A Crusade for Our Times
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63 A CRUSADE FOR OUR TIMES n 18 December 1960, the Observer carried a brief front-page story Oabout mass starvation in a corner of the newly independent Congo. Around 280,000 Baluba people had fetched up in a waterless and food- less plain, and there, strung out along the road, had stopped because they simply had no strength to go further. Thousands were no more than walking skeletons and many were swollen from hunger oedema. The weakest, mostly children, were dying at the rate of 200 a day. People working for Oxfam at the time remember that story in the Observer with the clarity normally reserved for the deaths of presidents and the outbreak of war. The tragedy in the Congo burnt the image of the starving African child onto the collective British conscience. Oxfam helped make that come about, and in the process itself leapt into public view as the British medium for prompt relief to famine victims in faraway places. When Kirkley went to the Austro-Hungarian border in 1956 he was no-one special, a helper among many. When he went to the Congo in early 1961, he was, fleetingly, a celebrity, on whom British hopes of saving lives were visibly pinned. Chaos had steadily engulfed the Congo in the months since independence on 30 June 1960. Belgium had been extremely negligent in preparing the handover from colonial rule, holding onto all vestiges of authority till the last possible moment. There were no Congolese in senior administrative or military positions; no trained doctors or professionals - there were only 17 university graduates in the entire country. Within days of independence, Congolese troops mutinied against their Belgian officers. The country's leading federalist politician, Moise Tshombe, announced the secession of mineral-rich Katanga Province, and law and order began to break down. The Belgians panicked. Most officials took to their heels, leaving an administrative vacuum and military turmoil. The Prime Minister, Patrice 64 Sunrise over the Third World: the 1960s Lumumba, turned to the United Nations for help. The UN Security Council agreed to despatch peace-keeping troops and a 'civilian operation' to restore order and maintain essential services - just while the Congolese sorted themselves out. Never had the United Nations Secretariat taken on such a complex, interventionist and controversial role; it came under tremendous strain, and the popular UN Secretary- General, Dag Hammarskjold, was killed in late 1961 when his plane crashed in the African bush on his way to mediate the crisis. At the beginning of 1961 when the famine hit the headlines, the UN's main peace-keeping operation was floundering. In Leopoldville, the capital, contingents of troops from Indonesia, Malaya, Tunisia, Ceylon, Ireland, Sweden, Ghana, and Egypt made occasional sorties to the bush. In New York the UN member states argued about pulling out their national forces, about extending the Cold War onto the African continent, about Dag Hammarskjold's interference in Congo's internal affairs, and about who should pay for the UN's attempt to keep control in, without governing, a disintegrating country. Out in the vast expanse of the countryside, things fell apart. The famine in South Kasai was months in the making, but - busy with battles for political control - no-one was looking out for the human suffering which must follow chaos and anarchy on such a scale. The source of the problem was ancient tribal friction, erupting under the pressures of mass insecurity. Over the years, some enterprising Baluba people had moved westwards into the country of the Lulua. When independence arrived, the Lulua were fearful that the Baluba would take power over the entire province, and turned upon them. The Baluba 'refugees' set off on a 300-mile trek towards their tribal heartland without food to eat or seed to plant and quickly became destitute. Many erected miserable little huts along the road. Meanwhile their co-tribesmen, who happened to be sitting on most of the Congo's diamond wealth, followed the prevailing fashion by seceding and setting up an autonomous state under their own 'President', Albert Kalonji. When hunger took hold in November, Dag Hammarskjold appealed for funds within the UN family and UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, came up with $150,000 for emergency feeding. But the routes and the transport for getting supplies into Bakwanga, the main local town, were complicated not only by every kind of geographical and communications difficulty but also by the political niceties attendant on 'President' Kalonji's relations with his neighbours and the central authorities. In early December, he agreed to the presence of a special UN unit and an air-lift began. A fleet of ancient trucks was despatched, and distribution centres set up. By this time the area's two hospitals and A crusade for our times 65 handful of dispensaries were overwhelmed by pitiful creatures starving and dying. It took time in such adverse circumstances to build up the food distribution system and some kind of rudimentary care for those in extremity. Many children could no longer digest ordinary food. Dr. Melson, a British medical officer attached to a Ghanaian military unit, was trying to cope with 1,000 patients in a 150-bed hospital in a village called Miabi. He and a colleague from WHO began making up 'Kasai cookies' from maize flour, powdered milk, and sugar, for special feeding. Gradually the death toll began to decline. By mid-January, around 60 tons of food a day were being delivered against the 150 tons needed for full distribution. The Oxford Committee was comparatively well-informed about the famine before it became front-page news in December 1960. Its first relief grant was made in October, and in mid-December it made an emergency grant of £5,000 to the Congolese Red Cross for child feeding. Just before Christmas, a special UN relief account was opened in a Leopoldville bank, and Oxford thereafter sent sums directly to this account: £5,000, and a further £5,000, as donations trickled in. At that time, there was no automatic identification of Oxfam by the British press or public as a charitable saviour for remote disaster victims. The Committee sent out Congo Appeal letters to the press over the signature of Canon Milford, again the Committee's Chairman, and Sir William Hayter, Warden of New College and a trustee. On 6 January, the story of the famine hit the popular press in an unprecedented way, splashed across four pages of the Daily Mirror. Sir William's and the Oxford Committee's name were mentioned. Oxfam ordered 50,000 reprints of the news spread and mailed them to all its supporter groups and donors. The coverage brought a tidal wave of response. Oxfam's press office and advertising machinery were operating in high gear. Some newspapers carried the appeal ad. free and the offices in Oxford were inundated. On one day, 9 January 1961, £20,000 arrived in the mail. Finance Officer Gordon Rudlin could scarcely manage to carry his suitcases of cheques and cash to the Bank. The Committee had to hire a church hall to house the mail-opening operation, with 30 volunteers working in shifts. In towns all over the country, regional organisers were swamped with demands for collecting tins and Congo literature. This massive outpouring of public generosity was something completely new. It came purely from coverage in the newspapers - there were no television pictures; and even the press coverage was modest and the pictures mild by the standards of later African disasters. Other overseas aid charities such as the British Red Cross and War on Want had similar experiences. By 21 January, a total of £104,000 had flowed 66 Sunrise over the Third World: the 1960s into Oxfam's Congo Appeal; the Red Cross had received £64,000 and War on Want, £40,000. The following day, Leslie Kirkley flew to the Congo. The Committee had never had at its disposal such large sums to dispense so rapidly. Kirkley felt that the scale of the expenditure, the criticism of UN operations in the Congo, and the intense concern of the British public - one donor wrote: 'No child on earth should look like this' - required him to undertake a voyage of relief inspection. On Wednesday 25 January, in the company of the UN relief co-ordinator, a British Embassy official, and a party of journalists, Kirkley flew down from Leopoldville to the famine area. Conditions were still severe with around 40 deaths a day. But things were very much better than they had been. The food distribution programme was in place and, drawing on further supplies from UNICEF, was about to step up daily capacity to 150 tons a day. Seeds and hoes had been given out by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) so that the refugees could plant in time for the heavy rains of mid- February. The worst of the crisis was over, and everyone agreed that whatever the shortcomings of the UN's peace-keeping operation, its conduct of emergency relief had been first class. Kirkley was told that Oxfam's prompt response with ready cash - vital for transport - was deeply valued. Among voluntary agencies it had led the way. As Kirkley's heart was being wrung by the kwashiorkor babies in Miabi hospital, Edward Heath, the Lord Privy Seal, was on his feet in the House of Commons answering questions from Dennis Healey, Labour Foreign Affairs spokesman, about British government tardiness over the Congo famine. Heath rejected this charge. Indeed, he had gone shopping all around the colonies - groundnuts had been flown from Nigeria, maize seed and flour from Rhodesia, dried fish from Uganda and Nyasaland: 'FAO appealed for appropriate food and we have done our best to get hold of it.' Still, there was no question that the public response had bumped the government effort up.