The Congo Roundabout
KEITII KYLE writes:
The Organisation of African Unity is in the same Congolese fix as the UN in 1960. If it sends in a 'peace force' with the consent of the legitimate government, how can it dissociate itself from those acts and motives of that govern- ment of which it disapproves? Dag Hammarsk- jold came to the conclusion that the Lumumba Government, at whose invitation the UN was present in the Congo, was responsible for 'genocide' in Kasai; how can the OAU risk let- ting itself be used as an instrument of Tshombe's 'neo-colonialism'? Yet all African Governments see Tshombe's constitutional legitimacy, so that any attempt to by-pass him raises the issue of interference in the Congo's internal affairs.
Tshombe, it need hardly be said, is the world's expert at manipulating this formula. Leopold- ville's verbal output now sounds exactly like that of Elisabethville during the secession. There is the same fulsorpe acceptance of forms of words agreed with international organisations (first the UN, now, the OAU), followed by the same righteous indignation when the words are not recognised by others to mean precisely what Tshombe says they mean. There are the same announcements of total vindication built on verbal straws' that will not bear their weight. When even the lvigerians complained that Tshombe had sat silently through a session of the Kenyatta commission in Nairobi while the sending of a mission to see President Johnson was discussed and had then waited to return to
his own capital before denouncing this as interl ference with Congolese sovereignty, we alL
recognised the hallmarks of a familiar game. 't
Now that General Mobutu's forces, with that aid of American-supplied planes and some whit mercenaries on the ground, have recaptured+, most of North Katanga, Sankuru and Central' Kivu and may be expected soon to march on; Kindu and Stanleyville, Tshombe probably( prefers a military solution. The Kenyatta comt?-, mission, of course, would like to set up a roundsa table conference, after a cease-fire, and get agreement on supervised elections When Thomas Kanza, Colonel Pakassa andit Bocheley-Davidson turned up at Nairobi to' represent the rebels, they spoke the language of moderation, reasserting loyalty to President) Kasavubu. Often the only card that used to bet left to the UN during their four years was thee' practically every Congolese was ready to ac'i knowledge Kasavubu: the depressing originality, of the present rebels had been that they were not. After the Nairobi meeting Christopho Gbenye, Lumumba's senior surviving colleague, who is now in Stanleyville as the self-proclaimed President Of the People's Republic, issued a statement that he would not accept a cease-fire ,1 until Kasavubu as well as Tshombe had been., removed from the political scene.
Yet if the rebels could be persuaded to accept Kasavubu, it would surely be not too much WV (I ask that the President should instal a less., objectionable Premier of what is after all only al, transitional government until elections bring tha.,t,. new constitution fully into force. If AmericapH wants to be helpful, she might convey a stronst
hint to the same effect,
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