Cause for Optimism

In a country where the unpredictable is commonplace and panic constantly threatens, any progress at all is remarkable. Despite its recent mercenary uprising and new rounds of racial violence and pillaging, the Congo has cause for hope. Last week, as the country marked the second anniversary of the army coup that overthrew Joseph Kasavubu in 1965, the mercenaries who have plagued it for years were in neighboring Rwanda, waiting with their suitcases and women for a one-way ticket out of Africa. Moreover, President Joseph Mobutu can claim credit for a lot more than driving out the "meres." In his two years of rule, he has laid at least the foundations for a more stable and efficient country.

Mobutu has cracked down on warring tribes and moved to prevent secessionist governments. He has abolished the 22 provinces and replaced them with eight large provinces whose governors have neither full control of provincial police, as in the past, nor strong tribal ties. To reassure whites, he recently formed a "committee of intervention" composed of army men, government officials and whites whose job is to discourage racial strife. He has also removed the radical leadership of his wild Jeunesse (youth) movement, whose members last summer sacked the Belgian embassy and menaced whites in the streets of Kinshasa, the capital.

Computers & Embezzlers. Mobutu has put the Congo on a sounder course partly by bringing into the government a group of bright young Congolese who are graduates of such schools as the Sorbonne and the London School of Economics. His government has installed computers to prepare the payroll, thus saving about $1,000,000 a year that would normally be lost to embezzlers. It has fired 40,000 relatives and friends of politicians from the bloated bureaucracy. And, at the urging of international monetary authorities, it has made some basic economic reforms, including a tight rein on credit and devaluation of the Congolese currency.

Politically also, Mobutu seems to have consolidated his position. Many of his political enemies are either in prison or in exile, including ex-Premier Moise Tshombe, who was kidnaped last June and remains in an Algerian jail. (Algeria has so far refused Mobutu's request for Tshombe's extradition to the Congo, where he is under a death sentence.) The flight of the 123 white and 950 black Katangese mercenaries, under pressure from Mobutu's army, has for now restored the prestige of his army officers, who might otherwise have been tempted to depose him as a scapegoat for their failures.

The cost of the five-month rebellion has been frightful: more than 1,000 killed on both sides, at least 27 of them white civilians; the halt of practically all economic activity in rich Kivu province; and heavy damage to Bukavu, the mercenaries' stronghold. Last week the Organization of African Unity demanded that the mercenaries' home countries pay reparations to the Congo as the price of their release.

Modicum of Confidence. Though the disorder and violence have naturally frightened off most foreign investment, Mobutu's government is gradually managing to win a modicum of confidence. Intercontinental Hotels Corp., for example, is going ahead with plans to put up a $6,500,000 hotel in Kinshasa, the first to go up there since independence in 1960. Two American and several European companies are studying the possible construction of auto-assembly plants in the Congo. The Union Miniere mining empire, now nationalized and called Gecomin, is operating almost at full capacity; half of the company's white technicians have stayed on to help run it. Belgium has agreed to resume its $70 million aid program, which it suspended after the Belgian embassy was stormed. About half of the 1,200 Belgian teachers, whose exodus from the Congo crippled the country's schools and three universities, are now planning to come back to areas where Mobutu can assure their safety.

Last week, in an anniversary speech, Mobutu called the Congo "the rising star of Africa." With the mercenaries gone--they signed a pledge never again to fight in Africa--and the country on a more sensible course at least temporarily, the Congo finally has a chance. It is richer in natural resources--copper, tin, cobalt, industrial diamonds--than almost any other African nation. With the opportunity to exploit them in peace, it could become a model of prosperity rather than of chaos.

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