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The King Is Dead. With their leader out of action, Tshombe's lieutenants quickly moved to align themselves with the U.N. resolution calling for the dissolution of "private armies" and throwing all Belgian advisers out of the country. In Elisabethville, Tshombe's Interior Minister Godefroit Munongo moved in as chief of the "caretaker government," announced that any of Tshombe's fickle mercenaries who wanted to leave Katanga were welcome to—and plenty were taking the hint. As fervent a Katanga isolationist as Tshombe, Munongo made plain that cooperating with the U.N. implied no change of heart about joining Kasavubu's central government. Tshombe's erstwhile Belgian friends shouted "Bravo Munongo" whenever he appeared publicly. Explained one Belgian shopkeeper: "Tshombe? The king is dead. Long live the king."
At week's end Coquilhatville gave birth to constitutional proposals. They call for a "Confederation of the United States of the Congo"—including, ambitiously, Katanga and Antoine Gizenga's rebel provinces of Oriental and Kivu—with executive power tightly vested in the president of the confederation. The president: Joseph Kasavubu, of course.