Congo Confederation:

...Gizenga may then return to his tribal base among the Kwilu of Leopoldville Province and establish a small principality there, keeping some international links...

...Tshombe (and the Belgian Union Minière) have gotten all they demanded...

...Each day we read in the press about "Gizenga's intentions...

...Also noteworthy among the absentees at Tananarive were the Congolese Army chief, General Joseph Mobutu, and Kasavubu's Foreign Minister, Justin Bomboko...

...Bomboko never favored a close relationship with Tshombe, and he has shown his displeasure since Tananarive by a declaration supporting Sendwe's claim for a separate state in northern Katanga...

...There was, first of all, the question of the number of regions that would compose the future confederation...

...Reports differ on how many were decided upon: eight or ten...

...In recognizing Kasavubu, therefore, Gizenga was reasserting his own legitimacy...

...In these circumstances, the instability of the Congo will be affected by the instability in Angola, Northern Rhodesia, Ruanda and Uganda —indeed all of southern Africa...

...The Tananarive decisions seemed to leave little role for Mobutu's Army, and it is doubtful that he can be very enthusiastic about this...

...He was recognized as chief of state by Tshombe and Kalonji, largely, it seems, because the United Nations had recognized his authority...

...Mobutu was still in Bumba in eastern Equator Province at the time and Bomboko was in the hospital...

...While the de facto existence of Kalonji's western Baluba secession from Kasai was recognized, the similar de facto secession of the eastern Balubas of Lualaba from Tshomhe's Katanga was not...

...Moreover, no Congo territorial unit will ever be perfectly ethnic...

...As the arena within which he has to work becomes smaller and more exclusively ethnic, he may find his claims more difficult to assert...

...What it will not be able to do is mobilize a modernizing elite and effect significant social change in the Congo...

...On the other, he emerges as the one figure still standing for the integrity of the Congo and against a re-alignment of its boundaries on tribal lines...

...All we really know is that Gizenga never went to Tananarive (nor in fact to Cairo), and that he has rejected the Tananarive accords...

...Washington's vote on the Angola resolution was a small but important step in this direction...

...Tananarive gives it its first real chance...

...The executive of this confederation would be composed of the presidents of the sovereign member states, each of whom would control its own gendarmerie...

...moves fast and in collaboration with the modernizing forces in Africa (both in the Congo and elsewhere), a new Yenan, which would be constructed by men not yet heard of, could possibly be averted in the Congo...

...Observers have spoken of up to 20 such states, mostly tribally based...

...In the countryside, the peasantry will continue to live in uncertain conditions, both economically and politically, under the dominance of traditional chiefs...

...The tragedy of Tananarive is that it not only furthered internal disintegration, but it has also grossly reduced whatever initiative any outside power might have had to move in the opposite direction...

...Hence, once the principle of ethnic autonomy is accepted, there will be no end to secession...

...Since the conference explicitly based recognition on de facto authority, several mare states have been hastily proclaimed since Tananarive...

...They have already been doing so with some success, and they will now be able to do so even more effectively...

...Returning to Leopoldville, Kasavubu celebrated the "reintegration" of Katanga and South Kasai into the Congo...

...Neither the UN nor the US nor the USSR are yet helpless, but none any longer has the power radically to alter the situation...

...For if all the "states" of the Congo are "'sovereign," each with its own "army or gendarmerie, each will be able to claim authority to keep UN troops out of its domain...

...But the price he had to pay was the cession of all effective power...

...Much less has been heard of the discords of Tananarive...

...The future of the Congo's National Army was left vague...

...Washington should not feel overjoyed about Tshomhe's victory and Kasavubu's effacement...

...This should aid him considerably with the younger educated elements...

...First, it can attempt to contain the tribalist anarchy of the Congo by supporting the formation of modernizing, strong African states around it...

...Communism has hitherto been an insignificant force on the African continent...

...Much has been made of the accords of Tananarive...

...Thus, Tananarive marks a significant victory for those whose perceptions are more short-run and limited...

...To date, the West has systematically undermined all those forces in the Congo which could serve as a barrier to all-out imitation...

...Gizenga's strength has not been significantly altered by Tananarive...

...On the one hand, his opponents have come to some sort of arrangement...

...What we shall have then is the social conditions for the emergence of a revolutionary movement, Yenanstyle...

...The future role of Kasavubu was left quite open as well...

...With all integrating elements in the country (national government, national army) virtually extinguished and all the states resting on tribal bases alone, there will be few forces left tending toward stability...

...But the unitarists were always more or less federalists, and the "federalists" were in fact secessionists...

...Last summer, one talked of the difference between unitarists and federalists...

...At the time, Kasavubu's Interior Minister, Cyrille Adoula, had also disassociated himself from these murders...

...Now the difference is said to be between federalists and confederalists...

...Joseph Ileo, Katanga Provincial President Moise Tshombe, "South Kasai President" Albert Kalonji and others—made these decisions not on the basis of any constitutional authority, but on the basis of the de facto situation...

...For the first time on the African continent, Communism will become a serious problem...

...This was exactly the situation that Lumumba (and the Casablanca powers) tried so hard to prevent...

...Kasavubu has emerged from Tananarive much weakened...

...It is noteworthy that the students at Louvanium have protested against the Tananarive decisions as a "return to tribalism...

...Perhaps the biggest question mark concerning the Tananarive "accords" was the absence of Antoine Gizenga, successor to the late Premier Patrice Lumumba...

...Moreover, they always cite someone else's opinion about their intentions...

...Second, Washington can attempt to support, wherever they appear, whatever centralizing, supra-tribal tendencies appear in the Congo...

...The recognition of Kasavubu as Chief of State, primus inter pares, is at best a temporary concession, which could be withdrawn almost at will in the future...

...What is more, instead of emerging as the steadying influence it might have been, the Congo will now be a major factor working against the internal stability of neighboring territories...

...Authority over foreign relations in a confederation lacking a central legislature or an executive independent of the constituent units has been a precarious business all through history...

...This will result in a continuing, growing disaffection of the intellectuals, indeed even the semi-educated urhanites, from the regime...

...The immediate prospects for a national coalition are dim...

...If so, and if the U.S...

...It was clear that the majority of the participants wanted to enlarge the number from the present six (provincial governments...

...Lastly, Tananarive, by weakening the Kasavubu camp, has opened the way to a new kaleidoscope of changing alliances in the Congo...

...Rather, they raise more problems than they solve...

...It is of course possible that Gizenga may yet emerge as the strong unifier of the Congo...

...This was neither logical nor justified...

...Seldom in history has a chief of state so easily surrendered his patrimony...

...The United States has probably only two courses of action left...

...A new confederation of Congo (or Central African) states was to be formed, recognizing Kasavubu as primus inter pares, controlling foreign relations...

...Thrown back on his own tribal base, Kasavubu may yet find himself incapable of controlling the disintegration process, with disastrous consequences for him personally...

...CLEARLY, the Tananarive meetings hardly represent a "solution" for the Congo...

...Both Mobutu and Bomboko had already been angered by Kasavubu's sending of several political leaders (including personal friends of Mobutu and Bomboko) to their death in South Kasai...

...A confederal regime at Leopoldville may, with continued UN aid, manage to muddle through for a while...

...The question of Lualaba was not the only one to divide the conferees...

...In any event, the attraction of the Chinese model is great...

...Neither Lumumba nor the UN had been able to put down this secession —the UN because it was unwilling to use force, Lumumba because he was not allowed to...

...In addition, he was the outstanding political figure during the meetings, and the Congolese leaders in effect legitimized his secession of last July...

...Tananarive has also further weakened the position of the United Nations in the Congo...

...It is much more likely that he will be ousted in Stanleyville, and with this ouster the last "national" leader will disappear from the scene...

...What is to be noted is that all these stories, without exception, originate from Leopoldville and Elisabethville...

...So the sides are roughly the same as before, but the focus of the debate—which continues unabated despite Tananarive—has now shifted slightly to the advantage of those who stand for the dismemberment of the Congo...

...For the Bakongo, whose leader he is, are subdivided into many smaller groupings, and Kasavubu's claim to leadership is not unchallenged among them...

...Each sub-group will begin to demand its autonomy, and in the struggle to achieve it, will seek allies elsewhere in the Congo confederation...

...It was he who convened the meeting, and the succeeding one will be in Elisabethville...

...What, then, is their significance...

...Lacking a strong party on the TunisiaGuinea model to integrate the nation and prevent outside forces (Communist, as well as colonialist) from asserting their control, the Congo will see semi-anarchy and stagnation and may begin to turn to an organized peasant Communist movement as its only long-term nationalist solution...

...First of all, Tananarive can be seen as an important political victory for Tshombe...

...By acceding to the "confederal" formula, he has even liberated those elements now in collaboration with him from a continuing alliance...

...One of the most significant omissions at Tananarive was recognition of the state of Lualaba, the area of north Katanga controlled by the Balubakat party of Jason Sendwe...

...These leaders— President Joseph Kasavubu, his Prime Minister...

...Congo Confederation Lacking a strong integrating force, the nation may turn to an organized peasant Communist movement, Yenan-style, as its only long-term nationalist solution By Immanuel Wallerstein LAST WEEK in Tananarive, capital of the Malagasy Republic, some of the major political figures of the Congo met, revised their country's Constitution, recarved its map and decided its fate...

...But the chances of this happening now seem remote...

...But if Parliament is reconvened and the Belgian counsellors are really withdrawn, new opportunities may arise...

...A clear position on the current crises in Northern Rhodesia and Ruanda are the next steps that are demanded...

...He has accepted Kasavubu as Chief of State, but only on the basis of the last meeting of the Congo Parliament in September, which reconfirmed Kasavubu as Chief of State and Lumumba as Prime Minister...

...The major question of what powers to confer on the "central authority" of the confederation was so difficult that only by tabling it were the conferees able to demonstrate a semblance of accord...

...They never quote Gizenga or his military chief, General Victor Lundula, directly...