The Monstrous Hangover

The huge bonfires of joy died down in the cities of the Congo. The drums and tom-toms grew quiet. The last writhing dancers fell exhausted in the dust. The wild intoxication of newly won independence was over, and last week the monstrous hangover began.

Whiplike Belts. With a primeval howl, a nation of 14 million people reverted to near savagery, plunged backward into the long night of chaos. Tribe turned upon tribe. Blacks turned upon Europeans. The deserted streets of great cities resounded with delirious gunfire and war cries in a dozen tongues. The 25,000-man Force Publique mutinied against their white officers, then turned their anger on their new government, against all whites, against all authority. There seemed no logical explanation for the madness that swept the Congo. The Congolese involved gave no coherent answers except to ask bitterly where were the pay raises and easy jobs and plentiful food that had been promised by the politicians?

It began slowly one morning last week when vainglorious Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba went to the Leopold II Barracks outside Leopoldville to deliver one of his grandiose speeches. Mostly Bangala tribesmen, the soldiers were hostile because their tribal leader, Jean Bolikango, had been denied a Cabinet post. They shouted him down and chased him back to the city. Startled Europeans found the streets suddenly filled with disheveled troops, their sports shirts sticking out of their unbuttoned tunics. Carrying clubs and iron bars and swinging their belts like whips, the mutineers shouted alternately "Kill Lumumba" and "Kill all whites." They overturned a car driven by a white nurse, smashed the cameras of a LIFE photographer, roughed up reporters and Belgian officers.

Lumumba went into hiding, but Foreign Minister Justin Bomboko had the courage to mount a chair outside Parliament and quiet the rioters. He led a delegation of three sweaty soldiers to Prime Minister Lumumba. Their demands: 1) removal of the Belgian commander in chief, Lieut. General Emil Janssens, a strict disciplinarian, 2) replacement of all other Belgian officers and noncoms by Congolese, 3) general raises in pay and rank. Lumumba hastily agreed. In the most sweeping army promotion in history, he advanced every Congolese soldier by one grade, making the Force Publique the only army in the world without a single private.

Nude Parade. This gesture of appeasement was not enough. That night a blacked-out train reached Leopoldville from Thysville, 90 miles south. Its 300 passengers were mostly Belgian and Portuguese women and children. In voices drained of emotion, they said that the Thysville garrison had mutinied and imprisoned its white officers. Houses and stores were sacked. European men were beaten in the street, and European women humiliated by being forced to parade in the nude. Worse news came three hours later as a convoy of twelve autos brought refugees from Inkisi and Madimba, led by Antoine Saintraint, 33, the civil administrator of the Madimba district. Huddled exhaustedly over a sandwich, he recounted how his wife and some 30 other women had fled to a Roman Catholic convent for protection. Soldiers broke in and raped them all, except for three who were spared because of obvious pregnancy. Was his wife among those raped? "Some things are better left unsaid," Saintraint said grimly.

Red Landing. More and more cars came in from the countryside scarred by stonings, and the occupants told of being dragged from their homes, beaten and searched for arms. Hundreds of whites camped in the embassies. Unruly bands of soldiers roamed the streets, leaderless and apparently aimless. At one point they all rushed off to the Leopoldville airport because they had heard a rumor that three planeloads of Russian paratroops had landed to take over the Republic of the Congo.

Under the dust-red light of a nearly full moon, thousands of Europeans flocked to the "Beach," the starting point of ferries making the two-mile run across the mighty river to Brazzaville in French Congo. Normally, the ferries operate only in daylight to avoid being swept downstream into the perilous rapids, but the terrified whites crowded onto paddle-wheel steamers, motorboats, skiffs--anything that would float--in their panicky flight.

Foot & Jeep. The next day Leopoldville was a dead city. Shops and offices were closed, and the 15-story skyscrapers stood empty and silent. The deserted streets were patrolled by mutineers on foot or in Jeeps. From hunting for "invading Russians," the soldiers turned to hunting down their former officers--particularly those who were Flemings (i.e., Belgians whose language is related to Dutch), who have always been unpopular with the Congolese for their fancied relation to the South African Boers, whose language is derived from Dutch. Invading the main hotels along the Boulevard Albert, the soldiers drove out U.S. and British newsmen at bayonet point and confined U.N. Representative Ralph Bunche to his room.

Prime Minister Lumumba, encouraged and accompanied by Foreign Minister Bomboko, who emerged last week as the coolest and most courageous member of the Congolese government, went to the Leopold II Barracks to negotiate with the army mutineers. A compromise was effected: President Joseph Kasavubu would become commander in chief of the Force Publique in place of General Janssens; the garrison would get native officers; and the army would be run by a general staff, part Belgian and part Congolese.

Returning to Leopoldville, Prime Minister Lumumba gratuitously added new fuel to the flames. He blamed the mutiny on Lieut. General Janssens, who, he said, had refused to accept proposals for the Africanization of the army; he blamed the scare about Soviet "invaders" on Belgian agents, and summoned the Belgian ambassador to make the fantastic charge that he had uncovered a Belgian plot to murder him. "The assassins were discovered and arrested in my residence," cried Lumumba. "They were armed to the teeth." Everything that was happening, Lumumba insisted, was a Belgian plot to discredit the Congolese government.

Canceled Flights. As news of mutiny, rape and chaos in the Congo poured into Brussels, Belgium's dapper Premier Gaston Eyskens at first shrugged it off with the remark: "These are the minor growing convulsions of a young nation." But as the first planeloads of refugees arrived from Brazzaville, thousands of former Belgian settlers demonstrated at the airport and nearly mobbed a Congolese politician who was on one of the planes. Shouting "A has les macaques! [Down with the apes!]," the settlers demanded army intervention in the Congo. So did Belgian newspapers, and La Libre Belgique cried: "It would be madness to worry now about legal scruples." More details came in: two Europeans had been killed at Kongolo; hundreds were isolated and under attack at the river ports of Boma and Matadi; 1,200 Belgians were trapped in an office building in Luluabourg and appealing desperately for helicopters, guns and paratroopers. Abruptly, Premier Eyskens' government reversed itself. Some hundred Belgian paratroopers were bundled aboard planes for Leopoldville; Sabena, the Belgian airline, canceled all commercial flights to rush its planes to Africa to evacuate Belgian refugees.

Whimpering Children. As the week wore on, the situation grew worse instead of better. Violence exploded in mineral-rich Katanga province, whose political leader, Moise Tshombe, has been advocating secession from the Congo. During a night of terror, mutinous Congolese troops roamed the streets of Elisabethville, the provincial capital, screaming war cries and firing machine guns and rifles. Four automobiles returning to the city after evacuating women and children to Rhodesia were stopped at a railroad crossing. Six of the ten European occupants, including Italian Vice Consul Tito Spoglia, were shot dead, and the others seriously wounded. Cavalcades of cars bearing panicky Europeans streamed eastward to the North Rhodesian border; 3,000 crossed in a single night, and Salisbury hotel lobbies were packed with women comforting whimpering children. The U.S., British and French consuls in Elisabethville called for help. Three hundred paratroopers were rushed by air from the Belgian airbase at Kamina, and for the first time the Congolese mutineers were engaged in battle by white troops. The paratroopers stormed the Elisabethville barracks and routed the mutinous Congolese troops, with some 100 dead.

In a desperate effort to regain control of the Force Publique, President Kasavubu and Prime Minister Lumumba promoted a former regimental sergeant major named Victor Lundula to full general and made him commander of the Congolese army. A Belgian colonel in Leopoldville did what he could to help by going on the radio to order all white officers and noncoms to hand in their weapons, since General Lundula was now in command. The troops, he added, would be allowed to choose the white officers they wanted to stay on as technicians; those they did not like would have to leave the country.

At week's end the Belgian government decided upon armed intervention to rescue and evacuate its citizens in the Congo, who are estimated to number 80,000. Two Belgian officials left Brussels for Leopoldville to put an ultimatum to Lumumba. He was given the choice of inviting Belgian troops to restore order. Should he refuse, the Belgians would intervene on their own initiative. As the Belgian plane took off, the paratroop reservists were assembled at collection points, ready for immediate departure, and army planes warmed up at Belgian airfields to begin the airlift. Either the Congolese government would restore law and order or the Belgian paratroops would do it for them.

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