Back from the Precipice

"Recognize who are the victims!'' cried Belgium's Foreign Minister Pierre Wigny, and the U.N. Security Council listened.

"Madame P. had a baby only a few months old in her arms whom the soldiers struck and threatened to kill if she did not allow herself to be violated. She was violated 20 times. Madame Q., several days after having given birth, still had an open tear in her abdomen held with clips. She was raped by several soldiers. What do you wish, gentlemen, shall I continue?"

It was difficult to believe that there could be a sympathetic answer to such a calendar of horrors. Yet the Congo's representative, Thomas Kanza, 27, who is one of only 16 university graduates in his nation of 14 million, went far to accomplish it. Speaking with dignity and restraint, he noted that there were other victims besides the unfortunate Belgian women: the Congolese themselves.

If the people of Congo were incompetent to govern, Kanza argued, "the first reproach must go to those who trained us." The Belgians ruled the Congo for 80 years without educating a single Congolese doctor or engineer. "Only eight years ago," said Kanza, "I was the first to leave Congolese territory to go through higher education." He might have pointed out that the actual casualties are far fewer than the headlines would suggest. Those killed were mostly soldiers from both sides and numbered twelve whites and 79 Congolese.

Kanza ended by asking for the evacuation--"I do not say immediate, but as soon as possible"--of Belgian troops from Congolese territory. With gratitude and relief, the Security Council quickly approved a resolution sponsored by Tunisia and Ceylon asking Belgium to "speedily" withdraw her troops. Kanza's level-voiced moderation disconcerted even the Russians, who had been giving noisy support to Premier Patrice Lumumba's charges of "aggression," and forced them in the end meekly to make the vote unanimous.

Up Morale. The Congo had reason to be grateful to the U.N. In a matter of days, U.N. troops had restored a semblance of order in a country that seemed about to fall into squabbling chaos. Overnight, the climate of racial hate changed. Tunisian troops patrolled the native quarters of Leopoldville, surrounded by happy Congolese crowds who hailed them as "liberators." A Ghanaian military band charmed the Congolese with sprightly tunes, and the bandleader said in clipped British accents, "Must keep up morale, old boy." Belgian paratroops grimly refused to give way in the European section of the city until they could be replaced by "white" U.N. soldiers, but the arrival of 650 blue-helmeted Swedes apparently put their fears at rest.

A strong detachment of Moroccan troops headed south to Thysville and Matadi, two of the worst trouble spots. The tough Moroccan commander, Colonel Ben Omar, delivered a speech at every whistle stop, telling Congolese that the United Nations was in charge and would take no back talk. At Thysville's Camp Hardy he ordered the raising of the U.N. flag and told the mutineers, "We have been invited here by your government, and we are taking command." Rounding on a raggedly dressed Congolese, he asked him if he were a civilian or a soldier. A soldier, said the man. Roared Omar: "Then go get dressed like one!"

It was at Camp Hardy early this month that mutinous Force Publique troops had locked up 35 Belgian officers and raped their wives. The soldiers then released the officers and asked them to resume command. "They refused because of what we did to their wives," said a puzzled mutineer. "Why? I gave my wife many times to white men." Another Congolese soldier explained that the European women who were raped were "bad women." He said: "They walked around in shorts showing their legs, but when black men came to them, they refused to shake hands. Belgian officers slept with our women all the time, but we could never sleep with theirs."

Pushing on to the important river port of Matadi, Ben Omar found that all but five of its 1,600 Europeans had fled. The Congolese garrison had successfully held the town against a Belgian attack; yet not a shot was fired as the Moroccans moved in. Several truckloads of mutineers were hauling off loot from European homes; at Ben Omar's command, they sheepishly returned the stolen goods to the sacked houses.

General's Problem. In temporary tactical command of the U.N. forces was Britain's Major General Henry Templer Alexander, who has been "seconded" to Ghana as commander in chief of the Ghanaian army. Early last week the Belgians were taking advantage of the confusion to parachute troops into smaller cities throughout the country, planning attacks on Matadi, Thysville, Stanleyville --Premier Lumumba's home town. Alexander cooled off the Belgians, rushed tough Ethiopian troops to Stanleyville and sent Colonel Ben Omar and his Moroccans down to Thysville and Matadi.

Alexander was equally brusque with Lumumba. On one occasion, Lumumba launched a 4-hour harangue in which he damned the United Nations as "a bunch of imperialists." When it was over, Alexander smiled coldly, said, "Mr. Premier, an imperialist bids you good night," and stalked from Lumumba's presence. The Premier did somewhat better when he ordered Alexander to clear all Belgian troops from Leopoldville by 6 o'clock. The general pointed out that it was already 6:10. "That," said Lumumba grandly, "is your problem, general, and I leave it to you to solve in your own way."

Upside Down. Belgium's one remaining stronghold in the Congo is the mineral-rich province of Katanga. The provincial premier, Moise Tshombe, has declared his state independent and rules with the support of Belgian troops. Last week the political clouds were gathering over Tshombe's domain. There was a hint of the probable future in the capital city of Elisabethville, where Tshombe's new flag ("red for the blood that has been shed for Katanga's freedom, white for purity, and green for hope") was still flying bravely--but upside down.

Premier Tshombe has asked everyone for recognition and been turned down by all including Belgium, whose people want no further colonial adventures. Most African nationalist leaders view Tshombe as a Belgian quisling. U.N. troops have as yet made no effort to cross into the province, and Tshombe has loudly cried, and been loudly echoed by the Belgian government, that there is no need for U.N. intervention, since his province is "completely at peace."

Unfortunately for this boast, Belgian paratroops launched an attack on some 250 soldiers of the Congolese Force Publique who had taken possession of a hydroelectric plant supplying power to mines owned by the potent cartel Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga. After a pounding by four rocket-firing Harvard planes of the Belgian air force, the Congolese were dislodged at a cost of two Belgian and 16 Congolese dead. Said Tshombe. deadpan: "There is no truth in the rumor of the fighting. Katanga is completely calm." As a last desperate measure to save Katanga and Premier Tshombe, Belgian officers were trying to get approval to paint their helmets blue and stay on as a unit of the United Nations. In any event, Paratroop Colonel Guy Weber assured nervous Premier Tshombe that Belgian troops would remain as long as he wanted them to. Gratefully, Tshombe set a preliminary estimate of 18 months.

Weather Vane. Most bewildering factor in the Congo crisis is 34-year-old Premier Lumumba. His temperament is like the New England weather: if you don't like it, wait a minute. Last week Lumumba first denounced the United Nations as a "tool of imperialism" and then hailed its action as "extremely gratifying." On Monday he was clamoring to have Russian troops land in Leopoldville; on Friday he renounced his flirtation with the Soviet Union and said Red intervention was "unnecessary." After weeks of screaming insults and threats against Belgium, Lumumba blandly about-faced to say he could have "no rancor" against Belgians because "this great country of Congo was built by them."

After exchanging cablegrams with Nikita Khrushchev and crowing that the Congo would be put on its feet economically by Russian aid and technicians, Lumumba stunned everyone by signing a "multimillion-dollar" agreement with a U.S. wheeler-dealer named Louis Edgar Detwiler (see BUSINESS), whose "Congo International Management Corp." promised to provide the Congo with everything from railroads to hospitals, undertook to build cities and churches--all in exchange for the rights to exploit the Congo's "resources." Most stunned of all was Lumumba's Acting Minister of Economic Planning, who had never been consulted.

No one could keep up with Lumumba, and, apparently, nothing could get him down. When both houses of Congo's Parliament refused to ratify his hasty ultimatum to the U.N. and his arbitrary breakoff of relations with Belgium, Lumumba's only reaction was to say he could not consult Parliament because its members were plotting against his life. He specifically named as chief assassins moderate Senate Speaker Joseph Ileo and two of his old political rivals, Jean Bolikango and Albert Kalonji.

Crimson Tilt. Since Lumumba will not remain in one place long enough for his political coloration to show, most Leopoldville observers eye dubiously the three men closest to him, all of whom have obvious Red leanings. Of the three, Secretary of State for Defense Jacques Lundula and Lumumba's private secretary, Bernard Salumu, have made junkets to Red China. Information Minister Anicet Kashamura runs the Congo radio and, at least on those days when puzzled Congolese technicians can get it on the air, broadcasts endless letters of sympathy from Communist groups in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Russia. His favorite charge: the Belgians started all the trouble by raping Congolese women.

Reckless Rush. At week's end reckless Patrice Lumumba took off for New York and the U.N. The heady prospect of having a world forum for his torrential words seems, in Lumumba's opinion, well worth the risk of being ousted from power while absent from his disordered homeland. In Leopoldville and some of the other large cities under U.N. control, a few factories were cautiously reopened by European managers, and peddlers were again hawking carved trinkets of ivory and mahogany on the streets. But there was promise of a new dispute. Belgian troops withdrew only to the two big Congo military bases of Kamina and Kitona, balked at leaving the country as Lumumba demanded.

Stopping off in Accra for a few hours talk with Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah--whose lordly behavior makes a strong appeal to nationalist leaders like Lumumba --he flew on to London. A passel of Fascist-minded Mosleyites picketed the Ritz Hotel where Lumumba stopped, and Ghana's High Commissioner in Britain, Sir Edward Asafu-Adjaye, was knocked down by two of the Mosleyites, whose slogan is "Keep Britain White!" Unscathed, as usual, Patrice Lumumba reached New York's Idlewild airport this week. Speaking to a dawn patrol of newsmen, Lumumba said softly that peace in Congo "is conditioned on the immediate withdrawal of Belgian troops," and offered his "compliments and friendship" to President Eisenhower. Signing autographs on his way through the air terminal, and looking more like an earnest divinity student than a political boss, Patrice Lumumba slipped into a rented Cadillac and was whisked off through the sleeping borough of Queens to Manhattan's respectable Barclay Hotel. The V.I.P. luncheons and the ceremonial meetings with U.N. and U.S. representatives might help to mellow Lumumba after the past few weeks of fumbling and failure in his newly independent homeland.

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