IMPERIALISM SETS UP A NEW SAVIOUR IN THE CONGO
June 50 marked an “important turning point in the history of the Congo, On that date the United Nations occupation of the Congo came to an end, On that date, too, President Kasavubuts four-year mandate as head of the Republic of Congo ended and the Rongatene parliament completed its first term,
As the deadline neared, anxiety rose among imperialist circles and their stooges in the Gongo over possible collapse of the neocolonialist Kasavubu-Mobutu regime, Their main figurehead, "socialist" Premier Cyrille Adoula, publicly admitted the pankruptey of his stewardshi He is virtually powerless outside of the 'Ruropean" [white "quarter of Leopoldville and even there his authority has.come under increasingly serious challenge from underground forces. Vast reaches of the country, including the provinces
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of Kouilou, North Katanga, Eastern Province and large sectors of Kivu, have set up new Lumumbist administrations which do not recog-= nize the authority of the puppet central government.
As for Mobutuls army, it is disintegrating. Repeatedly, contingents of the army have refused to engage in pitched battle with insurrectional formations, During one of the skirmishes in Kivu, _ General Mobutu himself had to lead the advance, like a feudal war— lord, in order to get some of his own soldiers to start marching in the same direction,
Capitalists abroad reveal their pessimism over perspectives in the Congo, In Brussels, quotations on the stock of the most powerful Congo trust, Union Miniére, have dropped to barely ten per cent of their highest point in 1957, oe ,
Both the Belgian capitalists, who are most directly interested in tapping the Congo's huge natural wealth, and those in the U.S., who feel most acutely that it is their duty to “save the Congo for free enterprise" and keep it from "going Communist," have been frantically looking for a way out ~~ some way to prevent their neocolonialist regime from going down like a house of cards, The solution they seem to have decided to try out is a rather curious one, They are pushing out into the center of the stage a new . saviour, a figure by the name of Moise Tshombe,
This is the South Katanga tribal politician who, through various tricks and stratagems and a liberal supply of grease, succeeded in first becoming premier of the province of Katanga, then head of the "independent" country of Katanga. This operation, mounted in direct collusion with Belgian military personnel and Belgian capitalists, was carried out.when the Congo first achieved independence in July 1960, Tshombe!ts treachery triggered the huge internal crisis in the country that eventually led to the occupa~ tion by United Nations troops.
The use of UN military forces, said the General Assembly resolution, was to help restore the country's unity; the real aim was not openly stated. But it soon became apparent with the ouster of Premier Patrioe Lumumba and his subsequent foul murder, Eventually fighting broke out between the UN troops and Tshombe's "gendarmes,'' Tshombe was deposed and this sinister figure then went into exile in Madrid, where Franco's fascist regime extended him every courtcsy. _
Tshombe did not réturn to the Congo directly from Madrid, He stopped off first at Brussels where he had long talks with Foreign Minister PauleHenri Spaak and U.S.Ambassador Douglas Mac- Arthur III. The cordiality of these briefings of the prospective Chiang Kai~shek of the Congo, as reported by the press, leaves no doubt that Tshombe is returning to his field of operation with the mandate of imperialism -~ above all, the mandate of President Lyndon Johns One
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Tshombe was carefully groomed during the final stage of the UN occupation of the Congo for his new role of saviour, unifier and pacifier of his country. This grooming was rather essential, for too many people were aware of how he destroyed the unity of the country by taking Katanga into secession, how he paralyzed the central government by withholding more than two-thirds of the taxes and customs: on which it depended, how he directly participated in the murder of Patrice Lumumba and how he sought to cover up the crime, He became deepiy associated in the public mind with the scum in his entourage -~ OAS bandits fresh from backstabbings in Algeria, former German SS men still smelling of the gas chambers, Cuban counterrevolutionaries looking for temporary jobs before again invading their own country.
One of the main moves in this careful grooming for his new role as "arbiter," the man above all the tribes and’ political parties of the Congo, was the splendidly timed "revelations" he made to a reactionary Belgian journalist about the murder of Lumumba in which he white-washed his own role and hung the rap on Cyrille Adoula, [See World Outlook February 7 and February 14.] (The generally accepted version of that murder still remains that one of Tshombe's main lieutenants, | his former Minister of the Interior Munongo, personally killed Lumumba, after the Congolese leader had already been badly maimed through frightful mistreatment on the plane that brought him from Leopoldville to the Katanga capital of Elisabethville, )
Upon his arrival in Leopoldville as imperialism's own °. trusted man, Tshombe at once called in Kasavubu, Adoula and the main leaders of various. neocolonialist parties and sects, He made it clear that he wanted a ground-breaking operation -- a general amnesty for political prisoners and an invitation to the Lumumbist leaders to return from exile. To make his new liberal halo look really authentic, he demanded the immediate’ release of Antoine Gizenga, Lumumba's most prominent lieutenant and former vicepresident of the Adoula government who has been imprisoned on an island in the Congo river although parliament has repeatedly called for his release,
Another maneuver not to be overlooked was Tshombe's stop-off at Bamako, the capital of Mali, on his way from Brussels to Leopoldville, where he evidently made” a bid for a stamp of approval from all the African independent states as to his "legitimacy."
The imperialist press co-operated deftly in this game by playing up the "popular" response to Tshombe's: reappearance in the Congo. Perhaps some "demonstrations" did occur, Their spontaneity is another matter, Tshombe is a well-heeled saviour. He has several million dollars in gold and hard currency on tap’in European bank accounts, while the other Congo leaders. of his temperament, training and loyalties are flat broke, His arrival-as a "iive" one was bound to create a good deal of excitement among the
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Tshombe's reappearance has, of course, a deeper meaning in the context of Leopoldville politics, The bankruptcy of the Adoula government has entailed extensive unraveling of the state fabric. The politicians themselves constitute the hardest, most avaricious nucleus of the Congo compradore pourge oisie-in-formation, Nothing . less than their immediate livelihood and future prospects are ins volved in keeping up the state apparatus, Since no faction is strong enough to impose its rule on the whole country, they are driven toward a general compromise that would affect all the lacal and regional politicians and chiefs, Tshombe still retains authority in the country's richest region, South Katanga, and has the full backing of the colonial masters there, Thus the decision to make him the nominal head of a government of "national reconciliation" is not so illogical as it may seem, :
For Tshombe to succeéd in his assignment, however, an essential condition remains to be fulfilled. The Lumumbist insurreotional groups operating in various areas must be persuaded to accept Tshombe, to co~operate with him and to take posts in his government. Will they do this? Can they accept a neocolonialist stooge who still has some 2,000 armed "gendarmes" on the shelf in Angola where they have been keeping in form under the guidance of the Portuguese colonial masters?
Unfortunately, there is great danger that many of them will be tempted, Gbenye, who led the MNC-Lumumba [Mouvement National Congolais] parliamentary group in Leopoldville after Gizenga'ts arrest until he himself had to go into exile, reportedly nogotinated directly with some important Belgian financial groups for the "reintegration" of the Lumumbist forces into "Congolese legality." He was expelled from the Committee of National Liberation in Brazzaville, formally on charges of embezzlement of funds, but one of the main guerrilla leaders in the Congo, Gaston Soumialot, still recognizes his authority. Many former Lumumbist leaders are said to have become demoralized and corrupted,
In addition, they have fallen into such suicidal maneuvers before, During. one of the peaks of the civil war, Gizenga, who headed the rival central government of Stanleyville and had a strong army and controlled most of the north and east of the country, accepted "reconciliation" with the Leopoldville government. The result was destruction of his base, his subsequent loss of the post in the coalition government with which he had been paid in return for dismantling his Stanleyville stronghold and his eventual arrest and imprisonment.
Lumumba himself made two colossal errors. Instead of strengthening his revolutionary base and mobilizing the population in the style of Fidel Castro, he invited in the United Nations, When this led to his being deposed as premier in Leopoldville, he
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did not retreat at once to Stanleyville where he had a strong following and could have organized a counterbase from which to resover his position, He stayed.in Leopoldville in order to personally protest and argue the illegality of Kasavubu!s moves, against him, The tragic result was his martyrdom,
Most of the radical. political leaders of the Congo have not yet drawn the necessary conclusions from such mistakes, Many of them are ready to commit the same errors:twice, Perhaps the influence of the Chinese Communist party and similar tendencies will . help the opposition to Tshombe!s blandishments. The revolutionary instincts of the guerrilla fighters who have been mobilized in the struggle will weigh in the same direction.