Balancing Act

THE CONGO

The weather-beaten monument in Stanleyville's Lumumba Square is wreathed in a spray of faded plastic flowers and surrounded by white bathroom tiles. It consists of a crude glass-encased portrait showing a goateed man, whose left hand rests on a multicolored globe. A rusty sign, rising from a scraggly bed of petunias, proclaims: "Here is the monument of the Liberator of the Congo, Premier Patrice Emery Lumumba, Hero of Independence and of Unity, assassinated 18 January 1961 in Katanga."

Up to the monument last week strode the latest Liberator of the Congo, Premier Moise Tshombe, onetime leader of secessionist Katanga and the man whom most Congolese hold responsible for Lumumba's murder. Standing poker-faced in a tepid drizzle, Tshombe solemnly deposited a wreath at the foot of the portrait, bowed his head in silence. Later he delivered a speech that drew wild applause from at least 5,000 of Lumumba's former followers. "You have suffered too much from strings pulled abroad. The Congolese will not be valets of colonialists and imperialists."

Bullets Are Flying. It was all part of Tshombe's carefully planned balancing act, in which for the past month he has been trying to form the Congo's splintered factions into a "government of national reconciliation." The rousing welcome he received on his tour of Stanleyville (pop. 300,000) showed that Tshombe had succeeded in winning the approval of at least some of the city folks. "Vive Tshombe!" they screamed as his caravan swept through Stanleyville's five African communes. One man even shouted, "Vive le Roi!" At Goma, in rebellion-torn Kivu Central province, Congolese literally hung from the trees to hear Tshombe speak. "Black blood has been flowing like wild animals," he told them. "I say to you: Kazi, kazi [work, work], and let the politicians do the talking. The important thing is to stop the rebellion. Bullets are flying like falling hair."

That might have wowed them in Goma, but it did little to stop the spread of rebellion. Almost a third of the nation was no longer under Leopoldville's control; as usual, government troops fled in panic at the very sight of the insurgents. And now a fourth front, potentially more dangerous than those in Kwilu, Kivu and Maniema provinces, had been opened only 100 miles north of Leopoldville. A band of uniformed, well-armed rebels crossed the Congo River border from neighboring Brazzaville Congo, took control of several towns and cut the vital Route Nationale, the combination of river and rail links that connects Leopoldville to the nation's eastern reaches. The welldisciplined group confidently boasted that it could take over the capital "in less than three weeks."

No Negotiators. At this anxious moment, who should turn up in Leopoldville but a batch of white mercenaries from Johannesburg eager to sign up on Tshombe's side, just as they had done back in the old days when he needed outside help to keep Katanga independent. Good news for Moise? Perhaps. But the mercenaries posed a nightmarish problem for U.S. officials on the scene. They are inclined to help the old Katanga renegade now that he is on the side of Congo unity, but would be acutely embarrassed to find themselves allied with South African racists in the process.

What alternative had Tshombe? There was always the hope of striking political deals with such rebel leaders as the notorious Gaston Soumialot, who as "president" of the Communist-backed National Liberation Committee was supposed to be in command of much of the insurgency. In fact, it seemed increasingly clear that neither Soumialot nor anyone else could handle the gangs. As Tshombe put it last week: "There is nobody to negotiate with. Nobody really controls the rebels, so nobody can stop them."

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