Hearts heavy, whites feeling driven from Africa

He sits alone in the softly lit room, leaning on mauve cushions and eating cashew nuts out of a glazed coconut shell. His wife and children left three weeks ago, spat on and slapped as they ran to catch the departing plane to Paris.

"We wanted to stay together," he says. "But they were afraid for their lives."

Born and raised in Africa, this middle-aged French professional, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says he always loved the Ivory Coast. He always felt safe here.

"We used to joke: We don't live in Africa; we live in the Ivory Coast," he says ruefully. There was rule of law here, he explains, a sound economy, and broad, modern roads - not to mention plenty of servants, good restaurants, a wild nightlife, and weekends at beach houses down the coast.

And then the whole thing got flipped on its head. Now alone and angry, he, like countless other whites in other African countries have done before him, wonder what the future holds for whites on the continent.

A failed coup last September here led to civil war, and pro-government masses turned against their French neighbors, blaming them for what they perceived as France's sympathy for the northern rebels.

His offices were attacked, his children's school was ransacked, his neighbor's home was looted, and the streets of Abidjan, once nicknamed the Paris of Africa, were filled with furious mobs screeching to whites, "Go home!"

But for many whites, here in Ivory Coast as elsewhere, Africa is home. There are 4.5 million white South Africans. Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Namibia all have white communities numbering in the tens of thousands, and thousands more are scattered among Angola, Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Congo, Senegal, Gabon, and beyond. Many hold onto their British, Portuguese, German, French or Italian citizenships, but most have been on this continent all their lives.

Until five months ago, some 20,000 French nationals lived in Ivory Coast. Most were left over or descended from the French colonialists who ruled until independence in 1960. Six hundred French-owned companies were based in Ivory Coast. The telephone and electricity companies, as well as the ports of Abidjan and San Pedro and the lucrative cocoa, rubber, and timber trades are all dominated by French. There are French doctors, lawyers, teachers, and even politicians.

"It makes no sense," the Frenchman says. "We have only given to this country. We gave the Africans work and worked with them. It is not like Zimbabwe where the whites took all the land. Here we were accepted."

But were they ever, really?

"It was never as simple as they say," states Gerard N'Guessan, a wealthy Ivorian shop owner in Abidjan whose children attended one of the city's 10 French schools before they all were forced to shut last month. "It should come as no surprise that we have a love-hate relationship with the former colonialist, here as elsewhere in Africa. We speak their language and eat their pain chocolat.... But they were and will always be outsiders."

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