Heart of darkness
Sir: In your editorial about Zaire (27 May) you rightly say that the word 'tribal' could be changed to 'national', but you cannot continue from that point and suggest a nation-state for the Shaba people on the assumption that the Shaba people are one tribe.
There are at least thirty recognisable tribes in Shaba, although local primacy is normally associated with the struggle between the Lun'da and the Luba, neither of whom controls Lubumbashi, the province's biggest town. (One distressing aspect of the earlier Katangese secession was the systematic removal, by any means possible, of the Luba from even the humblest position of authority.).
Kolwezi lies within the Lunda area, and Moise Tshombe was himself a Lunde. It was from this tribe, to the discomfort of the others, that the insurgent gendarmes were selected. It would be inconceivable that the same gendarmes carry out the same minnow-in-the-ocean stunt in an attack on, say, Kalemie, formerly Albertville, on Lake Tanganyika as that is an entirely different tribal area.
On the other hand, there are other guerrillas capable of doing just that.
Oliver Carruthers Africa Gazette, Wheatsheaf House, Carmelite Street, London EC4
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