An Attempt to Go Back

Cha cha cha, Spaak Papa,

Welcome like in good old day,

Cha cha cha, Spaak Papa,

Making Congo-Belgian unite.

A crowd of swinging, singing diplomats and politicians filled Leopoldville's Manhattan Bar last week as the Congo's famed O.K. Jazz Band serenaded the honored guest with its improvised Spaak Cha Cha. As the first member of the Belgian government to visit the Congo since his country prematurely and disastrously thrust its former colony into independence, Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak might have expected far harsher words of welcome.

But after four years of chaos, mutiny and massacre, the Belgians and Congolese are making moves to get together again. With the United Nations' peacekeeping force due to pull out in three months, Premier Cyrille Adoula's shaky government needs all the help it can get. And with 60,000 Belgians still living and working in the Congo (compared with 100,000 before independence). Brussels is eager to re-establish political and military influence.

The Big Portfolio. The major obstacle has been the contentieux--a number of financial and legal bones of contention left over from the Belgian colonial administration. First on the list was the Congo's preindependence debt of $920 million. Brussels, which had backed $240 million of the debt, was willing to honor its share but insisted that the Congolese help pay the rest.

Then came the question of who owned the ex-colonial government's bulging stock portfolio. In return for mining, forestry and transport concessions, Congo-based private companies had paid the colony in stock. As a result, the colonial government controlled nearly 20% of Katanga's wealthy Union Miniere, had control of diamond mines in Kasai province and hundreds of smaller concerns. At independence, the portfolio was worth more than $700 million; it has since skidded to less than half that value. More than any other economic factor, the desire to keep control of Union Miniere and related properties prompted Belgium's tacit backing of the Katanga secession under Moise Tshombe, which was eventually crushed by the U.N. Early last year, the Belgians turned away from Tshombe and accepted the U.N.'s demand for a united Congo.

A Dash of Sweetener. Last August negotiations over the contentieux broke down, and Congolese Premier Cyrille Adoula flew home from Brussels in a jet-propelled snit. His mood was not improved when the Belgians, three months later, failed in a move to ease him out of office. Papa Spaak's visit last week was aimed at renewing the negotiations. Long a friend of Adoula's central government, Spaak had opposed the Belgian conservatives who backed Katanga's secession.

After four days of secret sessions, the two men emerged beaming. "The contentieux are now behind us," Adoula announced. Spaak had recognized the Congolese government's claim to the stock portfolio but left vague the question of its future management. On the question of the public debt, Adoula agreed to pay; Spaak offered a sweetener of $20 million in commercial credit to Adoula's near-bankrupt government, plus another $3.6 million for development of a Congolese cotton industry.

Watchers in the Shadows. Even more important from the Belgian standpoint was Adoula's agreement to permit 150 Belgian officers in the Congo's once mutinous 35,000-man army. Also authorized by Adoula was an infusion of judges and executives to strengthen the Congo's struggling judiciary and civil service. As one Congolese minister admitted privately: "We've had a complete failure thus far in running the country. I am ready to accept that two out of 15 ministers be Belgian just to get us out of this mess."

All this may be too little and too late. Brussels remains skeptical about the agreement. Spaak, after all, is dealing with a government whose authority scarcely extends beyond Leopoldville's suburbs; the watchers in the shadows beyond include Communist Pierre Mulele's cutthroat Jeunesse and thousands of like-minded "bushniks" and tribal factions, all only too eager to contribute to chaos. But in Leopoldville, the rapprochement was widely welcomed. A rhapsodic editorial in the government daily, Le Progres, likened the Congo to a beautiful maiden who had fallen out with her handsome young lover, Belgium. "Years went by," the editorialist wrote. "Nights came, days came. But beautiful Congo never smiled. Now she is of age. She wants to go back to their life together, but as a free woman. Tomorrow, perhaps, our two hands will be clasped and together we will go down the road of life for better and for worse."

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