The Congo: The View from the Terrace

In five uproarious years of nation hood, the Congo has had four Premiers, four civil wars and two constitutions. Its politicians have denounced, arrested and exiled one another, and its government has swung wildly from left to right. All the while, President Joseph Kasavubu has neatly managed to hold onto the nation's highest office — primarily by nudging aside everyone who could have taken it away from him. Rather than lead the country, charge his critics, Kasavubu just sits on the terrace of the presidential mansion "watching the bodies of his enemies float past in the Congo River below." Last week who should go floating past but his fourth Premier, Moise Kapenda Tshombe.

The reason was simple. Kasavubumust run for the presidency again in February, and Tshombe, the Congo's most popular politician and the big winner of this spring's parliamentary elections, was after his job. Despite his unquestioned success as Premier, therefore, Tshombe had to go. "The mission I conferred upon him in 1964 has been completed," Kasavubu explained to a joint session of the new Parliament. "Therefore, out of respect for the habitual rules of democracy and since his government has not resigned on its own initiative, I have today put an end to its functions."

Shocking as it was to many Congolese and Westerners alike, Tshombe's ouster seemed unlikely to set off another rampage in the Congo. To take his place, Kasavubu named 39-year-old Evariste Kimba, a onetime railroad worker who was Tshombe's Foreign Minister during the Katanga rebellion and accompanied him into exile in Europe. Kimba's first steps as Premier were encouraging. "To the Congolese people and to the foreigners in our country," he announced, "we guarantee peace and security." Then he invited Tshombe, who still commands the biggest voting bloc in Parliament, to take a leading part in his new coalition Cabinet.

Despite his past friendship, Tshombe refused, announced that he would take his Conaco Party into the parliamentary opposition. As opposition leader, calculated Moise, he would still have a good chance of winning Kasavubu's job in February. Perhaps so, but precedent and the realities of African democracy are against him. Not once has the President of any black African country been defeated at the polls.