DANGER SIGNALS IN THE CONGO

...The pathetic flight of thousands earned only scorn from the Africans...

...It is always easiest to blame someone else for one's own troubles...

...in the Congo and Africa generally, many troubles are inherited from the colonial days...

...they believe they can do this without losing their African souls...

...The Belgian government offered a subsidy of eighty-five million dollars to the current and development budgets in 1960, but Belgian financiers tried to retain control of the Congo's economy by various means...

...To Africans, of course, the original villians of the Congo drama were the Belgians...

...diamonds leave Kasai as "unsorted gems" to depreciate their excise value...

...The Kennedy policy over Laos is a signal to Africa that the new President wants to help Africa achieve its position of equilibrium without wildly swinging between West and East...

...While Leopold II held the Congo as his private kingdom from 1885 to 1908, the population decreased by about three million...

...They telescope events—the basis for the charge that Mobutu's troops were paid in American dollars seems to be that in October the United States gave five million dollars through the United Nations to fill a gap the Congo Central Bank could not plug and still pay the central government's wage bill...

...they must have known he was being flown to his death, and yet they did not intervene...

...United States' policy should be not to draw several of these countries to her side, but to try to guide them all together on their own...

...The Belgian administration further diminished hopes for Congo unity by its encouragement of tribalism, on the "divide and rule" principle...

...and Belgian military interference has done more than anything else to defeat Dag Hammarskjold's attempts to seal off the Congo from the cold war...

...In reality there were all sorts of Belgians concerned with the Congo— devoted colonial administrators, cruel Force Publique officers, liberal professors warning of the need for change, big businessmen making political alliances to survive change, muddled politicians, and a vast apathetic electorate back in Belgium...

...Much of this criticism is unfair...

...by giving technical aid outside the United Nations framework and so confusing the whole civil operation in several spheres...

...These are typical of the...

...It is easy to see how Africans, offered a simplified version of events, arrived at their feelings of bitterness against American "imperialism...

...When Lumumba was taken from Thysville to Katanga, the United Nations' forces saw him being publicly bludgeoned in airports...

...They dress with ugly motives some examples of American restraint, as when Lumumba appealed first for American help before turning to the United Nations: "Surely that refusal then showed the United States had no imperialistic designs...

...Outside the province of Katanga Belgians have been able to return to their homes in the Congo only because of the presence of the United Nations...

...Julius Nyerere, the Chief Minister of Tanganyika, has spoken fiercely in Lumumba's defense on this point...

...A major cause was the brutal forced labor system he instituted...

...Britain is also charged with complicity, but in a minor role...

...Independence finally became inevCLYDE SANGER is a roving correspondent in Africa for the Manchester Guardian...

...In Africa, as anywhere else, it is not necessarily the truth that matters so much as what most people think is the truth...

...by letting General Mobutu use the Trust Territory of Urundi as a springboard for his vain expedition to recapture Kivu province from the Lumumbists...

...The Belgian government generously offered to pay one-third of the salaries of civil servants who stayed on after independence on a technical aid program—but in the accustomed paternalistic fashion ordered that a Belgian Embassy department should control their services, separate from Congolese rule...

...Inforcongo did not mention that there were only a dozen Congolese college graduates...

...When you argue that the day of the small nations has dawned in the General Assembly, you are told that most of the small states vote the way their benefactor dictates, whether in Latin America or former French Africa...

...Pan-African conferences devote long days to discussing how to defeat the "neo-colonialism" of economic bondage...

...Though Kasavubu was the prime engineer of Congolese independence, Lumumba has always been the darling of the nationalists: he was the people's man, a biting orator, an energetic figure, and he had borne the scars of colonial oppression for photographers to see...

...On top of all this, the Belgians have made themselves unpopular even in Katanga and Kalonji's self-styled "diamond state" of South Kasai by practicing old tricks of economic exploitation: mineral export earnings are held at Antwerp...

...The United Nations has been hamstrung with a weak mandate...

...Much of this opprobrium was deserved...

...To Americans this may seem a ludicrous misinterpretation of motives, but the fact of misinterpretation is important...

...by supplying Tshombe and his ally Albert Kalonji of South Kasai with arms...

...Why, then, is there such a wave of strong feeling against the United States and the United Nations Secretary General Hammarskjold...

...It is a reaction from the insidious ways of colonialism, and the United States suffers for it...

...itable, less because of the flight of 100 million dollars of capital in 1959 than because of the breakdown of administration in the Lower Congo, engineered by Joseph Kasavubu, which the Belgians knew they could not restore without a full-scale colonial war...

...Since the troubles of July, the Belgian record has been dismal...

...All nationalists who aspire to lead or be part of a strong central government backed to the hilt Lumumba's drive to smash Tshombe...

...The tough methods of the paracommandos enraged them, as did the prodding of Katanga's President Moise Tshombe into secession by Belgian colons and —more discreetly—Belgian financial interests in Katanga...

...But United Nations' inaction had the effect of hurting Lumumba's cause more than his enemies' and left the way open for his murder...

...questions Africans ask...

...In return for a promise to guarantee the operations of the faltering Congo Central Bank, the Belgian National Bank removed seventy million dollars of gold and dollar reserves from the Central Bank to vaults in Brussels and insisted that the Congo's monetary policy should be settled between the two banks...

...But having promised independence for June, 1960, Belgian attempts to safeguard their financial interests by tight control were disastrous...

...the fear of the white man emplanted then and nourished since by harsh policies of oppression is one of the roots of the Congo disaster...

...These divisions over the Congo are repeated in other issues of policy...

...General Jannsens can be said to bear equal blame with Patrice Lumumba for the mutiny of the Force Publique and all the chaos that has flowed from it...

...troops would protect the lives of Belgians in the Congo—is far from strong...

...The Belgian propaganda machine Inforcongo made an impressive display of school enrollment figures (1.7 million children last year), and the model African townships and well-appointed hospitals...

...There is a good deal the Kennedy Administration could do to improve the standing of the United States in Africa...

...Recently I argued with a Rhodesian African who, hearing of the promise of 150 American college graduates to come to East Africa and fill an important gap as high school teachers, immediately said, "They'll try to put over their propaganda...

...A diversification of channels of aid...

...But to Africans outside the Congo, whose main experience with Belgians was the sight of mournful, fussing refugees and the rumors of tough paracomman-dos, they were all despicable...

...a hammering out at conferences of Pan-African policies towards the Congo and towards economic aid and world politics...

...Poverty makes them dependent on foreign aid for development...

...As long as independent Africa suffers from divisions among its members, the United States is likely to be blamed (and Britain as well, though less forcibly) for promoting these divisions...

...Why was Lumumba refused a visa for the United Nations debate in New York which Kasavubu attended...

...The counter-argument—that, if the United Nations had exceeded its mandate and intervened to free Lumumba, it could not draw the line between this and any street-fight between Congolese—is merely mocked...

...Already there are welcome signs of change...

...Africa, in moving away from close Western ties towards a position of equilibrium, of "positive non-commitment" to the two power blocs, is often viewed by Americans as "going Communist...

...Africans pass over those items of undeniably good work performed by Americans, such as the airlift of food to the starving refugees of South Kasai and the efforts of the economist, Robert West, in advising the finance ministries during Lumumba's premiership...

...a growth of confidence in their own ability to choose wisely...

...it has also refused Kasavubu's request for troops to subdue the Lumumbists in Stanleyville and in Oriental province...

...John Foster Dulles' dislike of neutralism—those who are not with us are against us—dies hard...

...There is an anti-Communist evangelism about United States' officials in Africa that is jarring to the new leaders on this continent who want to make their own experiments and form their own convictions...

...by failing to place sanctions on Belgian nationals who volunteered for Tshombe's Foreign Legion or Mobutu's forces...

...Nor was any attempt made, unlike the French in Equatorial Africa, or the British in many colonies, to build up a Congolese political and administrative elite and to lay a sound foundation of provincial and local government...

...But if these troubles are compounded by involvement in the East-West struggle, there will be dangerous days ahead...

...Danger Signals in the Congo by CLYDE SANGER hoever murdered Patrice Lumumba, the death of the first Congolese Prime Minister has done enormous harm to the reputations of the United Nations and the United States in Africa...

...that as of last year less than 3,000 Congolese had gone beyond seven years of schooling...

...At present, African states are sadly divided between the Casablanca radical group of pro-Lumumba states, the Brazzaville faction supporting Kasa-vubu, and an "uncommitted" number which include Liberia, Nigeria, Tunisia, and Ethiopia...

...There is a tragic lack of self-confidence among many Africans which sometimes develops into xenophobia...

...General Jannsens in effect set himself up as a political rival to Lumumba, who subverted the troops in order to defeat the general, only to find that subversion had run out of control...

...A more sophisticated approach toward economic and technical aid also seems forthcoming...

...It is suggested that Dag_Hammarskjold, under United States' guidance, has always backed Kasavubu and Mobutu against Lumumba...

...African bitterness toward the Belgians has deepened since independence because their former masters have defied the United Nations in a number of ways: by keeping 200 military "technical assistants" with Tshombe's forces...

...You will hear many charges against United States' policy in the Congo, not only there but in places like Kenya and Rhodesia: Why did the United States pay the wages of General Mobutu's soldiers...

...The solutions to Africa's problems with neo-colonialism lie mainly with her own states...

...The bitterness and suspicion among Africans are grounded on a private acknowledgement of their own weakness...

...yet they see political strings hanging from every gift...

...Wasn't the Anglo-American resolution to the United Nations General Assembly in December (which barely failed to get the necessary two-thirds vote) an openly partisan plan to help Mobutu against Lumumba...

...that until 1958 the study of law was forbidden as, in the apt term of a Swiss United Nations official, "an apprenticeship for subversion...

...Worst of all, General Emile Jann-sens resisted moves to bring Congolese into the commissioned ranks of the Force Publique, then officered by 1,000 Belgians, or to raise the small wages of his 23,000 troops...

...To which the African replies, "America refused because she didn't want to attack her NATO ally, Belgium...

...It may be foolish, perhaps, to generalize about the Belgians, but that is what Africans do nevertheless...

...Given these feelings, Africans in many countries feel the United Nations' policy has failed them...

...Inforcongo never hinted that the primary purpose of the extensive social service program of which the Belgians were so proud was to keep fourteen million Africans content to be exploited as poorly paid laborers, servants, and semi-skilled artisans...

...African nationalists of many countries—and most Africans are nationalists, however incoherently —are accusing United States' leaders of imperialist designs on the Congo...

...They are not sure of being shrewd enough to separate good from bad, to take the nourishment of true knowledge and spurn the poison of propaganda...

...It is an utterly disgraceful record...

...the forging of closer links between various African states—all these steps are the means...

...Lumumba invited the United Nations in, and then the United Nations denied him the use of the radio station and the use of airports when he had borrowed Ilyushin planes to fly his troops against Katanga...

...The Belgian plea—that, in technical aid, she has a special relationship with the Congo and that, as far as military operations go, she would cooperate fully with the United Nations if she could be sure U.N...