LETTER FROM LEOPOLDVILLE

...Strictly speaking, the United Nations finished its main job here by more or less ending the Katanga secession, but it will undoubtedly stay on in a different and much smaller role...

...It is a lucky man who can buy his family a supply of manioc, the staple of the African diet, at the official price nowadays...

...Journalists traveling in the interior this year found that local U.N...

...While the nation's leaders in Leopoldville fret about how the cake is being cut, the rest of the country stumbles along somehow...

...This plan, part of an elaborate bid to lure Moise Tshombe's Katanga back into the Congo without war, actually fragmented the country more than ever...

...SUSAN BRADY is a free lance journalist living in the Congo...

...Living here, one does less contemplating than coping with the facts...

...Leopoldville's food distribution system was disrupted during a blockade last February and never properly restored...

...operation in the Congo has many characteristics of a government, but it lacks the elementary safeguards that one would expect to find at the smallest city hall, such as open accounting of expenditures, announcement of important policy decisions, and clarification of who is responsible for what...

...In any case, a "system" of unnamed persons that makes decisions is wide open to abuse of power, particularly when key people in that system often behave as if the rights of office are divine, passing direct from the Almighty to the Secretary General and all the way down the chain of command...

...Narrow personal interests are put before the nation's, and though many want the benefits of office, few want the duties...

...Such food is bought at the pegged official price and resold at the free-market price for an unearned profit of about 300 per cent...

...Here, far from the Olympus on First Avenue in New York City, the United Nations is a fearsome thing, a kind of camera-shy Frankenstein monster...

...From time to time newspaper editorial writers, trade union leaders, out-of-power politicians, and visiting diplomats sound the cajl for constructive endeavor and a government austerity program...

...U.N.-recruited doctors and judges, teachers, and technicians are scattered throughout the Congo...

...No traveler leaves Leopoldville without a batch of personal mail for friends and acquaintances, simply because an airmail letter takes twice as long to cross the republic as to cross the Atlantic...

...A curious thing about Leopoldville is that the markets run out of local products all the time...

...Nothing shatters the myth of the happy, smiling African quicker than a short stay in the Congo...

...officers had orders from Leopoldville headquarters not to talk and not to make any U.N...

...official in the Congo was asked who ordered the troops to move in Katanga last December, he gave the cryptic answer: "The system gave the order...

...Schools for European children are full, with openings left only in the Flemish sections...

...There is constant talk of austerity programs, of putting the Congo back on its feet, but nothing seems to get done...

...Local coffee and tea are still for sale, but only the lower grades...

...The United Nations, with its network of outposts in key spots throughout the Congo, could be a good news source, but it prefers not to be...

...A bent old man stands outside Leo-poldville's biggest pharmacy and as you come out with a month's supply of antibiotics and cortisone drugs, he pushes a little package under your nose and whispers, "Leopard's claws...

...Since the United Nations provides the sole means of transportation to many remote places, this decision amounts to cutting them off from the rest of the country...

...A long-distance telephone call consumes two days...

...Last summer seventeen new provinces were created, in place of the original six...

...As one old hand remarked, "Now I know the Congo crisis is over: There are teen-age white girls at the swimming pool...

...But the United Nations, like any bureaucracy or political machine, is a haven for misfits and miscreants, who must be counted along with the capable and dedicated...

...In some places in the interior, the U.N...

...Several months ago, when a top U.N...

...Usually news from the interior reaches the capital by personal courier as well as other means...

...The press is hostile toward us, and I don't see any reason why I should cooperate with you," a high U. N. official told a visiting British correspondent...

...Besides the Europeans, who are rich by definition—and this is a generally accepted fact of life—there is a new wealthy class of Africans, men of influence...

...It does contradictory things and moves, in many directions at once...

...Traveling from one province to another these days is like traveling from one country to another...

...in others the troops refuse to patrol the streets in times of unrest, presumably to avoid interfering in the Congo's internal affairs...

...But—"Not I," say the cabinet ministers...

...Skyscraper apartment houses and office buildings, wide sweeping boulevards, a jet airport twenty miles from the center of town, highways linking the inner city and the suburbs—the Congo's capital was built on a monumental scale and built so well that it still looks good after nearly three years of neglect...

...We have every right to withhold or suppress information," a public information officer declared this spring...

...One can only conclude that a vital political action was taken by someone who proceeded without, perhaps even against, orders, or by someone who does not want to be tagged with the credit or blame for the consequences...

...The undemocratic aspects of the United Nations' activity here should be disturbing to American liberals...

...Perhaps it is only a matter of scale, but it is this big power play that makes the Congo so much more interesting than other young African nations...

...There has been, however, surprisingly little crime for a city marked by extremes of poverty and wealth...

...facilities available to correspondents...

...In a speech not long ago, President Joseph Kasavubu noted that political independence is merely an instrument, of dubious value without economic and administrative order to accompany it...

...They continue to draw their inflated salaries and schedule debates on setting up a pension fund for "retired" parliamentarians...

...Doing a job or keeping house consumes every drop of energy—much reduced in the tropics to begin with— as well as patience, good humor, ingenuity, and flexibility...

...Communication with the capital is bad enough, but contact between provinces and from one part of a province to another is even worse...

...By now, everyone at least realizes that something went wrong, even if people disagree over exactly what...

...Besides, there do not seem to be any firm plans for replacing them when they are pulled out...

...What is less widely known is that a large share of the food shipped into the Congo, as a part of various aid programs, goes right out again...

...It is no secret that these items are smuggled out of the country to be sold for hard currency in neighboring African states...

...What the Congo lacks is leadership...

...Between their salaries, with fringe benefits, and the money they pick up on the side, they are more affluent than all but the most prosperous Europeans, and less productive...

...The notion of encouraging or even permitting public scrutiny of a public-supported operation is foreign to many...

...Perhaps most shocking is the secrecy surrounding political decisions—how they are made and by whom...

...Each province has its own customs, health, and immigration inspectors, and many issue special permits to enter and leave their territory (one heritage of the Western world is red tape...

...Inviting six people to dinner and preparing the sort of thing an American working wife could put together in an hour after coming home from an office, takes four days of planning and shopping...

...The disenchantment he experienced in one afternoon comes over most observers more gradually...

...it has a modern "plant...

...Six months ago a nearby sugar refinery expanded...

...A year ago, the Monetary Council, the nation's high financial policy-making body (composed of Congolese officials and foreign advisers supplied by the United Nations) reported that the country's foreign exchange reserves were exhausted and that from that moment on it would be completely dependent on foreign aid...

...it is not hard to believe apocryphal tales of soldiers mutinying when their Primus was late...

...Probably half the European (i.e., white) population pay their rent illegally in dollars or Belgian francs, purchase their food in Brazzaville with (French) Congolese francs (backed by the French franc), buy air tickets in dollars, and pay their medical bills either illegally in hard currency or at a highly inflated rate in (Belgian) Congolese francs...

...the danger is that five or ten years from now in some other trouble spot, it may very well not be...

...without it, it seems doubtful that the trend to deterioration in the three years since independence in 1960 can ever be reversed and that the Congo can move ahead through what the State Department is ridiculously keen on calling "the nation-building phase...

...The life of the urban African who is not a politician or racketeer is impossible to imagine...

...We get more mileage out of it this way," one American official commented cynically...

...Despite the difficulties of living in Leopoldville, people continue to come here...

...In April this year, the central government raised the minimum wage one-fourth, but the cost of living has quadrupled...

...The minority who have jobs are only a little better off...

...I wasn't hostile when I went in to see him," the journalist commented after his five-minute interview, "but I certainly was hostile when I came out...

...The U.N...

...They are here in an emergency capacity and as such are an important stopgap, even though there are not nearly enough of them...

...Fresh fruits and vegetables—including the much overrated tropical varieties— lean meat, fresh fish, and homemade yogurt—except for the bottle of Primus beer, the only local beverage that quenches thirst, the diet looks like a count-your-calories advertisement...

...In fact, one wonders where trained personnel will be found in sufficient numbers for this vast country...

...People are fond of saying Leopoldville is not the Congo, but its contrasts are characteristic of the entire country...

...Letter from Leopoldville by SUSAN BRADY Leopoldville "T eopoldville makes other African capitals seem like Erie, Pennsylvania—a small, dull, provincial town, but where everything works," a recent American visitor to the Congo commented...

...But after a while here, even such candid statements seem like just so much spit in the wind...

...It is almost impossible now to find a vacant house...

...Europeans who make their living in Congolese francs manage one way or another...

...many make a little money but for the most part get along without it...

...The Belgians are scared the Americans will get it, the Americans are terrified the Russians will get it, the Russians resent the West having it, and the Congolese do not want the "Europeans" to take it back but are resigned to it...

...Among the civil personnel as well as the military there are nationalists and internationalists, people who are pro-West, pro-East, neutralist, or indifferent...

...It is basically rich, abounding in natural resources...

...Not I," say the army officers...

...The most remote suburbs, which less than a year ago were uninhabited except for squatters and roving bands of vandals, have been rebuilt...

...Congolese from far and near are drawn to the capital where there is peace and order and a more or less functioning economy...

...Extremes, as always, are relative...

...Nothing about the Congo is so disheartening as this lack of patriotic pride and initiative...

...civil authorities are deeply involved in local politics, and the U.N...

...military forces act as guardian of public order...

...Moreover, the U.N...

...No one knows quite what it is doing or where it is going...

...The dominant mood is sullen, an expression of resentment that finds no outlet in active protest...

...One never fails to be fascinated here, as everywhere in Africa, by the contrast between the sophisticated and the primitive—telephones versus tom-toms, to choose an obvious one...

...Thousands live in mud shanties on the outskirts of town and scratch a living out of the ground...

...For the simple man who thought independence would be a kind of paradise, it has been instead a subtle form of hell...

...A more elaborate menu takes about a week, including at least one food-buying expedition across the river to Brazzaville, capital of the formerly French Congo...

...The result, practically speaking, was the rise of two distinct economies: one based on the Congolese franc and the other on hard currency...

...Let our experience be a lesson to other young African nations...

...Before independence," he said, "we were one of the richest countries in Africa and now it has all melted away...

...With no clear mandate, each official has wide discretionary powers—which would be fine if men were angels...

...This time the United Nations is on "our" side...

...And it lies there waiting to be squeezed while everyone worries that someone else will have the first grab...

...Telegrams take a week or more to reach their destination...

...Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula, generally conceded to be a good man, is hardly a firebrand, and there are times when he seems overcome by the rank corruption...

...Theirs is an elaborate system of favors given and favors received that the outsider glimpses only occasionally...

...The passivity of the people in the face of their own suffering comes as a shock...

...Sometimes the Congo resembles a huge sponge, amorphous and passive, absorbing everything that is put in front of it...

...This place is splendid, but it doesn't mean a thing if you can't get something to eat in a restaurant...

...This influx, of course, puts a strain on the city by swelling the ranks of the unemployed and adding to the burden of those who have jobs...

...It would never happen in Erie, Pennsylvania...

...Not I," say the national deputies...

...operation in the Congo is shot through with conflicting loyalties and conflicting ideologies...

...Consequently, dinner invitations are rare, and most people set a modest table...

...When the shops run out of Primus there is near panic...

...But it does not take long to sniff out the decay beneath the beautiful facade: public services function erratically at best, the economy is in a state of anarchy, and a spirit of lawlessness lies just under the surface...

...Some is sold here in the Congo, but only to the grocers' friends and relatives...

...since then it has been impossible to buy sugar over the counter...