CONGO: Jungle Shipwreck

The collapse in the Congo spread last week from the army to the government. Cabinet ministers argued heatedly with each other on the streets of Leopoldville. Lanky Premier Patrice Lumumba could seldom be found. With long-suffering President Joseph Kasavubu in tow, he was busy flying from city to city trying to impose a semblance of order.

Who’s Master? Their trip was an embarrassing failure. The authority of Lumumba’s central government extended no farther than the sound of his voice. As soon as he left a town or a province, power returned to whoever was strong enough and ruthless enough to wield it. At Elisabethville, capital of the secessionist province of Katanga, the plane was denied permission to land. A spokesman for the Katanga leader, Moise Tshombe, said that President Kasavubu was welcome, but “we refuse to let that other character set foot on Katangese soil.” When the two harassed leaders took off from Luluabourg and headed for Stanleyville, they never made it: a Belgian crew member overheard Lumumba say he wanted to break off diplomatic relations with Belgium, and the Belgian pilot turned the plane toward Leopoldville, where Ndjili Airport was in the hands of Belgian paratroops.

As the plane landed, the Belgians dutifully drew up an honor guard. Alighting, Lumumba stonily refused to review “enemy forces.” A Belgian officer said: “Our presence here is only to protect the whites.” Snapped Lumumba: “The whites need no protection, and we do not need your presence.” As the two Congolese leaders waited for another plane to take them to Stanleyville, they were surrounded by an angry crowd of Belgian Lumumba was cursed and spat upon.

“Why don’t you go see the women have been raped?” shouted a white and punched Lumumba in the face. In best performance since he became Pre mier, Patrice Lumumba remained and unshaken.

Dark Hint. By midweek it seemed if every Cabinet minister was crying help from somewhere. The Deputy Pre mier asked tiny Ghana to send its army. Foreign Minister Justin Bomboko for U.S. troops, but his appeal was promptly disavowed by Lumumba, who had been off on one of his flights. Lu mumba instead asked the U.N. for help, and hinted darkly that unless he got it, the Congo would appeal to Communist China. No one in the Congolese government asked Belgium for anything, but Brussels moved swiftly in response to the cries of its beleaguered citizens. Para troops and commando units fanned out from the big Belgian military bases at Kamina and Kitona; planeloads of home troops were rushed to the Congo from Belgium.

The crack Belgian paratroops had been expected to display an iron discipline, in contrast with the disorderly and irrational behavior of the mutinous Congolese troops of the Force Publique. But the paratroops soon got out of hand. Storming their way into Leopoldville after cap turing the airport, they beat up any stray Africans they encountered, disarmed and arrested Congolese troops. When Congo Foreign Minister Justin Bomboko pro posed a truce, with joint patrols from both sides to police Leopoldville, the paratroops indignantly refused to sit be side “those black apes” in military jeeps. They were trigger-happy and arrogant. TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs was shot at by a paratrooper, who then apologized because “in the dark I thought you were an African.”

Holed Bastard. When Premier Lumumba returned to Leopoldville from one of his hectic flights and got into a Sabena bus for the elevenmile ride into the city, paratroopers rocked the bus so violently that they raised it a foot off the ground. One of them shouted: “We ought to shoot this bastard full of holes!” Lumumba finally escaped under the escort of a U.S. embassy car. U.N. Representative Ralph Bunche, who had been confined to his hotel room by Force Publique mutineers, was manhandled by Belgian paratroops at the airport.

Militarily, the Belgians did not do so well. They restored order in the white section of Leopoldville, in Luluabourg chased Congolese mutineers away from a hotel where they had besieged 75 whites for two days. But they failed embarrassingly in an attack on the Congolese garrison of the river port of Matadi.

Fast Vote. In New York the U.N.

Security Council convened in extraordinary session to consider Lumumba’s appeal. To avoid any charge of colonialism, the U.S. had earlier turned down an appeal to send U.S. troops. Behind the scenes, U.S. Delegate Lodge argued that the Congo problem should be solved by Africans, backed a Tunisian resolution that authorized the dispatch of a U.N.

military force to the Congo and demanded that Belgium withdraw its armed forces.

The first U.N. detachments were to be made up of troops from such states as Tunisia, Morocco, Ghana and Ethiopia.

Though Russia’s Arkady Sobolev routinely charged that the U.S., Britain and France were engaged in a “colonialist conspiracy,” in the end Russia was forced to vote for the resolution, which passed 8-0 (Britain, France and Nationalist China abstained). Within hours, Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold had the first contingents of a 6,000-man force on their way.

In Belgium the Congo crisis shook the government of Premier Gaston Eyskens.

The Socialist opposition declared that the fuse for the mutiny of the Force Publique had been set off by the martinet behavior of General Emile Janssens, 58, its commander before independence. “The man is a military blockhead,” conceded one Cabinet minister. Janssens had long opposed training the Congolese for officer rank, habitually referred to both Belgian and Congolese politicians as “stupid rabble.” He treated Lumumba with contempt, once remarked: “With my 25,000 soldiers, I can rule the Congo if I want to.” Last week, a slender, mustachioed man in a rumpled suit, he marched into Brussels’ Place du Trome, stood stiffly at attention before the bronze equestrian statue of King Leopold II, founder of the Congo.

Saluting the statue, he barked: “Sire, Us vous I’ont cochonne [Your Majesty, they fouled it up for you].” Leopold II might well have understood him. When the Congo was his private igth century domain, Leopold drained it of wealth by measures of repression and brutality that shocked the world at the turn of the century. The Force Publique had been the King’s method of keeping the natives in check. Its troops were literally whipped into shape. Those who survived became efficient, if robot, soldiers who were trained to snap to attention and salute any passing white man. Because there were never enough “volunteers” for the low pay and hard discipline of the soldier’s life, village authorities fell into the habit of “appointing” local trouble makers as candidates for the army.

The Belgians always sent soldiers belonging to one tribe into the territory of other tribes so that there would be little fraternization with the population. The soldiers learned that the best way to pacify people was to treat them roughly. Last week part of the Congo’s trouble was that the troops had learned that lesson too well.

Exodus. By week’s end an estimated 60,000 of the 80,000 Belgians had fled before the rampaging soldiery. In Luluabourg only 54 of 3,600 Belgians were left, and mutineers still roamed the streets looting European shops and homes. From outlying districts there came more reports of rape and mayhem. In the Equator province a Roman Catholic priest was tied to a stake, forced to watch as ten nuns were repeatedly raped. Belgium’s Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Wigny spoke for his nation last week when he cried in Parliament: “Do we really have to prove with legal phrasing and quoting of legal textbooks the Tightness of our intervention, when the arrivals of our refugees prove beyond doubt its necessity?” Only bright spot for Belgium was Katanga province, whose premier, Moise Tshombe, had declared his province independent and called for Belgian intervention against the mutinous Force Publique. There was some momentary confusion when Tshombe, after announcing the independence of Katanga, seemed to reverse himself a day or two later. Disarmingly, he explained to reporters that his seeming about-face was “simply a cover-up to allow Belgium to move additional troops into Katanga,” and that “it was prudent to help Belgium with this little story so that Belgium could help us.” He also boasted that parts of Kivu and Kasai provinces, including the valuable Tshikapa diamond fields, were ready to join his Katanga state, and he was hopefully eying populous Ruanda-Urundi, the home of the tall and stately Watutsi tribesmen.

Tshombe announced flatly that no U.N.

troops would be permitted to enter the borders of his state. “We told the United Nations merely that there was complete calm in Katanga.” At Jadotville, 100 miles to the north of his capital, the Belgians arrested General Victor Lundula, a former sergeant major who had been named supreme commander of Congo’s Force Publique, and handed him over to Tshombe. Grandiloquently, Tshombe ordered the general expelled from Katanga, apparently sparing him a .. j se fate because he had “acted considerately” about the welfare of white men during the “disturbances” in Jadotville.

Hourly Watch. Tshombe also accused Patrice Lumumba of “preparing the mutiny of the Force Publique and establishing a dictatorial regime staffed by Communists to terrify Europeans so that they would leave the country and be replaced by technicians from the Communist bloc.” Premier Lumumba and his ubiquitous companion, President Kasavubu, gave some credibility to this charge by cabling Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow that the Congo’s independence was threatened by Belgium and “certain Western countries” and that their lives “were in danger.” “We beg you to watch hourly over the development of the situation,” they said. Delighted at this opportunity to pose as the champion of African nationalism. Khrushchev responded with an 800-word telegram of support for the Congo’s “struggle” against colonial oppressors. “The bayonet was Belgian,” cried Khrushchev rhetorically, “but the bosses were U.S., Belgian, British and West German monopolists,” and he demanded that the West keep its “hands off the Republic of the Congo.” While he fulminated, the U.S. was rushing to the Congo not marines but food and medicine, and furnishing planes to airlift U.N.

troops into Leopoldville.

At week’s end the U.N. task force was growing at Leopoldville. Some 600 Tunisian troops and 200 from Ghana arrived in British planes, and 1,000 Moroccans are expected this week. Congolese citizens wildly cheered the U.N. arrival, and mobs of young men taunted Belgian paratroops patrolling the white neighborhoods of Leopoldville. Cars driven by Europeans were stoned, and two white men unwary enough to be abroad in the outskirts of Leopoldville were beaten to death. Belgian officers grumbled at the arrival of “more black bastards” in the U.N. detachments, and complained that they would be no more likely to protect Europeans than the Congolese troops had been.

The arrival of U.N. troops seemed only to make Lumumba more frantic. At week’s end he issued an ultimatum to the U.N. forces, demanding that they clear all Belgian troops out of the Congo. If the Belgians were not gone within three days, said Lumumba, he would call on “Soviet Russian troops” for help. Khrushchev would undoubtedly be delighted to oblige.

Reeling Ship. The Congo treasury is empty, and there is virtually no chance of collecting taxes since most Congolese firmly believe that independence means freedom from taxation. Foreign investors have been thoroughly scared off, and each morning Congolese workers line up hopefully before the closed doors of factories whose white owners and managers have fled. The government bureaucracy ground to a halt as 10,000 Belgian civil servants left the country. The Leopoldville radio was off the air for 48 hours last week because there were no white men left to run it and inexperienced Congolese blew fuses every time they turned on the power.

In the third week of independence, the Congolese nation reeled through time like a ship that refuses to answer its helm in a storm. The white man’s day seemed ended in the Congo—but it was far from clear that the black man’s day had begun.