The Bad Dream

As in a bad dream, everything seemed to be moving at half speed. But slowly, the Congo's balance was tipping toward the forces that bore the label of reckless Patrice Lumumba, though he was still in Colonel Joseph Mobutu's jail. If Lumumba won, the world could thank the ceaseless efforts of Moscow and Cairo and Accra. The U.N. itself, under the myriad pressures of its diverse membership, stood by in confusion.

The Stanleyville regime of Antoine Gizenga, once Lumumba's vice premier, was getting clandestine arms shipments from Gamal Abdel Nasser's U.A.R., freely used terror to consolidate its control over neighboring Kivu province. Escaping missionaries were prevented from crossing the border, prisoners of the old pro-Mobutu regime at Bukavu were tortured, and the Mother Superior and a nun from Bukavu's hospital were under arrest for alleged misuse of funds.

Using Kivu as their staging area, 600 of Gizenga's men invaded the Katanga stronghold of Secessionist Moise Tshombe. Installing two Lumumba supporters (one of them Lumumba's cousin) as heads of a new territory to be known as "Lualaba," the invaders occupied village after village in Katanga's northern wilds, where the local Baluba tribesmen were happy to welcome any enemies of the Tshombe regime. At Manono, center of Katanga's tin mining, the interlopers stopped, dug in, and announced establishment of Lualaba's new capital.

Enraged at this brazen invasion of his region, Tshombe accused the local U.N. troops in North Katanga of carelessness or complicity, for Gizenga's soldiers obviously had traveled through dozens of miles of the "neutral zone," which Tshombe had agreed to leave under the sole protection of the U.N. forces themselves. The U.N. urged Tshombe not to retaliate, but planes of Tshombe's little air force, manned by Belgian pilots, flew off to strafe the enemy with machine guns and hand-hurled bombs. In this first use of air power in the Congo crisis, ground fire from the pro-Lumumba force killed one of the Belgian copilots and riddled a second plane.

Lumumba's Stanleyville pals now controlled more than 30% of the entire Congo, were clearly preparing to make it closer to 50% by grabbing sprawling Equator province in the northwest. Leopoldville's harassed Colonel Joseph Mobutu hastily packed two platoons of troops into planes and flew them to Lisala, one of Equator province's main towns. But how effective Mobutu's troops would be was anyone's guess, for there was trouble in the ranks; many of his soldiers wanted more pay. At the big Camp Hardy troop center at Thysville, where Lumumba was held captive, the angry troops had been talking mutiny. There were some who even wanted to free Prisoner Lumumba and make him their commander.

Scooping up President Joseph Kasavubu himself, Mobutu charged down to Camp Hardy to quell the brewing revolt. What happened is wrapped in the inevitable confusion that surrounds every Congo crisis. One report had it that Mobutu was arrested temporarily by his own troops and that Lumumba was freed. But when it was all over, Patrice Lumumba still sat in jail. With his loyal supporters taking over more and more of the country, how long he would remain there was an open question.

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