In the northern Congo, weeds and wild bush snaked across roads traveled only by stealthy bands of marauding army deserters. In Leopoldville, garbage piled high and the prevailing scent came from the sewers. Jealous rivals have sliced the Congo into six distinct nominally independent "nations," and in each juju magic and ritual murder are becoming the savage law of the countryside, just as they had been when Henry Morton Stanley arrived in 1876.
For example, there is the "nation" of little, spade-bearded Albert Kalonji. A vain and cocky tribalist, Kalonji is an ex-railroad clerk who shortly after independence announced himself "king" of a rich diamond-mining area of South Kasai. which he called "Mining State." He is so superstitious that he cannot relax anywhere he goes until the local authorities produce an albino woman to kiss his hand, habitually carries a magic wand that is supposedly capable of killing any man with a wave.
In the wake of Patrice Lumumba's murder, Kalonji's memory raced back to the days last fall when Lumumba ordered an assault on Kalonji's Baluba country, where his troops pillaged, raped and murdered at such a rate that Dag Hammarskjold himself called it genocide. Suddenly, Kalonji bethought himself of a dozen Lumumba aides and bullyboys he was holding. They had been sent to him for safekeeping by the Leopoldville Congolese authorities. He snatched them from jail, hauled them into Bakwanga's dusty public square. There they were beaten before the eyes of hundreds, later put on trial before Baluba tribal chiefs. For six, the verdict was death. Hardly was this ugly news made public before whispers emerged from the Eastern province of Lumumbaist Rebel Antoine Gizenga, Khrushchev's favorite puppet, that ten imprisoned members of the national Congolese Parliament and five anti-Lumumba army officers had in turn been taken from their Stanleyville cells and slaughtered in a dawn execution early last week.
Where's Anicet? In Gizenga's Eastern province, and in neighboring Kivu, the leaders are beginning to squabble among themselves for the throne vacated so abruptly by Lumumba. Major victim was Anicet Kashamura, Lumumba's 32-year-old former Minister of Information who was named seven weeks ago by Gizenga to plant Lumumba's banner in Bukavu amidst the farm-rich Kivu highlands that border the Mountains of the Moon.
Kashamura lost control of his own rampaging troops a fortnight ago. So Gizenga sent out Hatchetman Christopher Gbenye from Stanleyville to fetch Kashamura home. But Kashamura's cops met Gbenye at the city limits, sent him fleeing to the local U.N. troops for sanctuary. Then Kashamura began to fear Gizenga assassins under his bed—and also asked U.N. protection. When he finally ventured out of hiding, he was still nervous. Startled by a commotion in the hall outside his fourth-floor office in Bukavu's Riviera Hotel, he leaped for the window; friends had to restrain him from jumping out. One day last week Anicet Kashamura quietly vanished, and was last seen speeding down the road toward Stanleyville in the custody of Gizenga's agents.