must give to her husband. Of all relatives who stick their noses in a wife's affairs, sisters-in-law are the worst. "In my country," reported a Togoland woman, "sisters-in-law are more dangerous than mothers...
...Togoland is a hot, humid and tiny country, 75 miles wide and 330 miles long, named by the Germans, given to the French under a U.N. trusteeship, and stuck like an afterthought on the map of Africa, between Ghana and the even tinier French territory of Dahomey. Of all French African territories, it is closest to independence. At the same time, it has seemed closest to France. Since 1956 the government has been safely in the hands of Premier Nicolas Grunitzky, a naturalized French citizen and member of the French National Assembly. The boss of the ruling political party...
...because the leading party in the land, in the years immediately following World War II, has beaten the drum for independence and boycotted all elections since 1952. Each year Sylvanus Olympio, 56, head of the Comité de l'Unité Togolaise (C.U.T.), journeyed to Manhattan to plead Togoland's cause before the U.N. He is a graduate of the left-wing-leaning London School of Economics, and Togoland's top businessman. As a result of his boycott, an Assembly was elected without a single member of the opposition represented, and France was able to keep control...
Only France and South Africa held back. Foreign Minister Georges Bidault merely said France was "prepared to study" trusteeship terms for her slices of Togoland and the Cameroons (rubber, cocoa, palm oil). With Gallic eloquence, he painted a picture of French colonial idealism and native happiness that was somewhat at variance with the facts. Forced labor and high taxes actually caused natives to flee by tens of thousands...