In the "good old days" of the late 1960s, when Zaire was known as the Congo and its leader did not yet call himself Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu waza Banga (the all-conquering warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake), the United States proudly had the huge, unwieldy, volatile country wrapped around its little finger...

Ten years ago, I left New York on a dark, snow-lashed night and stepped down the next day into the morning glare of Dakar, in Senegal. It was an exciting, expectant time for the newly independent countries of Africa. Since that moment in Dakar, I have spent most of the last decade in Africa. Those ten years did not transform a gullible fool into a mean and narrow cynic, but I feel more critical, more doubtful, more skeptical, more pessimistic than I did in 1962. I still feel sympathetic and understanding. But I have learned that sympathy and understanding are not enough. Africa needs to be looked at with cold hardness as well. There have been more disappointments than accomplishments in Africa in the ten years. Two events — the Nigerian civil war and the assassination of Tom Mboya — struck like body blows at the sympathies of an outsider. The war was probably the greatest scourge in black Africa since the slave trade, and it was largely self-made. Murder cut down the man who seemed most to represent all that was modern in new Africa, and it was probably done for the glory of tribal chauvinism. On top of this, the decade has produced a host of other unpleasant events...

There are two ways of looking at the Congo. The first is to compare it with the past, and marvel. Once in turmoil, fractured, tearing apart, projecting images of brutality and savagery, the Congo these days is a reasonably calm, quiet, secure, and united country of 20 million people. A visitor can go almost anywhere without fear. The authority of President Joseph Desire Mobutu reaches almost everywhere. Considering the Congo’s history, these are remarkable achievements. The second way of looking at the Congo is to put aside the past, take the Congo for what it is today, and despair. The Congo is exhibiting some of the worst traits of independent black Africa — corruption, waste, elitism, luxury, grandiosity, and neglect. The government can build what the Congolese call the world’s second largest swimming pool, but it refused, for more than a year, to pay the bills to transport to the Eastern Congo U.S. relief food for children afflicted with kwashiorkor, the disease of advanced malnutrition. The public treasury spends millions of dollars for monuments and parades but no money to build a road from the farms of Kivu Province to their port on the Congo River. At a time when other African leaders, like President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, are trying to infuse their people with self-reliance, austerity, and honesty, Mobutu is rushing the Congo the other way...

The white mercenaries of the Congo, now in rebellion, have humiliated black men everywhere in Africa, and by doing so shattered some of the self-confidence that Africans need to run their affairs well. Moreover, some Africans have struck out at whites to assuage this humiliation, and the beatings and killings have torn relations between white men and black men over the continent. These are terrible consequences. Yet it is pointless to condemn these confused, aimless and distorted men. Their role in the Congo was created by others. The rebellion of the mercenaries was the legacy of an attempt by the United States Government to stage-manage the unmanageable Congo. Using them worked for a while; then they flew out of hand. Why blame them? The present group of rebellious mercenaries first came to the Congo in 1964 with the support of the United States Government, then as now the most powerful and significant outside influence on the Congo. It was prepared to do whatever it could, even to the point of supporting mercenaries, to help Moise Tshombe, the new Prime Minister, put down a leftist rebellion in the eastern Congo...

The Congo is rich in precious metal and fertile land, but its economy may be near ruin these days - too weak to absorb the bitterness and hate provoked by 150 mercenaries in rebellion. Since the mercenaries began their fight more than two months ago, there have been waves of reprisals by Congolese, mostly soldiers, against innocent and defenseless white civilians, the very civilians who keep the economy going. These civilians, almost all Belgians, are frightened and fed up. Many have sent their wives and children back to Belgium and are pondering whether to follow them out. If they do, they may leave economic chaos behind. The mines of Katanga offer a stark example of the problem. Generale Congolaise des Minerais, the Congolese government-controlled company that took over the copper mines of Katanga at the beginning of the year, employed 1,800 Belgian technicians and administrators before the troubles began...

Congolese artists are helping President Joseph Mobutu rewrite history these days, painting huge canvases that show the grim, young president peering steadfastly ahead with a ghostly Patrice Lumumba at his side. It is all part of a campaign that depicts Mobutu as a great militant African nationalist, the apostle and heir of Lumumba, and as the great enemy of imperialism, neocolonialism, mercenaries, and Moise Tshombe. To maintain this pose requires some glib talk and some artful dodging of facts. Mobutu, a 36-year old former newspaperman, has been successful at both. So successful, in fact, that African leaders at the recent summit conference of the Organization of African Unity here put aside the past and hailed Mobutu for all he claimed to be. In the long run, the Congo may gain from Mobutu's rewriting of the past, but, for the sake of the record, it is worthwhile comparing the claims of the new Mobutu with the facts about the old Mobutu and the histories of Lumumba, Tshombe and the mercenaries...

Much Pomp, Some Progress - There was so much pomp and vanity, even hypocrisy, at the summit conference of the Organization of African Unity last week that it was sometimes hard for an outsider to see the tiny but very real, significant and exciting steps forward. Young and weak, ashamed of its weakness, the OAU often likes to hide its lack of power under the trappings of power, wasting precious time and energy. This hurts the OAU, making it seem comic and pathetic, even when it is progressing. An example came in midweek when the 18 chiefs of state and government stopped work in the afternoon to help the Congolese government dedicate a memorial to Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of The Congo, the first martyr of independent Africa. The tone and meaning of the ceremonies reflected many of the ills that afflict leadership in Africa...

The leaders of Africa tried to push the white mercenaries out of the eastern Congo Wednesday with a demand, an offer and a threat. But all three were cloaked in such vagueness that it is doubtful they changed the situation in the Congo at all. The mercenaries, led by Col. Jean Schramme, still rule the city of Bukavu and still have the potential to disrupt the administration and economy of the eastern Congo just the way they have for more than two months. The African leaders, meeting at the annual summit conference of the Organization of African Unity, passed a resolution demanding that the mercenaries leave Bukavu, if necessary with the help of competent international bodies, presumably the Red Cross. This implied a safe conduct for the mercenaries. The OAU, which called its resolution a generous offer, based it on the assumption that Schramme and his 150 men want to leave and are tired of fighting for little purpose and no pay since their rebellion began July 5...

President Mobutu Scores Moral Victory Over Mercenaries Ruling Eastern Area - Eighteen African leaders marched past powder blue - uniformed, red-plumed Congolese honor guards to open the annual African summit conference Monday and give President Joseph D. Mobutu a moral victory over the white mercenaries who rule part of his eastern Congo. The 18 chiefs of state and governments represented less than half the membership of the Organization of African Unity, a meager percentage by most diplomatic standards. But the slight figure seems outsize and formidable in the Congo this week because, for two months, there have been doubts that any one at all would ever show up. Since July 5, the white mercenaries of Col. Jean Schramme have been in rebellion, disrupting the eastern Congo, humiliating the Congolese army and ruling the city of Bukavu...

Conferees Try to Ignore Col. Schramme's White Mercenaries, Nigerian Civil War - The Organization of African Unity opens the pageantry of its annual summit conference today with the main actors trying to shut their eyes to the two great problems tormenting Africa. The Nigerian civil war and the white mercenaries of Col. Jean Schramme may fill the thoughts and darken the spirits of the African foreign ministers meeting here now to discuss African problems and prepare the agenda for the fourth annual conference. But, so far, the ministers have managed to keep their pronouncements and the agenda free of the two embarrassments. The foreign ministers have faced diplomatic realities and concentrated on safer subjects, like the appointment of a special committee to choose an emblem for the OAU. The federal government of Nigeria insists that the civil war is nobody else's business, and the government of the Congo maintains that the white mercenaries are now of only trifling importance. And the OAU - at least its council of foreign ministers - is too weak to dispute them.

Lack Will to Mold Future - What is a Congo mercenary? In some African lexicons it is the lowest form of humanity - a white man who kills Africans for a dollar. This definition, at least about the dollar, is partly true but it tells us little. A mercenary is a complex, confused, tough man, and no man can be defined, in a lexicon. In some ways, the 160 mercenaries here in Bukavu are surprising. Since July 5, these men and their thousand or so allies from Katanga province have disrupted the eastern Congo, routed the Congolese army and seized this cool picturesque city in the hills alongside Lake Kivu. Yet the first thing that strikes you about them is how passive they seem. They are the kind of men who have been pulled along by events in their past and who lack the will to mold their future. A Rhodesian related the details of his recruitment...

Nation Seems Too Unstable for Control by Mobutu, Mercenaries or Americans - Neither President Joseph D. Mobutu, the white mercenaries nor the U.S. government can save the Congo from more turmoil and bloodletting. The mercenary seizure of Bukavu has made that clear. The lumbering, luxuriant Congo is too big, too cruel, too unnerved to be managed by Mobutu, the mercenaries or the Americans. For Mobutu, the mercenary uprising of the last five weeks has undermined his power and prestige. His position seems a little embarrassing, even comical. Almost all the accusations and boasts broadcast by his government radio have been picked apart and exposed as lies. Hordes of foreign parachutists never invaded the Congo. The white civilians protected by the mercenaries never considered themselves hostages. The Congolese army never surrounded the mercenaries. The mercenaries never fled from them. Mobutu might have won a great deal of sympathy throughout the world by telling the truth...

White Troops, Buoyed by Escapade, Grow Testy From Uncertainty in Congo - The white mercenaries who rule this city in defiance of Congolese President Joseph D. Mobutu and his army are a group of confident and prideful men from many lands who are growing tired these days and testy with each other. Their confidence and pride comes from their extraordinary escapade of the last five weeks in which they have disrupted the eastern Congo and routed the Congolese army. Their fatigue and bickering comes from the pointlessness of it all and the uncertainty of the future. Even mercenaries want to know occasionally where they are going and why. The air of confidence - even cocksureness - strikes you as soon as you walk across the tiny trestle bridge that connects Rwanda with Bukavu, the old Belgian settler city that nestles in the cool green hills along Lake Kivu in the eastern Congo. A Portuguese mercenary, dark, grinning, showing his ice teeth, is waiting. You want to see the commander? He slaps on his bush hat, the wide brims folded up in the dashing way of movie heroes...

Belgian Says Congo Rebellion Has Roots in Need for Representative Government - Col. Jean Schramme, who has shattered the Congo's fragile political stability by leading white mercenaries to a rout of the Congolese army, is a slight, diffident-seeming Belgian who talks in the idealistic tones of a peace-loving missionary. Here, in the eastern Congo city that he rules, he told a few newsmen, who had walked across the bridge Thursday from neighboring Rwanda, that his five-week rebellion had its roots in the need of the Congo for representative government and economic development. He seemed to want to play down reports that the main aim of his mercenaries was the release of their grand patron, Moise Tshombe, who is in prison in Algiers. Instead, he talked about the place that Tshombe should have in a representative government. "I think Tshombe is the representative of the Katangese people," he said. "But that's just my opinion." Then Schramme had his one truculent moment in the interview...

Rebellious Whites Take Full Control of Congo City, Show Power by Marching to Rwanda to Release Civilians - Rebellious white mercenary units took full control of the important eastern Congo city of Bukavu and served notice they would keep control until kidnaped Moise Tshombe, former Congo premier, is released and returned to Congo political life. The column of mercenaries demonstrated their control by marching to the Rwanda border and releasing the first of the more than 100 white civilians who had lived with them in the Congolese bush for the last month. The Congolese government radio had called these civilians hostages, but the civilians, as soon as they reached Rwanda, insisted that they had joined the mercenaries for their own protection. No one standing here on Rwanda border could doubt the control and power of the 150 mercenaries and their 700 to 800 allies, the former African gendarmes of the Congo's secessionist Katanga province...

Newsmen Discover - The book charge was simple: "Admiring the light of the moon." Three of us had browsed along the bank of the Congo River at 1:30 a.m. The moon was whole and almost yellow, but no reflection seemed to light upon the river, a vast expanse of brown shadows rushing in the darkness. Some lights from Brazzaville across the river speckled the view on the right, and the lights on top of Mt. Stanley, the home of the president, did the same on the left. The air was cool and quiet. We turned, and a man approached us in the dark. He stopped 30 feet away. He wore a long overcoat that made him seem shapeless. A rifle jutted out from one side of him. He asked us what we were doing, and we told him we had come to admire this beautiful view of the Congo River in the moonlight, and he called out nervously, "Sergeant. Sergeant." Congo lore is full of tales of Congolese soldiers who, fearful and distrustful, suddenly panic and fire away...

Washington Has Kept Reds Out Without a Vietnam - Here in the Congo, it seems natural for U.S. Air Force C-130 transport planes to roar across Congolese skies with Congolese soldiers, ammunition and food. The C-130s may be controversial with some congressmen back home who fear the mission will lead toward entanglement of the United States in Congolese affairs. But the truth of the matter is that, even without C-130s, the United States is entangled in the Congo and has been for almost seven years. The sudden dispatch of three fat planes has not changed a thing. The United States probably has more influence in the Congo than in any other African state. That influence comes from years of involvement. Of course, in Africa, words like entanglement, influence and involvement must be put in perspective...

Congo Trouble Spot - Kisangani, the town they once called Stanleyville is quiet and hot and tranquil. It is stirring feebly and helplessly, like most towns do in the calm and light that follow a hurricane. But no natural disaster wracked this town. The bullet holes that pock the stucco buildings make the difference clear. For eight days after July 5, white mercenaries of the Congolese army controlled the town. The way to control was bloody. Even after they had the town, the mercenaries could not keep peace. After the mercenaries left on July 12, Kisangani was engulfed by anti-white hysteria, and the stores and apartments of whites were smashed for several days. Finally, Red Cross planes and U.S. Air Force C-130s evacuated 290 of the 350 non-Africans in town and law and order was restored...

Lost rootless men sometimes fashion schemes of power and of glory out of their faded memory and their braggadocio. That may lie at the source of the latest crisis in the Congo. The restless men were: the exiled Moise Tshombe, a Congolese living like a suave continental businessman in Madrid, reaching for his memories of lost power, smug in his dreams; the white mercenaries of the Congolese army, self-exiled Europeans living like tribal lords, feeling their power and past slipping away, arrogant in their self-confidence. Their plots and schemes, foiled and then recharged, bloodied the Congo in the past two weeks. The best evidence, both factual and circumstantial, from all sources - diplomatic, Congolese government, academic, private - sketches a strange tale of intrigue and counterintrigue...

Predawn Mutiny Killed Hundreds of Sleeping Soldiers - Armored cars and truckloads of white mercenaries drove into an army camp at Kisangani in the blackness before dawn on July 5 and fired their submachine guns at benumbed African soldiers of the Congolese army. This terrible, sudden strike snapped the thin reins of stability in this massive, strange and luxurious country and let it fall into panic and chaos. It was a typical Congolese spell of confusion, or madness. No outsider really knows why it all happened. But with the help of accounts from onlookers, the story of how it happened is falling into place. In a sense, the mutiny of the white mercenaries was their last romantic and gory moment. The Congolese government intended to end its dependence on them by September. The mercenaries might have had to pack their things, collect their money, and slip quietly away then. Instead, their departure has been dramatic and bloody...

Almost 200 White Mercenaries Believed Hiding in Heavily Forested Lands of East - The Congolese army is reportedly ready to begin pursuit of almost 200 rebellious white mercenaries hiding in the thick forest land of the Eastern Congo. The army, according to reliable sources, is satisfied that it knows the general area where the mercenaries have taken refuge. In a sense, the mercenaries have come home - to the fiefdom of their leader, Maj. Jean Schramm. With the help of three U.S. C-130 transport planes and a squadron of Ethiopian jet fighters, the Congolese hope to move into the Schramm area and defeat the soldiers of fortune, whose bloody rebellion in Kisangani almost two weeks ago engulfed the Congo in yet another crisis and provoked a bitter reaction. In their anger and excitement, Congolese soldiers have beaten and killed innocent white residents and looted their homes and shops...

Congolese army officers tried valiantly and sometimes vainly in the past few days to hold back their own troops from beating whites, looting homes and firing wildly in Kisangani. This report came from several of the more than 300 refugees who arrived in Kinshasa Saturday aboard two Red Cross planes and a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport plane. Friedrich Engel, a German journalist stranded in Kisangani since July 5, told newsmen he believed 10 Europeans had been killed in the rampage of Congolese soldiers who entered the city after mercenaries fled Wednesday night. Engel said the officers made every effort to keep their men under control, but the men broke out from under the discipline and rushed through town from time to time in what has become a typical Congolese army victory celebration...

Transport, Sent in After Reports of Looting and Shooting, Returns With 9 Evacuees - The United States rushed a C-130 transport plane to the crisis-ridden city of Kisangani Friday after widespread reports of looting and shooting by the Congolese army which took over the city after rebel mercenaries fled. But the plane returned here with only nine evacuees, including two U.S. Army sergeants, one of them wounded. Two C-46 planes chartered by the International Red Cross brought in an other 100 refugees, most of them Congolese, including injured women and children. The wounded soldier, Sgt. John Degele of Dallas, a mechanic, and the other, Sgt. Robert Mack of Seattle, a radio operator, made up the U.S. Army Congo Mission team in Kisangani. Degele and Mack were believed captured by the mercenaries who took over the city at the start of the rebellion in the early hours of July 5...

The Congolese army took control Thursday of Kisangani, the last rebel stronghold. Immediately after rebel mercenaries fled the big city of the eastern Congo, two International Red Cross planes flew in and picked up about 100 persons who had been stranded there. It was a desolate scene at the airport here when the refugees arrived. One plane carried about 50 Congolese wounded, the great majority of them Congolese army soldiers. In the other plane there were about 50 Europeans and Americans, most of them women and children, who had lived in Kisangani, formerly Stanleyville. The whites were tired, but not injured. One American woman told newsmen that the mercenaries were gentlemen. She said she did not know of a single white person who was held hostage by the mercenaries during the last week. But she added that perhaps the mercenaries had taken two or three hostages with them when they left Kisangani Wednesday night...

The Katanga crisis is over. What are the lessons? Several American experts on Africa agree the world has learned that an effective United Nations can do a better job at ending trouble than a big power rushing in by itself. "One of the chief lessons", Prof. Carl. G. Rosberg, Jr. of the University of California said today, "is that the UN Secretary-General can act as an independent and effective agent in solving major disputes if he has a reliable body of supporters". Rosberg, a political scientist specializing in African affairs, was one of several experts in American universities, the State Department, and Congress, contacted by the Associated Press and asked: "What are the lessons of Katanga?"...