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Ivory Coast
Index
After the defeat of France and the alignment of many
West
Africans with the Free French, the political maturity of
the
indigenous populations developed. De Gaulle recognized the
need to
revise the relationship between France and its colonies in
Africa.
In January 1944, Free French politicians and high-ranking
colonial
officials from the French African colonies met in
Brazzaville (in
present-day Congo). The Brazzaville Conference, as it came
to be
known, recommended political, social, and economic
reforms. It
accepted the representation of the colonies in the French
Constituent Assembly, which was to draw up a new French
constitution after the war, and the subsequent
representation of
the colonies in whatever parliamentary body the
constitution
established. The conference also recommended that the
colonies be
administered with greater autonomy and that both French
citizens
and Africans be permitted to elect a legislative assembly.
In
addition, the conference committed the French government
to respect
local customs, abolish the indigénat, adopt a new
penal
code, end labor conscription, improve health and
educational
facilities, and open positions in the colonial
administration to
Africans.
The only immediate effect of the conference was the
passage of
a law in August 1944 granting workers in the AOF the right
to
organize. In October 1945, after the defeat of Germany and
the end
of the war, the first countrywide elections were held in
Côte
d'Ivoire to choose two delegates for the French
Constituent
Assembly, which was to meet in Paris before the end of the
year.
French citizens residing in Côte d'Ivoire elected one
delegate, and
a restricted African electorate chose Félix
Houphouët-Boigny as the
other delegate. Houphouët-Boigny, a wealthy African
planter and
French-educated physician, was the cofounder of the
African
Agricultural Union (Syndicat Agricole Africain--SAA),
which was
formed in 1944 to fight for the abolition of forced labor
and the
rights of African planters. Much of Houphouët-Boigny's
support came
from the SAA, whose members included some 20,000 African
planters
as well as laborers, civil servants, traders, and other
Africans
engaged in the money economy. In spite of his popularity,
however,
Houphouët-Boigny won by only a narrow margin.
Two factors explain the closeness of the vote. First,
the
French colonial administration disapproved of the SAA and
consequently supported the candidacy of a Mossi, costing
HouphouëtBoigny the votes of the majority of Mossi, who constituted
one of
the largest ethnic groups in Upper Volta. And second,
HouphouëtBoigny , a Baoulé, faced rival candidates from the Bété and
Agni
ethnic groups. Houphouët-Boigny's support came from most
of the
rural voters in the south and the forest area, but he
would not
have won the election without the support of most of the
voters in
the Bobo Dioulasso region in Upper Volta (a part of Côte
d'Ivoire's
annexed territory).
When the French Constituent Assembly met in Paris, 63
of the
600 delegates represented the African colonies. The
African
delegates, all members of the educated elite, demanded
liberal
reforms in the colonial system, for which they received
support
from French socialist and communist delegates. In the end,
the
assembly reevaluated colonial policy and drafted a plan
for the
union of France and the colonies.
In addition to abolishing the indigénat and
forced labor
system, in 1945 and 1946 the French government decreed a
number of
other important reforms concerning Africans. It granted
freedom of
speech, association, and assembly to the residents of the
colonies;
it provided funds for economic and social development; it
permitted
the AOF to adopt a new penal code; and it granted all
inhabitants
of French colonies French citizenship. France's failure to
define
closely the rights of citizenship, however, prevented the
indigenous populations of the colonies from the full
exercise of
civil rights on the grounds that they were not yet ready
for it.
Data as of November 1988
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