Africa: Order or Oratory?

When they get together, Africa's leaders are great talkers. When they return home, however, they too often seem to forget what the talk was all about. Last week, at the fourth "summit conference" of the Organization of African Unity in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa, heads of state from 18 African nations passed a number of resolutions that could go far toward bringing order to the Continent—if anything is ever done about them. One of the main achievements of the conference was that the chiefs were able to assemble at all.

Another was that the conference's willingness to come to the Congo gave a boost to its genial host, President Joseph Désiré Mobutu, whose prestige has lately fallen both at home and abroad.

20 Chefs. To attract the VIPs, Mobutu spent $10 million that he could hardly afford. On a bluff overlooking the Congo River, he built an entire village to house the delegates, complete with four-bedroom bungalows, tennis courts, a swimming pool and even a miniature golf course. Thirty tons of food were brought in for the occasion, and stewards prepared to serve 600 bottles of imported wine a day to accompany the meals cooked by 20 imported Belgian chefs. While bands played such incongruous tunes as Marching Through Georgia, squadrons of police escorts roared down Kinshasa's boulevards all week long on their Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

Such African leaders as Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta and Tanzania's Julius Nyerere claimed to have more pressing business at home. All the Arab chiefs stayed away because several of the black African countries had not supported their demand for an Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab territory. But, surprisingly, more heads of state showed up than at last year's meeting in Addis Ababa, among them Ethiopia's Haile Selassie, Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda, Ghana's Joseph Ankrah and Uganda's Milton Obote.

Offering Advice. The delegates served notice that secessionists will not be tolerated in the African countries, thus condemning by inference the rebel Biafrans of Nigeria; they also made plans to send a six-member delegation to Nigeria to offer advice on ways to end the civil war. Kenyan, Ethiopian and Somalian diplomats took the occasion to arrange talks for next month aimed at ending the revolt of Somali tribesmen in Kenya and Ethiopia. While Haile Selassie urged an armed assault on the white-supremacist government of Rhodesia, the delegates more realistically decided only to increase their financial support for bands of black "freedom fighters" who seek to overthrow the regime. As for the Congo's white mercenaries, entrenched in the border town of Bukavu, the heads of state demanded that they get out of the country and promised them safe conduct, but they also pledged to drive them out by force if necessary.

All this was a fine beginning. U.N. Secretary-General U Thant, an invited guest, exhorted the members to greater things but politely reminded them that beginnings too often remain just that in Africa. After four years of existence, said Thant, "your organization has not made the hoped-for progress toward achievement of its goals."