The Congo: New Order

"Come over here," ordered General Joseph Mobutu, President of the Congo. "Now turn around."

The governors of the nation's twelve provinces did as they were told. They had been summoned to Kinshasa (formerly Leopoldville) to receive the Order of the Leopard, an award Mobutu invented for "exceptional services" and had already passed out to his Cabinet. For last week's ceremony, the governors showed up in Kinshasa's Place Braconnier in a sartorial array of cutaway coats, tails, business suits and even one black corduroy jacket. When they were properly in line, Mobutu marched stiffly down the ranks, planting a medal on each chest and a noisy kiss on each neck. Then he climbed into his black Ford convertible and was driven off, standing at attention in the back seat.

There was a marvelous irony about the ceremony, for Mobutu had only recently stripped the governors of nearly all their administrative powers. They no longer control their provincial police; they can no longer even set foot outside their provinces without Mobutu's written permission. It was typical of the way the general has been running the Congo since he seized power eight months ago. But if his methods have been anything but democratic, he has at least taken charge of a land in which for five chaotic years no one was in charge.

Dawn Riser. With army backing, Mobutu has put a violent end to the political intrigues that confounded every Premier from Leftist Patrice Lumumba to Rightist Moise Tshombe. He organized a youth corps to report any political activity, and he hanged four politicians, including ex-Premier Evariste Kimba, whom he caught plotting against him.

Mobutu's whip hand has been felt everywhere. He consolidated the number of provinces from 21 to a more easily managed twelve, appointed the governors and their Cabinets himself. He rides herd over his own ministers, overruling their decisions at will and firing them at the slightest sign of disaffection. "What the Congolese need most is discipline," Mobutu says. "I have been teaching them discipline, and they have been listening to me. This gives me pleasure."

Discipline is Mobutu's way of life. He rises at dawn every morning, takes a breakfast consisting mainly of Eno's Fruit Salts, a sparkling laxative, then settles down for an hour to read the biographies of the world's political and military leaders ("to know how they acted in difficult times"). His own most difficult problem is reconstruction of the northeast Congo, which the two-year Simba rebellion left in ruins. An average of 400 refugees a day are still pouring into Kisangani (formerly Stanleyville), which is itself a city half dead: half its shops are closed, there is little left of its once-thriving industry, and most of its citizens are unemployed.

Bribe Squeezers. Mobutu realizes that the first necessity for the northeast is the re-establishment of fundamental order. The Simbas killed or carried off almost all the trained civil servants, leaving vast areas of the north east governed by second-rate profiteers who squeeze bribes and extortion mon ey out of the population at every chance. They are in for trouble: Mobutu has opened an interprovincial police training school in Kisangani that has already sent 250 cops throughout the northeast.