United Nations: Irresponsible & Repugnant

UNITED NATIONS

“Never before have I heard such irrational, irresponsible, insulting and repugnant language in these chambers—and language used, if you please, contemptuously to impugn and slander a gallant and successful effort to save human lives of many nationalities and colors.”

Adlai Stevenson, who doesn’t get worked up very often, had carefully written the speech, overruled the doubts of some of his aides (“Should we be so rough?”), and sent the words flying like stinging chips of wood across the Security Council’s horseshoe table. He had reason to be angry; in both Council and Assembly, the Africans’ irrational and insulting language had poured forth, supposedly in support of a complaint to the Council that the Stanleyville rescue operation had been an act of “aggression” and “intervention.”

The Accusers. Led by Africa’s radical hardcore—Ghana, Guinea, Algeria, Mali and Egypt—18 of the continent’s 35 nations had signed the complaint. The signatories included the tiny leftist kingdom of Burundi, where Chinese influence is strong, and backwater states that once belonged to France: Central African Republic, Brazzaville Congo, Dahomey, Mauritania and Mali. Also on the list, however, were normally more moderate Ethiopia and the Sudan, and the Commonwealth nations of Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, of which better things should have been expected.

Despite the fact that many of the complaining nations, such as Tanzania and Kenya, had in the past relied on outside troops to help them keep order, or had called them in to quell uprisings, the rescue operation was roundly condemned by Foreign Minister Charles-Daniel Ganao of the Brazzaville Congo as “the latest aggression committed by the Americans, the Belgians and the British against the black population.”

Ganao charged that the operation’s only purpose had been “to exterminate the black inhabitants,” but Guinean Foreign Minister Louis Beavogui thought it had been carried out “to keep Africa within the orbit of the imperialist powers,” and Kenya’s Foreign Minister Joseph Murumbi called it a “sordid collusion, a calculated attempt to impose American-Belgian domination in the Congo.” For Tanzanian Foreign Minister Oscar Kambona, it “will go down in history as the meanest, most unwarranted and provocative interference by the Western world in the affairs of the African continent.”

Burundi’s Foreign Minister Joseph Mbazumutima sneered that Premier Tshombe’s white allies consider “the blacks, by definition, killers and liars.” And Mali’s Foreign Minister Ousman Ba even accused the U.S. of “massive cannibalism.”

The Specter. It was a chilling display, and its significance reached far beyond the Congo. “Even such a torrent of abuse of my country is of no consequence compared to the specter of racial antagonism and conflict raised in this chamber,” said Stevenson. “I personally need no credentials as a spokesman for racial equality. I say that racial hatred, racial strife, has cursed the world for too long. I make no defense of the sins of the white race. But the antidote for white racism is not black racism.”

Stevenson charged that the real interventionists in the Congo were Algeria, Ghana, Burundi and Brazzaville—not to mention the Chinese Reds—who were actively supporting the Congolese rebels against Tshombe’s legal government. Stevenson warned: “If every internal rivalry is to become a Spanish Civil War, with each faction drawing in other Africans and great powers from other continents, the history of independent Africa in this century will be bloody and shameful.”

The Defender. One of the Africans who publicly agreed with Stevenson was Nigeria’s earthy, bulldogged Foreign Minister Jaja Wachuku, who noted that the wild, radical charges were not “the only opinion that exists within the African scene.” The only serious question before the Security Council, said Wachuku, was the Tshombe government’s own charge “that certain sister African countries have been subverting it, aiding and abetting rebellion within its territory, and indeed doing everything to make it impossible for that state to exist.”

Wachuku pointed out that Tshombe had sought U.S. and Belgian support only after all African states had refused to help him restore order: “If your brothers and sisters let you down and you know that you have some faithful friends, you turn to them.” As to the left-wing cry that all Africans must rally against Tshombe, Wachuku remarked acidly that “it appears that there are people who feel that in Africa one must all be of the same type, the same size and the same weight, and that our color must be exactly the same.” Such thinking could only lead to trouble, he said: “We have different shades of black in Africa. Some are very fair, some are chocolate brown, some are very dark, and some are what you might call graphite grey.”

The Russian Role. All such arguments were lost on the Russians. Soviet Delegate Nikolai Fedorenko charged wildly that the “monstrous” Stanleyville mercy mission had been part of “a criminal conspiracy for the dismemberment of the Congo,” that Tshombe’s mercenaries had massacred over 10,000 Congolese.

There was increasing evidence that the Russians, perhaps jarred into action by Peking’s successful inroads, are beginning their first major African drive since they were kicked out of Guinea three years ago. In Moscow the Kremlin suddenly closed the Congo’s embassy staff on mysterious charges of “hostile activities.” From the Congo, where Tshombe’s armies were running into increased fire power from the rebel Simbas, came the first solid proof that Russia’s military aid was getting through. Government troops captured from the rebels a quantity of Russian rifles and machine guns, many still bearing traces of heavy packing grease.