Congo: After Two Years

Trumpets blared and drums rattled as the proud procession moved down Leopoldville’s broad Boulevard Albert I to celebrate the Congo’s second anniversary of independence. President Joseph Kasavubu and Premier Cyrille Adoula took the salute from the black soldiers of the new Garde Républicaine, who were decked out in powder-blue uniforms with black lace trimming and red feathered hats. Along the route, 20,000 Congolese added their cheers to the festive occasion.

The panoply was welcome relief from the drabness of life in the Congo today. Six months after the end of the bloody fighting between the U.N. forces and Katanga, the new nation lies exhausted in the equatorial sun, a battered giant unable to make productive use of the freedom its black leaders fought so hard to win. Even with the help of nearly 3,000 Belgian and U.N. technicians and advisers and $86 million of U.S. financial aid, the railroads are not running in most of the Congo, two-thirds of the nation’s trucks are idle for lack of spare parts, and the roads are almost impassable.

Paper Solace. The result is that some areas of the vast Congo interior are at a virtual standstill; last year coffee and cotton exports yielded only fractions of their normal revenue, and much of the big palm-oil output is lost to smugglers. Unemployed workers upcountry now flock to Leopoldville, where 100,000 of the normal 300,000 labor force are already out of work. Organized gangs, ignoring the barred windows and the bright floodlights around homes of the well to do, creep up at night to saw off the bars and steal what they can. The U.N. is bringing 64 judges from abroad to build a judiciary system for the country. One of the first judges to arrive lost his briefcase to a thief on his first day in town.

Except for locally made beer and cigarettes, Leo’s shops are virtually empty of consumer goods, and prices for the items still available have soared. No end to inflation is in sight, since Adoula’s central government simply prints more and more paper money to make up for its hideous deficits (April revenue: $14 million; April expenditure: $36 million).

Soft-spoken Premier Adoula, by far the ablest of the Congo’s leaders, is as exasperated as anyone else at this state of affairs, but he is hamstrung by Leopoldville’s nightmarish political mess, which forces him to spend 80% of his budget on salaries for civil servants and the 25,000-man army, which is vastly overpaid ($180 base pay per month for privates) to keep it loyal. To retain the support of the myriad political factions, he has 41 men in his Cabinet, perhaps the world’s biggest.

Lost Funds. Adoula must also cope with widespread corruption among his highest-ranking officials. In recent weeks, two Congolese ambassadors in major world capitals have “lost” a total of some $50,000 in embassy funds, have advised Leopoldville that the money just vanished. It is widely believed that some Cabinet ministers have secreted large sums of government money in bank accounts in Europe. Last week, when the Congolese parliament tried to censure Foreign Minister Justin Bomboko for allegedly doing just that, Bomboko surrounded the legislature with gendarmes, produced his own list of foreign money transfers, got the investigation called off.

There is a huge smuggling trade in illicit (and mainly industrial) diamonds from the big South Kasai fields. Millions of dollars are lost by the government in this way alone: of some 17 million carats produced in South Kasai during the past year, only about 124,000 carats came onto the market legally.

Even with these handicaps, Adoula can boast some progress toward stability. Some Belgian technicians and businessmen are returning; many intend to stay for only a short period, but others have even brought their wives and children back, and a few black nannies are again seen in the parks with their white charges. Adoula has deposed and jailed the worst regional extremists, notably erratic Antoine Gizenga, who almost made Eastern Province a Communist preserve last year, and zany “King” Albert Kalonji of South Kasai. But Adoula still has not rid himself of the biggest headache of all, stubborn President Moise Tshombe of Katanga Province, who has a firm grip on the Congo’s copper-rich southeast corner and refuses to share its $50 million annual revenue with the rest of the nation.

Gaining Repose. For months, Adoula and Tshombe have been negotiating bitterly in Leopoldville on schemes intended to bring Katanga back into the Congo. U.N. officials have pleaded, cajoled and threatened the two sides to find common ground for a deal. Wearily, Adoula offered repeated concessions, such as a revised constitution to give Katanga greater local autonomy in a federal Congo. But Tshombe wanted all or nothing: virtual independence for Katanga, his own gendarmery, and a corps of foreign mercenaries to run it. While he still would not agree to divvy up the copper profits with the Central government, Tshombe announced a $2,000,000 gift to the Congo, “to ease the catastrophic position and especially aid the poor and unemployed.” In the latest six-week round of talks, the only thing Tshombe would agree on was formation of four advisory committees to discuss specific ways to reunify Katanga with the Congo in the military, economic, monetary and communications fields. With that, Tshombe declared he was tired and wanted to stop talking. “I am going home to gain repose,” he declared, as he and his entourage headed for the plane back to Elisabethville.

Shocked and bitter. Central Government Premier Adoula gestured toward the broad Congo waters outside his window as he told newsmen: “Gentlemen, six weeks of patient negotiations have just gone down the river.”

Hints of Force. In Elisabethville, Tshombe blithely made plans to celebrate Katanga’s own independence day—July 11, marking the date in 1960 when the province seceded. The U.N.’s Congo chief, patient Robert Gardiner, is increasingly exasperated at the deadlock, has dropped strong hints that his units will put down Tshombe and take over Katanga by force if the wily Moise breaks off negotiations entirely. In Manhattan the U.N.’s Acting Secretary-General U Thant declared that his Congo commanders “have been told to be very much on the alert.” The U.N. may or may not be able to accomplish it, but sooner or later, the preposterous, protracted Adoula-Tshombe deadlock will have to be broken. The inert Congo giant cannot be allowed to lie there indefinitely.