What It's Like

In the northern Congo, weeds and wild bush snaked across roads traveled only by stealthy bands of marauding army deserters. In Leopoldville, garbage piled high and the prevailing scent came from the sewers. Jealous rivals have sliced the Congo into six distinct nominally independent "nations," and in each juju magic and ritual murder are becoming the savage law of the countryside, just as they had been when Henry Morton Stanley arrived in 1876.

For example, there is the "nation" of little, spade-bearded Albert Kalonji. A vain and cocky tribalist, Kalonji is an ex-railroad clerk who shortly after independence announced himself "king" of a rich diamond-mining area of South Kasai. which he called "Mining State." He is so superstitious that he cannot relax anywhere he goes until the local authorities produce an albino woman to kiss his hand, habitually carries a magic wand that is supposedly capable of killing any man with a wave.

In the wake of Patrice Lumumba's murder, Kalonji's memory raced back to the days last fall when Lumumba ordered an assault on Kalonji's Baluba country, where his troops pillaged, raped and murdered at such a rate that Dag Hammarskjold himself called it genocide. Suddenly, Kalonji bethought himself of a dozen Lumumba aides and bullyboys he was holding. They had been sent to him for safekeeping by the Leopoldville Congolese authorities. He snatched them from jail, hauled them into Bakwanga's dusty public square. There they were beaten before the eyes of hundreds, later put on trial before Baluba tribal chiefs. For six, the verdict was death. Hardly was this ugly news made public before whispers emerged from the Eastern province of Lumumbaist Rebel Antoine Gizenga, Khrushchev's favorite puppet, that ten imprisoned members of the national Congolese Parliament and five anti-Lumumba army officers had in turn been taken from their Stanleyville cells and slaughtered in a dawn execution early last week.

Where's Anicet? In Gizenga's Eastern province, and in neighboring Kivu, the leaders are beginning to squabble among themselves for the throne vacated so abruptly by Lumumba. Major victim was Anicet Kashamura, Lumumba's 32-year-old former Minister of Information who was named seven weeks ago by Gizenga to plant Lumumba's banner in Bukavu amidst the farm-rich Kivu highlands that border the Mountains of the Moon.

Kashamura lost control of his own rampaging troops a fortnight ago. So Gizenga sent out Hatchetman Christopher Gbenye from Stanleyville to fetch Kashamura home. But Kashamura's cops met Gbenye at the city limits, sent him fleeing to the local U.N. troops for sanctuary. Then Kashamura began to fear Gizenga assassins under his bed--and also asked U.N. protection. When he finally ventured out of hiding, he was still nervous. Startled by a commotion in the hall outside his fourth-floor office in Bukavu's Riviera Hotel, he leaped for the window; friends had to restrain him from jumping out. One day last week Anicet Kashamura quietly vanished, and was last seen speeding down the road toward Stanleyville in the custody of Gizenga's agents.

See No Evil. The U.N. forces on the spot seemed paralyzed, even speechless. There were 300 Ghanaian troops, 55 Austrian hospital specialists and a company of Pakistani transport men in Bakwanga the day Kalonji brought his victims to town for their public beating; apparently they stood by helplessly, did not even report the incident to Leopoldville headquarters of U.N. Congo Chief Rajeshwar Dayal until four days later. Eleven hundred U.N. Ethiopian soldiers were in the area when Gizenga executed his 15 enemies; either they knew nothing of the killings or did nothing to stop them.

Dayal's U.N. headquarters in fact seemed more concerned with the "menace" of Belgians than with the barbaric slaughter. After the first wave of violence last July, the Congo's Belgian population dropped from 80,000 to 20,000, but slowly rose back to its present 40,000 as farmers, shopkeepers, technicians and barbers returned to their Congolese homes. Most are perfectly harmless--and highly useful -- private citizens owning private property and pursuing private lives. Under any rule of international law, there is no more reason for them to be forced to "get out" because the Congolese have taken over than there was for U.S. citizens to give up homes or businesses when Democrats replaced Republicans in Washington.

Then there are the civil servants. More than 2,000 Belgians are employed by provincial governments and by Premier Joseph Ileo's central Congolese regime to run waterworks, power plants, to collect taxes and keep account books. Without them, things would grind to a halt in many a Congo town. Not long ago, the lights went out and the water stopped running in Bukavu when the four Belgians who manned the Ruzuzi River dam took off in terror at the arrival of gun-toting Congolese soldiers.

What really upsets the U.N. is that many of these senior technicians ignore, others brush aside, Dayal's own U.N. specialists who want to take a hand in city or provincial administration. In the wake of last week's U.N. resolution banning "political advisers" from the Congo, some of Dayal's planners apparently hoped to stretch this definition to include the technicians too -- although it was obvious that the U.N.'s small band of 200 technicians could never take over all the Belgians' jobs. At the very time the U.N. talks of kicking them out, African faction chiefs are in fact struggling to get more. Dozens of black delegations have shown up in Brussels, and recruiters are stationed there on behalf of the Leopoldville government of Joseph Ileo and the Katanga regime of Moise Tshombe.

Katanga and South Kasai, in fact, are the only places where Belgians are a serious threat to anybody's peace. There Moise Tshombe and Albert Kalonji employ "retired" Belgian officers to fly their planes, train their troops, plan their military attacks. In Katanga's government office, every Congolese minister has hired a Belgian as an "adviser." The Belgian government argues that the military men are there as private citizens and mercenaries, cannot be called back if they prefer to work for the Africans; it also insists it has no control over Union Miniere, whose subsidies make Tshombe's government one of Africa's richest.

Taking Sides? While Dayal's experts fussed noisily about Belgians, they turned a blind eye to a bigger threat to the peace: the gradual southward nibbling of the military patrols of Stanleyville's Antoine Gizenga. Repeatedly in recent weeks visitors warned U.N. headquarters that Gizenga troops had been seen moving toward Luluabourg, capital of Kasai, a strategic junction commanding the only direct route between Kasavubu's Leopoldville and Tshombe's Katanga. "We have no such reports," sniffed a U.N. official.

But great concern echoed at U.N. headquarters over the Congolese central government's 1,600-man force gathered at Bumba by General Joseph Mobutu, apparently poised for an attack on Gizenga's Eastern province. To stop him, new U.N. Military Commander General Sean McKeown flew to Mobutu's bush headquarters, extracted a promise that there would be no invasion. This was highly convenient to the Gizenga regime, for, with Mobutu's immobilization now assured, they were ready for their dash deep into Kasai. The target was Luluabourg, just as the U.N.'s tipsters had been warning. No U.N. soldier raised a hand as Gizenga's 300 men rumbled into the town and took over without a shot from the local troops, who had been thought loyal to Mobutu but who had obviously made a deal with Gizenga instead.

With the occupation of Luluabourg, Gizenga could claim to have split the Congo in half.

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