Shrinking Giants

Wherever they have operated in the Congo, they are known as "the white giants." But for all their fierce reputation, Colonel Jean ("Black Jack") Schramme and his band of white mercenaries are beginning to look a lot less tall. Not that the Congolese army is cutting them down to size; the swaggering "meres" could probably hang on for a while at Bukavu, the old resort town on the Congo's eastern frontier where they holed up three weeks ago. President Joseph Mobutu's regulars are bothering them so little that the only raiding that the mercenaries have been doing has been in Bukavu's abandoned wine cellars.

But time is all on the side of the Congolese troops--however reluctant they are to attack. Only two weeks ago, Schramme proclaimed that his mission was to bring down Mobutu's "dictatorial and tribal" regime, and restore Moise Tshombe to his rightful place in a "democratic" Congo. Now Schramme has abandoned that ambitious task and an nounced his willingness to call off the two-month-old revolt in exchange for an amnesty and a safe conduct for his men, including an estimated 1,000 Katangese gendarmes.

Nazi State. Schramme seems to have given up his long-held hope that other mercenaries operating out of Angola will open up a second front. And he knows that he and his men cannot take over the country on their own. He also knows that his departure can come none too soon for the 80,000 non-Africans still in the Congo. To many Congolese these days, the words mercenaries and whites are synonymous, and whites and Asians alike realize that they are in mortal peril from revenge-seeking Africans as long as the mercenaries mock Congolese sovereignty.

Three young Belgians who strayed into the eastern Congo recently while studying African tribal life were summarily executed only hours after their arrest by Congolese troops. A Belgian mining technician and his wife were murdered a few days later. Belgian officials barely bothered to protest. With more than 20 whites killed by Congolese soldiers since the mercenary rebellion began, Brussels has just about lost all confidence in the ability or will of Mobutu and his government to protect whites. "Sometimes," sighed a white resident of the Katanga provincial capital of Lubumbashi last week, "we feel as though this is a Nazi state and we are the Jews."

Under the circumstances, the most promising tactic for Schramme and his men would be to scram. The big question is how to arrange their escape. At week's end the U.S. and other embassies were putting pressure on the Congo's eastern neighbor, Rwanda, to permit the meres to cross the border and be evacuated by plane.

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