Glass Houses

Above Lake Tanganyika's blue waters the Bahutu or Wahutu (singular Muhutu) were minding their own business 300 years ago when the Batutsi or Watusi (singular: Mututsi) wandered in, probably from Abyssinia. The Batutsi announced that hereafter they would run the twin kingdoms of Ruanda-Urundi, and look after the Bahutu. Because the Batutsi brought with them wondrous long-horned cattle and because they were seven feet tall, the Bahutu did not argue the point.

About 50 years ago the Germans came to Ruanda-Urundi to supervise the way in which the Batutsi ran the Bahutu. After World War I the Belgians proved to everyone's satisfaction that the Germans had done a very poor job of supervising. The Belgians took over.

Last May the Belgian government submitted an account of its stewardship of Ruanda-Urundi to the U.N. Trusteeship Council. The council last week issued its "report on the report," finding much amiss about the way the Belgians directed the Batutsi 5% of the population to rule the Bahutu 94%.* The Russians, who check up on everybody, refused to sign the report. The Russians thought the council was not sufficiently critical of the Belgians.

Private Lives. In fact, the Belgians have done a lot for Ruanda-Urundi. They built roads, fostered trade, fought disease and, having the natives' welfare at heart, discouraged them from excessive drinking of a beer they made out of bananas.

The Belgians have also called attention to the fact that the Batutsi are probably the world's greatest high jumpers, regularly clearing 8 ft. 5 in. from a takeoff mound a foot high, making a net jump of 7 ft. 5 in. (this year's Olympic winner jumped 6 ft. 6 in.--see SPORT).

The Belgians select the most promising young men (not necessarily the best high jumpers) and give them a nine-year course of training in the .Groupe Scolaire at Astrida in Ruanda. The Catholic priests who run the Groupe call the first four years of the course "the rolling mill." During this period the aristocratic young giants are subjected to constant surveillance and iron discipline, including very hard beds. "The rolling mill" squeezes out two-thirds of the students and the priests do not want the two-thirds who fail to go back to their villages demanding soft beds. The successful third go on to five years of technical training with an honor system and soft beds. If they pass they become medical, veterinary and agricultural assistants or tribal chiefs, and are deemed eligible to look after the Bahutu, the Batwas and the long-horned cattle. The Trusteeship Council, however, thought that more natives should be sent to European universities and the people given a vote. The Belgian report to the U.N. got rather personal at one point in its 382-page, statistics-laden report. It said: "The private life of the Mwami [King] of Urundi left something to be desired when he paid visits to Usumbura [the capital]. Fortunately, his visits are no longer as frequent ... He has been advised to be more careful; time will tell whether he has heeded this advice."

Many Eyes. In spite of all this checking up on them, the people of Ruanda-Urundi seem to thrive. The country has a population of nearly 4,000,000, which is over 200 to the square mile (the adjacent Belgian Congo has only twelve to the square mile and Texas only 27). They love their green rolling hills and their cone-shaped huts and their banana beer. They love their cows so much that they let them die of old age rather than slaughter them. They love their leaping dances; listening to some Batutsi recordings, Gene Krupa said: "Those boys know how to drum!" The climate is pretty good,* and the whole country smells like cough medicine, from Australian eucalyptus trees brought in years ago.

Some of the countries whose representatives signed the critical council report are not doing any better than Ruanda-Urundi. The chairman of the committee that wrote the report is Iraq's Awni Khalidy; when Iraq was elected to the council, the Bagdad weekly Al Wadi commented on Iraq's "heated defense of oppressed peoples--except, of course, the Iraqi people."

Above the blue waters of Lake Tan-ganyike the Batutsi sing a song:

The Kings are the Eye of God

By which He watches over Ruanda.

What with the Batutsi, the Belgians, the Iraqi and the Russians, God had a lot of help in Ruanda-Urundi.

Among those who had cast a stone at Belgium by voting for the council's rebuke was the U.S. A couple of days later came a shocking admission from Washington that the colonial house of the world's richest nation was in a deplorable mess. In a report to U.N., the U.S. said that "the vast majority" of Puerto Rico's 2,000,000 people suffer from "chronic nutritional insufficiency," a fancy phrase for near-starvation. "The control of tuberculosis in Alaska," said the report, "has reached a crisis" with a death rate nine times that in the U.S.

* The other i% are Batwas. Even Bahutu look down on Batwas, who are virtually pygmies and have no case pending at Lake Success. *An old Belgian Congo hand at Lake Success was asked if the climate of Ruanda-Urundi was healthful. He made a nice distinction: "I would say the climate there is very pleasant. On the other hand, the climate of New York is healthful --but not very pleasant."

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