The Sudden Guests

Maurice Van Hemelrijck, 57, a man with a flair for dramatic decisions, is Belgium's Minister for the Congo--and hopes very much to be the last one. Long before the bloody Leopoldville riots last January, he had warned his government that unless it began giving the Congo democracy and some sort of independence, it would face "catastrophe" and lose the colony altogether. When he flew into Leopoldville last week, he got the kind of ugly welcome that France's Premier Guy Mollet once got in Algiers. Angry white settlers shut up their shops in protest, flew flags of mourning, chalked up slogans saying GO HOME, TRAITOR, and SNUL (Flemish for simpleton). Had the irate settlers had any suspicion what energetic little Maurice Van Hemelrijck was about to do. their slogans might have been a good deal nastier than that.

After a quick personal investigation of the evidence in the January riots. Van Hemelrijck decided that Joseph Kasavubu, 41, the fanatic leader of the ultranationalist Abako organization, had been falsely arrested for fomenting them. He ordered Kasavubu and two other Abako leaders released. Then he had the three men bundled onto a military plane loaded with paratroopers headed home on furlough. When the plane landed in Brussels, everyone from Premier Gaston Eyskens on down was astounded. Van Hemelrijck had done some daring things in his time, but no one had ever expected him to bring home in freedom the very person the press had been calling the most dangerous man in the Congo.

At first his colleagues in the Cabinet bitterly attacked Van Hemelrijck for his lone-wolf gamble, but since at this delicate moment in Congo affairs Belgium does not wish to appear divided, he got their grudging approval. When a Member of Parliament asked the Premier whether Van Hemelrijck had given advance notice to the Cabinet, Eyskens answered: "No, but the minister has such heavy responsibilities that he must be free to make quick decisions."

From the rostrum of the Chamber of Representatives, Van Hemelrijck carefully explained himself. As long as the three leaders remained in prison they were a threat to the peace. "Tension still runs high," he said. "Wildcat strikes and the refusal to pay taxes are explained by the people as a resistance movement against the arrest of these men. Their pictures are everywhere in the native towns." The three Africans, he added, had agreed to come to Belgium in a state of "provisional freedom." As for discussing independence, "they may have their say," but in no way were they official negotiators.

Van Hemelrijck may have concluded from the British example that locking up nationalists seldom does much good. But his gamble did have its dangers. In Leopoldville last week, Kasavubu's overeager followers, thinking that their leader had been invited to negotiate, were already laying plans for a seven-day celebration as soon as independence is announced. And Kasavubu himself, a deceptively mild-looking man who dreams of rebuilding the fabled 14th century Kingdom of the Congo, broadly hinted that his people would not wait forever. "I love visiting Belgium," he said. "But it must not be for too long."

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