FREEDOM

Fifteen volunteers from eight countries left Caux at once. 'I wish it were fifteen hundred,' said Buchman, 'but we must do what we can.' The group included former Mau Mau men, white South Africans, and the Colwell Brothers. They visited every provincial capital, and through some of the darkest days were directly responsible for averting bloodshed in certain places. The Colwell Brothers made four hundred broadcasts over Radio Leopoldville, containing songs and stories in French and the indigenous languages.

The Auxiliary Bishop of Leopoldville, Monsignor Malula, described these broadcasts as the 'one voice of sanity to the nation'. The Catholic communities were hard-pressed, as bitterness against whites in general was often avenged on the white priests who did not now desert the Congolese. The Archbishop of Stanleyville, Monsignor Kinsch, said to the Moral Re-Armament force, 'I can't tell you what it means to me to hear the things you are saying. This is the message of the Gospel, and it comes with more force from your lips than it ever could from mine ' He insisted on their coming to stay with him, and when he heard that Moral Re-Armament was financed by the sacrificial giving of thousands of people around the world he went to his safe and offered a gift in the same spirit.24

Buchman, meanwhile, was playing his part in Caux. ‘Four men from the Congo met in my room on Sunday morning,’ he wrote to Robert Schuman. ‘They were four men with different and opposing ideas. Two were Belgians, one a governor of twenty-seven years’ experience, the other a banker. The banker said, “There is no hatred in the Congo.”

‘The other two were Congolese. One dropped his head. Finally he said, "I feel I must tell you that there is a black list of the white men to be liquidated after its independence. I was one of those who drew it up." "But," he added, "here at Caux I have seen how wrong I was. We must learn to change men, both white and black. Otherwise we shall destroy Africa." An hour later he told this to the public Assembly meeting, from the same platform from which you once spoke to us.

'The Belgian governor added, "We Belgians have been superior and so we are responsible for the hatred that is in the country. Now we must bring an answer and create a real basis for freedom." Two days later all Belgium read this in Le Soir. The significant thing is that the Congolese who made this courageous statement is the right-hand man of Prime Minister Lumumba in Brussels.'25

The Moral Re-Armament force in the Congo were everywhere implored to stay longer, and remained for over three years through the coming of independence. They were often in considerable personal danger: one of the white South Africans, for instance, was saved from attack only by the timely appearance of one of his ex-Mau Mau colleagues.

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