Apres Moise?

For Katanga's Moise Tshombe, it was the worst of times. Once he was the cockiest Congolese of them all, the man with the most money and the tidiest private army. Last week, stripped of his Belgian advisers and cut off from his troops, he languished in a guarded villa in Coquilhatville. He was a victim of that old Congolese persuasion tactic--kidnaping. And nobody much seemed to care.

The U.N. politely asked President Kasavubu to accord Tshombe "fair treatment and due process of law." But the U.N.'s special representative to the Congo, India's Rajeshwar Dayal, who had been quick to protest Kasavubu's least move to counter the machinations of pro-Communist Patrice Lumumba, uttered not a word of reproach. In fact he was still "consulting" in New York, and seemed disinclined to return to the Congo, where he seems to have incurred the displeasure of nearly all Congolese. Explained one observer: "In the next few weeks, it's just possible we will find the whole crew in the Congo sitting around a table thick as thieves. We don't want to distract them with anything--such as personalities."

Everybody's Friend. A stylish, wealthy businessman -turned - politician, Moise Tshombe found himself top man in the Congo's richest province when the Belgians relinquished rule. When the Congo erupted in factional squabbling. Tshombe declared mineral-rich Katanga independent, hoping to maintain economic and cultural ties to Belgium. He tried to keep the U.N. out of Katanga, strengthened his hand with hired mercenaries and Belgian advisers. While the rest of the Congo starved and squabbled. Tshombe prospered. He began to infuriate the Congolese leaders. When Tshombe boldly agreed to attend the Coquilhatville conference, Kasavubu saw his chance to pounce on him--and did.

Tshombe came to Coquilhatville with the air of a man who was going to dictate his own terms. He declared that he would accept only a confederation in which Katanga would have nationhood of its own (and spend its own money). He mocked Kasavubu's willingness to cooperate with the U.N., got down on his knees to mime Kasavubu's attitude for news photographers. Once arrested, his mood changed. He became all oozing contrition. He begged for permission to rejoin the formal talks. The leaders refused but hauled him down from his villa prison for a private tongue lashing on another subject. "Why did you have Patrice Lumumba killed?" demanded Kasavubu. "He was my friend!" shouted Foreign Minister Bomboko. "He was my friend too!" added Major General Joseph Mobutu. "He made me a colonel." Tshombe meekly mumbled regrets, hastily assented to the new plan to reassemble Parliament in Leopoldville. Unappeased. Tshombe's captors charged him with treason on ten counts, ranging from secession to bootlegging cigarettes. The 19 aides who had accompanied him to Coquilhatville were also accused.

The King Is Dead. With their leader out of action, Tshombe's lieutenants quickly moved to align themselves with the U.N. resolution calling for the dissolution of "private armies" and throwing all Belgian advisers out of the country. In Elisabethville, Tshombe's Interior Minister Godefroit Munongo moved in as chief of the "caretaker government," announced that any of Tshombe's fickle mercenaries who wanted to leave Katanga were welcome to--and plenty were taking the hint. As fervent a Katanga isolationist as Tshombe, Munongo made plain that cooperating with the U.N. implied no change of heart about joining Kasavubu's central government. Tshombe's erstwhile Belgian friends shouted "Bravo Munongo" whenever he appeared publicly. Explained one Belgian shopkeeper: "Tshombe? The king is dead. Long live the king."

At week's end Coquilhatville gave birth to constitutional proposals. They call for a "Confederation of the United States of the Congo"--including, ambitiously, Katanga and Antoine Gizenga's rebel provinces of Oriental and Kivu--with executive power tightly vested in the president of the confederation. The president: Joseph Kasavubu, of course.

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