At a Korea University conference in Seoul a few months ago, I was placed next to Julius Nyerere of Tanzania at dinner. For those of us who covered Africa more than a quarter of a century ago, Nyerere was like a saint. Incorruptible, frank, good-humored, intellectual, he could charm the most suspicious and doubtful questioners into following the flow of his logic as he expounded the need in Africa for socialism, one-party democracy, self-reliance, non-alignment...

Ten years ago, I left New York on a dark, snow-lashed night and stepped down the next day into the morning glare of Dakar, in Senegal. It was an exciting, expectant time for the newly independent countries of Africa. Since that moment in Dakar, I have spent most of the last decade in Africa. Those ten years did not transform a gullible fool into a mean and narrow cynic, but I feel more critical, more doubtful, more skeptical, more pessimistic than I did in 1962. I still feel sympathetic and understanding. But I have learned that sympathy and understanding are not enough. Africa needs to be looked at with cold hardness as well. There have been more disappointments than accomplishments in Africa in the ten years. Two events — the Nigerian civil war and the assassination of Tom Mboya — struck like body blows at the sympathies of an outsider. The war was probably the greatest scourge in black Africa since the slave trade, and it was largely self-made. Murder cut down the man who seemed most to represent all that was modern in new Africa, and it was probably done for the glory of tribal chauvinism. On top of this, the decade has produced a host of other unpleasant events...

President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania is trying to have his economic cake and eat it, too. He ended a week-long nationalization takeover Monday with an appeal for more private investment. His appeal appeared in a special article for the East African Standard, the English language daily read by most Western businessmen in Nairobi. Nyerere maintained that his nationalization of banks and other businesses in the last week had cleared the air. Investors now knew they could invest in everything else with confidence, he wrote. Nyerere also said that his country now had nothing to fear from private investment because the important things had been nationalized. "The key positions of the economy have been secured for the nation in the same way, as during a war, an army occupies the sites which dominate the countryside," Nyerere said. "We can now welcome the enterprise of private investors without reservations, because we no longer have any cause to fear the effect of their activities on our social purpose." Nyerere's appeal is likely to fall on deaf ears...

New Kenya Immigration Bill Will Define Aliens' Rights, and Is Aimed at Indians - There are 358,000 Indians and Pakistanis in East Africa who face an uncertain and possibly tragic future. African jealousy of Indian success in business and the Asians' own past attitude of superiority toward the Africans has shaken the lives of the Pakistani and Indian traders since independence came to Africa. Two personal incidents underline their predicament. Five years ago, before independence, I cashed a check in a Nairobi bank and waited while an African apprentice clerk labored over the transaction. His Asian supervisor stood behind, impatient, scowling, sneering, shrugging - his every gesture telling me, "These Africans will never learn." Then I recently accompanied a young African into a duka, as rural Asian shops are called. The African sipped his soda and suddenly bust into a tirade. "Where is your money hidden?" he shouted at the Asian shopkeeper...

President Julius Nyerere ordered his government to take over all banks in Tanzania Monday, proving again that he's one African leader who follows up his flowery words with deeds no matter what the cost. The cost this time will be difficult to measure. But the action demonstrates that Nyerere meant exactly what he said Sunday when he announced Tanzania's new march toward socialism. According to Nyerere, Tanzania will follow its nationalization of banks by taking over all land, forests, mines, water property, oil refineries, electric power plants, communications, transport, insurance firms and other big industries in the country. Nyerere said he had nationalized the banks first because "money was more important than other things.' He announced no timetable for taking over the rest...