Mr Tshombe Restrained

Press, Volume C, Issue 29511, 12 May 1961, Page 12

Mr Tshombe Restrained

Prophecy about the Congo the removal of Mr is always unwise. Yet, if Lumumba.

it were not for the fact of Mr Tshombe's imprisonment it would, be tempting now to attribute to Congolese leaders a growing awareness of political realities—something from which could result successful government. There seems at last to be some constructive purpose in Congolese efforts to salvage from chaos civil order and the foundations of unified nationhood. Indeed, Mr Tshombe’s arrest may itself have been symptomatic of the trend. It is unlikely that it was planned and premeditated, in spite of Mr Tshombe’s manifest contempt for his poorer neighbours. The Katanga leader went to Coquilhatville to elaborate plans for a confederation of Congolese States on lines agreed at the Malagasy conference in March. He could scarcely have expected such marked changes as he found in President Kasavubu’s constitutional policies and in the attitude of his fellownegotiators towards the United Nations. Mr Tshombe came unprepared to accept Mr Kasavubu’s decision (reached in the absence of the unpopular Mr Dayal, Mr Hammarskjold’s Indian deputy) to co-operate with the United Nations in preventing civil war and in reorganising the central Congolese army The latter, proposal was particularly distasteful to Mr Tshombe, and, after failing to defeat it, he stormed from the conference—into the arms of the Congolese soldiery to whom he owed

The attempt to cloak with legality the arrest and detention of Mr Tshombe will not allay fears that this is another incident of Congolese barbarism. The international inquiry into the murder of Mr Lumumba by Mr Tshombe's troops is only now about to begin. If Mr Tshombe had fallen into the hands of Lumumbists, instead of those of the Leopoldville Government, he might have received no mercy. Will Mr Kasavubu’s followers continue to be more moderate in their treatment of an awkward opponent? The folly of predicting the course of Congolese affairs was exemplified after Mr Lumumba’s death, when bloodshed on the scale expected did not eventuate. Mr Gizenga, Mr Lumumba’s political heir, remains quiescent. If Mr Tshombe’s arrest really formed part of the legally-constituted central Government’s struggle to impose its authority on dissident provinces and to restore order throughout the Congo, then legal fictions and similar devices adopted by semi-literate, inexperienced administrators might be almost tolerable. But what finally will be achieved by the detention of Mr Tshombe, or by his trial? The danger is that, in spite of the Katanga Government’s more conciliatory mood since losing Mr Tshombe, disorder and misery will be extended to the only Congolese province where a semblance of stability has been preserved under independent rule.