The Hammer and the Hoe

CONGO REPUBLIC The Hammer and the Hoe Not even Guinea, for all its flirtations with Moscow and Peking, had gone so far. In Brazzaville last week, the new banner of the Congo Republic was fluttering atop flagpoles, boasting a crossed hammer and hoe (the sickle, it seems, is not used in equatorial Africa) surmounted by the traditional gold star. The country was rechristened the People's Republic of the Congo--not to be confused with the former Belgian Congo, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. National assembly functions were taken over by a central committee consisting entirely of members of the Congolese Labor Party, the only legal political group. Surprisingly, however, Brazzaville's neighbors did not seem too concerned about the creation of the first seemingly full-fledged Communist state on the African continent.

"Before a country can be Communist," said one West European diplomat, "its government has got to have a strong grip on the people and the economy. The Brazzaville government has hardly any grip at all." Since 1968, when an army coup led by Captain Marien Ngouabi overthrew the leftist government of President Alphonse Massamba-Debat, the regime has been rocked by two major Cabinet shakeups and at least two attempted coups. It has also tried at least 18 former high officials on charges of treason.

The officials' crimes were ostensibly ideological; actually, the troubles were tribal. All 18 were members or close relatives of the Bakongo tribe, whose members make up nearly half of the country's 900,000 population. The current rulers are northerners, members of a group of anti-Bakongo minority tribes. As an African diplomat summed it up: "The Brazzaville Congo has become the world's first tribal Communist state --and that, of course, is a contradiction in terms."

Equally contradictory is the fact that while the Russians and Chinese are pitching ideological woo at Brazzaville, the regime remains closely connected with France, its former colonial overlord and currently its chief source of foreign aid. Other uncertainties have arisen. At the new government's first public rally, the Internationale was played. Later, officials explained that it was not the new national anthem. A completely new anthem is being adopted. It simply had not been finished in time for the ceremony.

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