Lumumba's Loyalists

In theory, both Patrice Lumumba and his ambitions were safely mewed up in Colonel Joseph Mobutu's army camp. In fact, Lumumba was doing just about as well inside as out. For one thing, he had talked his way out of his jail cell, now had the run of the camp and ate in the officers' mess. More important, his followers, quietly and steadily, were spreading the Lumumba banner over more and more of the troubled nation, just as if Patrice himself had been there giving orders.

Headquarters of Lumumba's shadow government is Stanleyville, the slick little river capital of Eastern province. There Lumumba's Prague-trained Vice Premier Antoine Gizenga holds firm control of the local Congolese army and police force in defiance of frustrated "Boss" Mobutu inLeopoldville. With this foothold, Gizenga & Co. were pressuring Equator province, reaching into Kivu, and looking greedily at northern Katanga as well.

Rule by Kidnap. Kivu, a land of rich highlands and rolling farms once run by Belgians, was easily won. Gizenga simply sent several Jeeploads of troops swooping into Bukavu, Kivu's capital, to negotiate with the wavering Kivu provincial leaders. When the latter refused to disavow Mobutu, the invaders simply kidnaped the conferees--Kivu's provincial president, a couple of his ministers and the local army commander--and hauled them back to Stanleyville to get them out of the way. Suddenly, Kivu had a new provincial boss, who turned out to be another Lumumba crony, former Minister of Information Anicet Kashamura.

Straying Escort. Sputtering with rage, Colonel Mobutu vowed to retaliate and to bring Kivu back under his control. But how? The only troops he could depend on were nearLeopoldville, 900 miles away, and the U.N. surely would forbid the use of trucks or planes to haul them east for an all-out invasion. No one, however, could complain when he airlifted 100 troops to Kasai as an escort for President Joseph Kasavubu on his official visit to Bakwanga, capital of the secessionist Mining State in Kasai. But soon after the heavily armed "escort" got to Kasai, the transports took off again, turned up at an airport in Ruanda-Urundi, the Belgian-run trust territory on the Congo's eastern edge. There the Belgians, who clearly were in on the game, smilingly agreed to U.N. demands to eject Mobutu's men, loaded them into trucks to take them back to the border. The border point they chose was 90 miles away, right across the river from Kivu's Bukavu itself.

The Roundup. But when Mobutu's troops crossed the bridge under a white flag and advanced on the town, Kashamura's pro-Lumumba soldiers greeted them with a cascade of chattering machine guns and banging rifles. When it was all over four hours later, no one much had been hurt, but Mobutu's invaders were in jail. So was their commander, who promptly changed sides and began issuing statements damning Mobutu as a "colonialist intriguer."

Back in Leopoldville, President Joseph Kasavubu sat down grimly with visiting U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, who flew in from Manhattan to urge the regime to reconvene Parliament and give imprisoned Patrice Lumumba a fair trial. As they talked, rowdy groups of pro-Lumumba and pro-Kasavubu men shouted at and slugged one another outside U.N. headquarters. It was hardly a favorable atmosphere for promises of peace, but the stolid President grandly announced he would give it another try--with a round-table conference of all Congolese leaders on Jan. 25. Lumumba's own variety of roundup seemed to be proving more effective.

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