How France Shaped New Africa
By HOWARD W. FRENCH (Originally published in The New York Times, February 28, 1995)
When Jacques Foccart, one of France's most secretive statesmen, broke his legendary silence with a newly published memoir, one of his main goals, it seems, was to shed the image that he had long headed a potent network of informants, henchmen and spies in former French territories in Africa.
Instead, for all his denials, what emerges from the book about the man who was among Charles de Gaulle's top aides is a picture of a master puppeteer. The account indicates that his seemingly unchecked powers in shaping the former French empire in Africa in the postcolonial era surpass even those imagined by ardent critics of French behavior in the third world.
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