Back Comes Moses the Beloved

In the predawn gloom at Leopold ville's Ndjili Airport, the DC-8 jetliner whined to a halt on the hardstand. Almost coyly, it poked its nose between a pair of aircraft chartered to ferry the last United Nations soldiers away from the Congo. From the hatch of the first-class compartment stepped a tall, plump man in a severe black suit, grinning like an African Fernandel. Burly, rifle-swinging Congolese cops and nervous Surete plainclothesmen hustled him into a black Chevy Impala with government plates, and off he sped into the flower-and sewage-scented dark. Thus last week with fanfare and foreboding did Moise Kapenda ("Moses the Beloved") Tshombe return to the Congo.

Come Home Again. A year ago, when he fled to Spain in exile, Tshombe was Moses the Hated. As the leader of copper-rich Katanga province's abortive secession, finally crushed by the U.N., he had been damned as a traitor to African nationalism and a stooge of the Belgians. But last week the stooge was being praised as a possible savior. In the chaotic Congo, that made as much sense as anything else.

Ironically, Tshombe came home on invitation of his onetime archenemy, Premier Cyrille Adoula, whose government now needs all the help it can get. Adoula's inept 35,000-man army has proved itself incapable of suppressing Communist-encouraged rebellions that already engulf three provinces and are spreading even farther. To many, it seemed that his only hope was reconciliation with the dissident elements that rack the land. Adoula apparently agreed, however reluctantly. As a trial balloon, he permitted his secretary-general to call openly for the liberation of long-imprisoned Leftist Antoine Gizenga, and amnesty for Rightist Albert Kalonji, onetime Mulopwe (god-emperor) of south Kasai.

"Free Us! Free Us!" The Mulopwe accepted readily, flew in from Europe in such haste that none of his political allies were on hand at the airport to meet him. Balancing the return of Kalonji and Tshombe was the elimination of Jason Sendwe, leader of Katanga's once rebellious Baluba tribe and provincial president of north Katanga. Captured two weeks ago, Sendwe and three of his lieutenants were knifed to death in Albertville by the Jeunesse, according to reliable reports. With the aid of the survivors, Adoula could form a compromise regime to keep some kind of order in the months ahead.

Tshombe, for one, was quite willing to be reconciled. After a four-hour meeting with Adoula, he called a press conference at Leopoldville's Zoo Restaurant. While monkeys chattered and brightly dressed Congolese couples twisted to the music of the Conga Succes jazz band, a grinning Tshombe shook hands, signed autographs and proclaimed: "I'm convinced that sincere, total reconciliation between all Congolese is the only absolute condition for saving the country from misery and anarchy." The crowd shouted back: "Free us! Free us!" This was heady stuff, but then everything in the months ahead would be.

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