It was a bad week for earnest Joseph Mobutu, 30, the Congolese army clerk who became a colonel overnight and was now trying io run a nation. In any other revolution the boss might maintain his dignity by shooting a few enemies at dawn. But the Congo's strongman could only sit there and take it as everyone began to harass him. His control of the army was wavering, and everywhere, it seemed, there were plotters trying to push Patrice Lumumba back into power.
"Disorderly Rabble." Out of nowhere came Cleophas Kamitatu, president of Léopoldville province and a Lumumba sympathizer. Exercising the one Western political gambit that every Congo politician has mastered, he called a press conference. To newsmen he denounced the colonel and threatened his expulsion from the region (expulsion is another political phrase that comes easily to the lips of all Congo politicians, but seldom results in any subsequent action). Mobutu's troops, he charged, were running wild in the city, staging raids and attacking the citizenry. Kamitatu warned that his own provincial police would take over if Mobutu did not keep his troops off the streets at night.
Mobutu was prepared to laugh Kamitatu's words away, but to his chagrin the head of the U.N.'s Congo force backed up the provincial president. "Colonel Mobutu's army is a disorderly rabble.'' snapped Rajeshwar Dayal, announcing that U.N. troops would henceforth patrol the Leopoldville streets side by side with Kami-tatu's police. Indignantly, Mobutu collected a hundred soldiers and some Jeeps, rushed over to U.N. headquarters to protest. When he emerged, there were tears in his eyes. "The United Nations wants me to get out." he announced stiffly. Mobutu complained bitterly that Dayal was treating him like a child, and announced that he would fly to New York this week to protest in person at U.N. headquarters. It was not clear where he would find a plane to carry him.
What bothers the U.N.. its officials ex plain, is the danger that Mobutu's regime might become a military dictatorship; they insist that the world organization cannot even indirectly support an undemocratic movement. Time after time, U.N. officials had refused to let Mobutu arrest Lumumba; now they were frustrating his efforts to put a halt to the covert activities of Lumumba's friends as well. When Mobutu's troops arrested 15 Lumumba supporters in a series of predawn raids and tried to deport most of them to faraway Kasai province, the U.N. quickly intervened and had them freed on the ground that arbitrary arrest should be discouraged.