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Tears in Africa. The Belgians compare the Congo with the state of Texas, though in fact the Congo is bigger and far richer in its natural resources. The Congo's gross national product has tripled since 1939. Money is plentiful. Belgian investors take more than $50 million a year in dividends alone. Once the Congo depended exclusively on mining and farming; today it manufactures ships, shoes, cigarettes, chemicals, explosives and photographic film. With its immense reserves of hydroelectric power (a fifth of the world's total), the Belgians expect the Congo to become "the processing plant for all Africa."
The Congo boom makes its cities grow like well-nourished bamboo shoots. In six years the Negro population of Elisabethville has jumped from 40,000 to 120,000, Costermansville from 7,000 to 25,000, Stanleyville from 25,000 to 48,000. But the pride of the Congo is Leopoldville (pop. 370,000), a bustling, modern metropolis that is spreading along the south bank of Stanley Pool (see map).
Black & White Leo. Leo, as the Belgians call it, has tripled its population in the past six years. Its 20,000 whites live apart in a suburb that seems far too big for them. There are broad, empty boulevards and a scattering of modern skyscrapers, but the buildings seem isolated amid the mango palms and yellow-flowered cassia trees where the red-tailed parrots roost. Many streets are unpaved and unlighted; in heavy rain they turn to quagmires. Leo's whites are mostly officials or highly trained business executives—managers, engineers, sales agents. They are a hardworking, hard-drinking crew, and they have plenty of money to spend on oysters. Scottish salmon and French wine, served in Leo's nightclubs. The Belgians drive American cars, particularly Buicks, and wear colorful combinations of sun helmet, khaki shirt, pink shorts, bright green woolen socks and beige suede shoes. "They have two kinds of conversation," gibes an English-born resident of Leo. "One is an offer, the other a counter-offer."
Adjoining "white Leo" is the teeming "native town," known to the Negroes as Le Beige. Without its 350,000 Africans, Leopoldville would crumble in the tropical sun. Each morning, thousands of Negroes bicycle into downtown Leo to work in the shipyards and offices. Evenings, they stream homeward to the jumble of shacks, tenements, modern homes and tastefully built hospitals that make up "black Leo." In the darkness, millions of candles glow under the mango trees where Negro market women do a roaring trade in bread, beer and dried fish, green-and-brown-striped caterpillars (a delicacy when fried in deep fat) and blackened lumps of elephant meat.
Primitivism and progress, magic and machinery, go hand in hand in Le Beige. A government helicopter sprays the town with DDT to keep away mosquitoes, but many of the Negroes put far more faith in "charms." There are swimming pools, tennis courts and night schools, but many of those who use them still believe in witchcraft.