The Congo: The Rebels Collapse

From the depths of the Congolese rain forest came the plaintive voice of Christophe Gbenye, President of the rebels’ self-proclaimed People’s Republic of the Congo.”I did what I could to preserve African honor,” he said in a radio message to the continent’s nationalist leaders, “and you have left me alone beneath the bombardments of the Americans and Belgians. In the name of Lumumba, I utter a last appeal.” But not even the invocation of the martyred leftist was likely to help. For last week the whole rebel cause was collapsing. Incredible as it seemed, Moise Tshombe’s chaotic army was advancing furiously on all fronts. Spearheaded by white mercenaries, and operating under the air cover of U.S.-supplied B-26 fighter-bombers, government troops had marched to within striking distance of the rebel capital of Stanleyville.

More Punch. The turning point came in August, when a loyalist garrison drove back a major rebel assault on Bukavu after three bloody days of street fighting, giving Tshombe’s dispirited army its first real victory. Even more important, however, were 450 white mercenaries-mostly South Africans, Rhodesians and Belgians-recruited by Tshombe to give his army more punch.

The mercenaries were organized into small units and sent to shore up besieged garrisons, and to lead-and often plan-attacks on strategic rebel towns.

Slowly, sporadically, Tshombe’s forces began to close in. By taking Boende, they halted a rebel drive toward Leopoldville. By seizing Albertville and Uvira, they all but cut off the rebel supply lines from the Communist Chinese embassy in Burundi.

Last week the drive suddenly grew into a major offensive. Along the Uganda border, a government column shook the rebel hold on the northeastern Congo by recapturing the towns of Beni and Lubero. In the west, another force rolled unopposed from Boende all the way to Ikela, a vital road junction 185 miles from Stanleyville. But the main force came from the south. There, led by a Belgian colonel and 250 mercenaries, the 2,000-man 5th Mechanized Brigade clanked out of its staging area at Kongolo one morning, rumbled 250 miles in four days, conquered the rebel communications center at Kindu almost without firing a shot, and found itself a mere 250 miles south of Stanleyville.

The brigade’s principal tactical weapon along the way had been the telephone: at each town it stopped long enough to phone a warning to the rebel garrison in the next town to get out while it could. Unfailingly, the rebels fled.

Deadly Game. In Stanleyville, Gbe-nye’s government-which from the beginning had been so disreputable that not even the Chinese Communists would recognize it-appeared to be on its last legs. Food supplies were running out, and the few remaining scraps were being black-marketed at many times their normal worth. Rebel savages, hopped up by dope and voodoo spells, pillaged the city almost unchecked. And from the surrounding rebel countryside came tales of kangaroo courts that forced their victims to swallow gasoline, then sliced them open and ignited them.

Through it all, the rebel leaders quarreled and bickered among themselves; the Foreign Minister even hinted to a press conference that President Gbenye had sold out to the Americans.

If he had, the Americans would like to hear about it. For the desperate Gbenye had turned to a deadly game of blackmail. Announcing that he had taken hostage all 60 Americans and 800 Belgians who had been stranded by the rebel invasion of Stanleyville, he demanded an immediate end to U.S. and Belgian aid to Tshombe. Threatened Gbenye, in a broadcast on the official rebel radio in Stanleyville: “We can no longer guarantee the lives and property of Belgian and American citizens.” Gbenye may have been bluffing, but Tshombe obviously would rather not have to put him to the test. At week’s end, as his army paused to regroup, the Premier broadcast “a solemn appeal to the rebels to lay down their arms” and arrest Gbenye and his cohorts. Added Tshombe: “We insist particularly that all foreigners held hostage must be freed, and ask the entire civilian population to protect them until our army arrives.”