CONGO: The Three-Headed State

In a yellow plaster house with a red tin roof on the outskirts of Leopoldville, Colonel Joseph Mobutu, 29, bit his fingernails, answered the telephone, coped with a stream of visitors, and tried to keep his three children (aged five, three, and nine months) from crawling off with state papers. In a big, three-story, official residence near the river, bespectacled Premier Patrice Lumumba peered out curtained windows, occasionally shouted invented communiqués to passing newsmen, and cried defiance at the world. On a grassy hilltop overlooking the foaming Congo rapids, stolid President Joseph Kasavubu huddled in his modern-design palace and issued laconic statements to the effect that whatever Lumumba said was a lie.

Panicky Word. For most of last week, the three pretenders stayed close to home, surrounded by hedgerows of Congolese and U.N. troops. Each seemed to feel that venturing into the streets was inviting death or disaster. Because none of the rival heads of government would act, nothing got done. Congolese bureaucrats sat numbly at their desks shuffling papers and waiting for something to happen.

There were the usual alarms and excursions. A pro-Lumumba major tried to assassinate Colonel Mobutu, who wrestled the gun from the man’s hand. A squad of pro-Mobutu soldiers arrived with a warrant to arrest Patrice Lumumba but were turned back by a Ghanaian officer of the U.N. corps because the warrant was not properly drawn. A big river boat loaded with 400 soldiers pulled up at a Leopoldville dock, and the panicky word went out that they were Lumumba troops from his upriver stronghold of Stanleyville. Truckloads of Mobutu’s forces raced to the dock, escorted by jeeps armed with bazookas, recoilless rifles and machine guns. In the excitement, an armored car fired a wild shot into the river before it was learned that the new arrivals were a timid group of recruits loyal to Mobutu.

68-Man Mistake. News from the bush country was uniformly bad. Two U.N. detachments—Liberians and Tunisians—fought off ambushes by Congo tribesmen near Luluabourg. In the mineral-rich province of Katanga, where anti-Communist Moise Tshombe rules with the support of Belgian businessmen, there was serious trouble. Tshombe’s trigger-happy security forces raided the rebellious village of Luena, which supplies coal to feed the furnaces of the potent Union Miniére de Haut-Katanga. The troops reportedly “got out of control of their Belgian officers,” bound the hands of 68 Baluba tribesmen and murdered them all with Sten guns. The U.N. called it “the most brutal massacre yet to have taken place in the Congo,” and warned that U.N. forces would intervene the next time. Tshombe woodenly maintained that his secessionist army was only engaged in “hard repression of a rebellion,” but a Katanga spokesman finally admitted, “It was a mistake —they didn’t intend to kill them.”

Three Hats. Colonel Mobutu made a valiant effort to get the wheels of government turning. He created a High Commission made up of young, well-dressed, French-speaking teachers and graduates of Louvanium University, which was founded only six years ago. Promptly dubbed the “Student Council” by newsmen, the youthful elite is supposed to administer the government until the politicians can get together and put an end to political chaos. Mobutu designated as commission president able little Justin Bomboko, who thus became simultaneously Mobutu’s “Premier,” Lumumba’s Foreign Minister, and Kasavubu’s representative to the U.N.

All week long, President Kasavubu maintained a detached and dreamy silence in his hilltop palace. Patrice Lumumba continued to fulminate inside his empty residence. His supporters have fled or disappeared; the last of 450 Russian and Czech advisers glumly flew home in the Ilyushin transports they had previously given Lumumba. Such colorful and devious cronies as Serge Michel, his pro-Communist French press officer, and lissome Madame Blouin, the Mata Hari of central Africa, have found discretion the better part of valor and quietly decamped.

Undismayed by these desertions, Lumumba insisted that Colonel Mobutu’s military coup was not supported by anyone anywhere, not even the army. Why then was there no outcry against Mobutu? Replied Lumumba grandly: “Because I forbid it. I have restrained the army. I have held it in because we want peace.” Though apparently lacking much support among his own countrymen, Lumumba found some in the envoys of five African states. Diplomats representing Ghana, Guinea, Morocco, Sudan and the United Arab Republic at Leopoldville urged silent President Kasavubu to keep Lumumba as his Premier.

Also Goldfish. The strain was beginning to show even on Colonel Mobutu. Interviewed in a room furnished with a few dusty rubber plants and a bowl of sluggish goldfish, Mobutu complained: “I have no time to eat or sleep, and everyone calls on me—soldiers, politicians, journalists.” Reminded that the only reason the U.N. troops had prevented his arrest of Lumumba was because of a faulty warrant, Mobutu was asked if he would have a proper one issued. “You ask if I am going to arrest Lumumba!” he cried, throwing up his hands. “Why do you continue to ask? Why does everyone ask me everything? You will see what will happen when it happens.”

At week’s end Colonel Mobutu made a desperate effort to turn the three governments into one. He went to the President’s palace for a personal interview with Joseph Kasavubu and then stunned observers by turning up at Lumumba’s official residence. The ex-Premier launched at once into a half-hour tirade, to which Mobutu responded by reading a newspaper. Emerging later, Mobutu told newsmen: “I went to see President Kasavubu and Mr. Lumumba with the idea of a reconciliation. If necessary, I will impose a reconciliation.” Then the colonel went back home to his paper work, his ever-ringing telephone, and the shrill cries of his three tumbling children.