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Little Léo. The Belgian attitude is that these things will only change slowly. It is an attitude that is shared by the three big institutions which run Congo life: the state, which is absolute (no one has a vote in the Congo); the big corporations, which control one-third of the land area and at least half the Negro workers; and the Roman Catholic Church, which maintains the Congo's schools and most of its hospitals. The state is Governor General Léo Pétillon, 52, a diminutive Belgian barrister who stands but 5 ft. 3 in. in his epauleted white uniform. Known as the "Little Lion" to the 5,000 Belgian civil servants who govern the Congo on his orders, Pétillon has an actor's mobile face, slow limpid speech, and graceful white hands which more often than not gesticulate with a lighted Camel to emphasize a point. An old Africa hand, he is guided by a motto like that of his predecessors: Dominer pour Servir—dominate to serve.
Paternalism. Pétillon stands for "paternalisme," the policy which the Belgians openly proclaim as the secret of their success in the Congo. "The African under stands paternalism." says the Governor with conviction. "It was he who invented it." In the Congo, paternalism means bread but no votes, good government but no opposition; the best Negro housing in Africa but no real freedom of movement. "The emphasis is on economics," says Governor Pétillon. "The fascination of becoming a skilled worker handling precision machinery drives out of the Negro's mind the need for politics."
The Congo has excellent roads because the rural population is compelled to labor on them; it is developing scientific agriculture by forcing peasant farmers to grow minimum quotas of cotton, and jailing them for failure to deliver. Each Negro city dweller is fingerprinted and must carry a plastic identity card attached to his tax receipt. Yet the Congo is one of the few places in Africa where there is practically no racial tension.
"This is black man's country," says Governor Pétillon. Before a white man may buy Congo land, he must prove to the government that no native is using it, and that it will not be needed for native settlement.
Big Five. Most whites work for the big corporations that are responsible for the Congo's boom. The corporations operate hand in glove with the government, through a series of interlocking cartels, of which the biggest (60% of all Congo business) is named, with eloquent simplicity. La Société Générale.
The Union Miniére du Haute-Katanga (UMHK) has a concession of 13,000 sq. mi., larger than Belgium itself. It pays its principal stockholder, the government, $50 million a year in taxes, its private investors $25 million. Then there is Huilever, which has a palm-oil concession of more than 4,000,000 acres.