CONGO REGIME CONTINUES. DOWNHILL
By René Massa
BRUSSELS, March 10 ~~ Prime Minister Adoula'ts quick trip to Paris is one of the indications of the continuing disintegration of Belgium's neocolonialist empire in central Africa. In fact, the only remnant, of this empire in which the Belgian imperialists can be said to have retained a "solid" grip is the tiny Republic of Ruanda. Even there they can continue to hang on only by the use of such terror that Bertrand Russell employed the term "genocide" in relation to the measures directed against the ethnic minority, the Watutsi.
The Kingdom of Burundi, a part of the former Belgian empire, has almost completely cut its ties with Belgian capitalism. In its cautiously "neutralist" foreign policy, it has gone so far as to send ~@ diplomatic mission to Peking and is. ‘strengthening its ties with Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika,
As for the Belgian Congo, onee the main part of the empire, it is settling more and more into a jigsaw puzzle of tribally dominated "provinces," many of them completely controlled by foreign companies, most of thom Belgian, but some British-owned. In Katanga,. the infam ous Union Miniére continues to rule supreme, | 2
Adoulats trip to Paris indicates, however, that in desperate search for increased foreign support to halt further sapping of its reign, the ruling clique of Léopoldville is looking toward Paris in hope of more substantial handouts than it. has been receiving from Belgium and the U.S.
i. - Some of the sectors of the Gaullist regime are known to be toy= ing with the idea of integrati the Léopoldville crew into the "Union Africaine et Malgache, t TuaM] combining most, but not all, of the former French colonies in Black Africa,
. The UAM is experiencing a. deep crisis itself due to-the oreation of the Organization of African. States [OAS], and there is talk in diplomatic circles of its. complete collapse under the influence of the OAS. At its last meeting, not all the governments adhering to - it sent representatives, De Gaulle may hope to prop Up - -this neocolon= dalist set up by bringing in the Congo regime, Conditions in the Congo
The economic situation in the Congo has become intolerable for. the broad masses, Inflation is rampant. Although two wage increases of fifty per cent each have been granted since independence was won, the real income of most wage workers has. been cut at. least in half and is deteriorating at a fast rate,
Many consumer goods, including food items, have disappeared from the shops and can be found only in the black market. In Léopoldville, the capital, they are rare; in provincial towns they have completely vanished. In one provincial center a steak has become such a luxury that it would take almost two weeks wages of a skilled worker to buy a pound,
Along the roads leading into Léopoldville, youths, women and..the unemployed hawk such items as rats and tiny fish -- a clear indica~ tion of the level to which the standard of living has dropped. In the towns,. too, there has been a relapse to foods like manioc and the- revival of subsistence. agriculture,
Unemployment is ‘enormous. Coupled with other kinds of insecur» ity, it has driven hundreds of thousands from the countryside to the big towns. Since independence the population of Léopoldville has swollen from 350,000 to 1,400,000.
Most of these people are squatters on the government- or company~ owned land at the outskirts of town, There they have built primitive shelters and started a patch of manioc and vegetables, A shanty town like. this is a tremendous powder keg,
‘People are one hundred per cent against the KasavubueAdoula -government. Although most of them are from the Bakongo tribe in which Kasavubuts ABAKO [Alliance des Bakongo] was rooted.as’ the Congo's first anticolonial party, they have broken with the ABAKO machine so that it has practically ‘lost the. mass basis which was still strong in 1961,
“Lumumba s memory is. revered by the one million inhabitants of Léopoldville's shanty town. His portrait is to be. seen everywhere,
In the bars at night, Congo youngsters dance the cha-cha=cha to native songs commemorating the memory of Lumumba and swearing death and destruction to his murderers, Police and even soldiers are afraid to appear in uniform in these districts, .
Much the same situation exists in other towns. Although Pierre Mulelets guerrilla forces are still operating on a tribal basis, other tribes sympathize with them, A visitor to Luluabourg, the capital of Kasai province, said that young militants told him they would rise and join Mulelets forces when they reached the city, . Such talk is heard in many parts of the Congo. At Maniema, in Kivu province, new forces are said to have gone into action,
Mulelets forces appear to be holding their own against efforts of the "national" army to crush them, They are supported by most of the population of Kwilu province where they are centered, They have undertaken skirmishes on the very outskirts of Kikwit, the. capital of the province. And they have ambushed river and road traffic between Kasai and the ocean, including shipments from the diamond fields of © Tshikapa,.
The Kasavubu-Mobutu-Bomboko-Nendaka regime is rather frantically seeking to establish some kind of "legal" framework, which has been missing since President Kasavubu dismissed parliament. and. suspended | the constitution (which he had no constitutional right to do), A "commission" was convened in Luluabourg, from which all political parties were banned. It consisted of representatives of provincial governments and "national organizations" (churches, youth and student organizations, trade unions, etc.). The purpose of the body was to draft a new constitution and to prepare general elections or a “referendum" to ratify the document.
By packing the commission with representatives of the many pro-= vinces that have sprung up since the overthrow of the Lumumba government, Kasavubu hoped to get a "federalist" and "presidential" constitution that would enable him to destroy the power of the nationalist political parties, However, he got a big surprise, The trade-union and student organizations united in favor of a centralist constitu~ tion, succeeded in limiting each province to only one vote, and thereby formed a power bloe in the commission that thwarted Kasavubu's scheme, —
Some of the leaders of the Congolese trade unions, who had been kept in prison for months by Kasavubu for organizing a general strike of public-service workers, came out of the Luluabourg discussions as potential leaders of a regrouped nationalist movement in Congolese politics, Kasavubu was so taken aback by these unforeseen develop= ments, that he did. not convene parliament once for fear of being confronted with a vote of nonconfidence,.
It is doubtful that the regime will dare hold nation-wide elec tions, “Recent municipal elections in Bukavu, the capital of Kivu
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province, and Stanleyville, the capital of Oriental province, regis~ tered overwhelming: majorities: for the Lumumbist forces, It is diffi-« cult to see how the regime could prevent similar results in national legislative elections,,
The truth is that the authority of the central Congo government has almost vanished outside of Léopoldville and a few other centers,. Balkanization of the country through establishment of new "provinces" and new "provincial governments" in which greedy local bosses vote themselves the salaries of millionaires, has reached grotesque. pro-= portions, But this weakening of the central power has also favored the appearance of leftist nationalist forces, through establishment of local guerrilla forces and the reconstitution of nationalist pare ties. —
The emergence of a central figure or a central force capable of co-ordinating the tremendous. revolutionary energy accumulating today: among the masses would probably constitute a decisive turning point in this situation,