Magazines: Voice of the Third World

MAGAZINES Voice of Third World

The U.S. and Russia have formed a secret pact to divide the world between them. Seraphina, whose mother had been sold into slavery, is enraged. Her dark eyes flashing, she checks out her weaponry: a deadly energy ray that springs from her fingertips, a mirror that reflects secrets from any corner of the globe. All systems are go; the sexy superwoman darts out from her South American skyscraper to destroy the unholy alliance of the superpowers.

Although Seraphina is about to be boiled in molten wax in this week’s com ic strip, any faithful reader of Jeune Afrique (Young Africa) can be confident that she will escape and vanquish her enemies to the applause of all the neutralist nations of the “third world.”

Seraphina is one of the most popular features of a weekly French-language newsmagazine devoted to the problems of the third world, primarily in Africa. Reaching 85,000 readers around the world, Jeune Afrique has made itself must reading for the neutralist nations’ elite.

The magazine was founded in 1960 by Béchir ben Yahmed, 38, a Tunisian who decided he could exert more influence as a journalist than as a politician. An intimate of Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, he quit his job as Minister of Information because he felt that his boss had assumed too much power. The danger of one-man rule is, in fact, one of Jeune Afrique’s most persistent themes. “We believe that the funda mental role of the press is to prevent leaders from taking advantage of the people,” says Ben Yahmed. “Africa’s rulers have learned to fear us.”

The magazine, in turn, has developed a healthy respect for the power of the dictators. Four years ago, Jeune Afrique, which has been banned at least once by almost every African nation, moved off the continent—first to Rome, later to Paris. Staffers, however, still make regular forays into African countries, where many doors are often opened for them that are closed to Western correspondents.

Steadily gaining circulation, Jeune Afrique is now operating in the black. In the near future the news weekly plans to start pleading the cause of the third world in an English edition. It takes its role very seriously. “The underdeveloped world has been bullied a great deal in the past,” says Ben Yahmed. “It is still being bullied. But Seraphina, and perhaps even Jeune Afrique, are the instruments of its revenge.”