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Holding Companies. Control of Union Minière is at the Brussels headquarters of Belgium's huge Societe Generate, the giant holding company with interests in many other parts of the Congo. But a little-known fact is Britain's big interest in the firm through the London-dominated Tanganyika Concessions Ltd., which holds 14½% of Union Minière shares, in 1959 enjoyed $45 million in dividends. This explained at least part of the noisy protests in Britain's Parliament (many M.P.s frankly admitted personal financial interest) and last week's .pressure on Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to back Moise Tshombe and stop the U.N.'s Katanga intervention.
During the Katanga fighting, there has been little doubt that the bomb racks for Tshombe's Dornier bombers were fitted in Union Minière's big machine shops. Tshombe also put to, good use Union Minière's extensive telephone and radio system for his communications and enjoyed its transport facilities. But late last week, even the resources of Union Minière could now no longer change the course of the Katanga war.
The Blue Helmets. It was raining hard when the U.N. moved out of its stronghold for the final drive against Tshombe's troops; in the van were the little Indian Gurkha soldiers, best by far of all the U.N. fighters. Within hours they had pushed the retreating, disorganized Katangese back to the very center of Elisabethville, where a desperate few set up mortars in front of the Hotel Leopold II in a last-ditch stand. At the" refugee-filled hotel, guests were packed five and six to a room, and dozens more slept on the floor of the lobby; the dining room began rationing its food at the rate of two sandwiches per person per day. Then, abruptly, the lights and water went off all over town; at hospitals, emergency power units were switched on for X-ray machines and operating tables, but nurses had to put buckets out to collect rainwater pouring from the roofs in the torrential downpour.
Katangese snipers operated at every street corner in the downtown area, but despite the danger, people dashed from their homes to nearby shops to buy essentials from the fast-disappearing stocks. Those who had battery radios heard the local U.N. radio station broadcast reassuring bulletins urging the populace to keep calm. "The blue helmets are your friends and are only here to restore order," it repeated every few minutes.
At the other end of town, in the peaceful southern outskirts, the Katangese defenders were readying hasty barricades, certain that the city center would soon be in U.N. hands. Sure enough, word came that Swedish and Irish units had overrun Camp Massart, the main Katanga gendarmerie enclave; the backbone of the resistance was broken, and one by one the Katanga roadblocks at key intersections were cleared away.
U.N. troops were now within a few yards of Tshombe's residence itself. But now Tshombe was gone. From his temporary frontier refuge at Kipushi on the Northern Rhodesia-Katanga line, he could step out of Katanga to safety on a moment's notice. Rhodesia's Sir Roy Welensky had already offered him haven "any time he wants it."