do you play by?”
He: “I don’t want anybody else who is there to be uncomfortable about my being there. And I don’t want to be surprised about anybody else who is there. Also, I don’t ever want to be quoted to another African.”
By then I had lived in both Asia and Europe, and so I blessed the fact that, apparently, in Africa people would say what they meant a lot sooner than would any Asian or most Europeans I had met. “Those are my rules, too,” I said, realizing how sensible they were. “I never quote anybody in the host country to some other person of the host country.” “And,” I added, “just to make sure that you are happy with the guest list, from now on I will show it to you first, before I invite anyone else. You can then cross out—or add to—the names on the list.”
He stood up to indicate that our meeting was over—and, for the first time, he smiled. It was not just his giant size that was impressive. He had the presence of a leader. From then on, we trusted each other, and through him I was able to learn a lot about what was going on in the dissident camp and report it by confidential cable to the State Department. Anxious to protect my dissident sources, I got permission to use pseudonyms in cables and in vouchers seeking reimbursement for dinners I hosted for them. Only my bosses in Kinshasa knew the real names.
Since I was the “dissidents” officer, the ambassador eventually asked my views, among others, on whether to stick with Mobutu or to encourage the dissidents to take over. I pleaded for the dissidents to be given a chance on the grounds that if we waited until, inevitably, Mobutu lost power, the dissidents—who included virtually the only people in the country who had had access to a decent education and who for the most part had a commitment to democratic principles—would probably be too old to take power. And the Congo would then go the way of too many former colonies around the world, with their educated potential leaders killed or jailed, and ending up headed by near-illiterate charismatic but bloodthirsty bullies.
To my sorrow, the decision was made to stick with Mobutu, which even I had to concede was a reasonable decision, given that there were large stretches of the country where the dissidents commanded little or no support.
Yet, though I had to come to terms personally with the tragedy that I could see lying ahead for a country I had come to care about, thanks to my giant friend and the dissidents I met through him, my whole career path had changed. I was no longer regarded at the embassy as a “token” female. I ended my tour there promoted to the next higher grade and was invited to move to the political career track, which was better suited to my penchant for reporting and making contact with politicians than would have been remaining a consular officer.
The rules my friend taught me turned out to be sound rules for maintaining a dialogue with important contacts, regardless of country. But more important was the way in this brief exchange we had established that our relationship would be led by him. I was not the bwana’s wife or a nun or a teacher to whom he would have been expected to humble himself in the old colonial days. This was his place, not mine, and, by sending the ball back into his court, I had acknowledged that he had the right to make the rules. New as I was, I realized that this man, by reaching out to me and talking straight, was trusting me literally with his life. Together with me, he was inventing a way to deal with a kind of diplomat new to him—a female. I am forever in his debt.
. . .
John was greatly tickled at the thought of my being allowed—even encouraged—to cultivate the most interesting people in the country and to be the chief link between the legal opposition and the US government. It was a far cry from the banal world of protocol duties to which I had been originally assigned. John found being present at those dinners—at which Robby was usually also present until he and his family left later that year—made up for his having to spend time dealing with Mobutu’s very corrupt and often boring commercial cronies. My dissident contacts liked John a lot. They trusted him to give them a good sense of what support they could expect from Uncle Sam.
Robby, who still had too much to do, also offered me the human rights dossier. Being the human rights officer at our embassy to Zaire meant following what was happening for good or ill as regards human rights in the host country and then writing a report. The report would be published, after editing back in Washington, as a chapter in the State Department’s annual assessment of human rights in all the countries we recognize.
It was in that connection that I got involved in the effort to get a pardon for prisoners. I was working with a Congolese man Robby admired and had nominated for an International Visitor’s grant to the United States. After coming back, the man—who was now my friend, too—had been appointed to a position high up in the Ministry of Justice. One of his first acts in the new job was to visit as many as he could of the country’s prisons; he was appalled by what he found there.
Together, he and I drafted a pardon for some of these prisoners, over a series of breakfast meetings at my apartment. (We had noticed that Mobutu’s secret police were not early risers.) My new friend’s idea was that the pardon should apply to those who had been in jail for two or more years without being charged, or who had less than two years to serve to complete their sentence. After consulting with me, and my checking with my bosses, my friend told his minister that these prisoners were by and large not troublemakers but that, unless released soon, most of them were likely to die of starvation, leading to headlines abroad that could keep Mobutu from getting in to see President Carter at the White House.
Mobutu signed the pardon in May or June of 1980, and somewhere close to 40,000 people were set free. I felt absurdly proud when our new career ambassador, Robert Oakley, asked my friend whether the pardon was due to the just concluded visit of Pope John Paul II. My friend smiled and pointed at me, saying, “Voici le Pape.” It wasn’t me, of course. It had only happened because the US government was then believed by Mobutu and his advisers to care about human rights. I think of this pardon when politically fashionable people of various nations pooh-pooh the effectiveness of human rights policies like Carter’s. But looking back now, I realize that the benefits of this human rights coup cut two ways. Yes, it saved tens of thousands of lives, but it also made it easier for the United States to defend its continued support of a dictator who had allowed prisoners to starve to death in jail.
Chapter 2
Paying Calls
IN NOVEMBER 1958, LONG BEFORE the State Department allowed spouses to take the Foreign Service exam, long before John and I became one of the first so-called tandem couples, I left my country for the first time.
I was accompanying John to his first post: the American Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia. There he was assigned to be an officer in the political section. We both had graduated from college the year before but, unlike John, I was not officially a diplomat and had received no State Department training. I arrived in Jakarta almost totally ignorant of the place where I was going to live for the next three years or why Uncle Sam was sending us there.
In those days before we were all tethered to the Internet, diplomatic pouches sent once in six weeks by sea were our only route for getting personal mail, and international phone calls were out of the question. So I knew I would have to come to terms with what was—like it or not—our new home. The first impression of this new home was not altogether encouraging.
“SEATO Hands off Indonesia” read some of the signs on the trees lining the road from Kemayoran Airport into town. Other signs showed President-for-life Sukarno giving a big kick to a supine Uncle Sam. There seemed to be similar signs and slogans on every spare space on fences and walls along our route.
Looking beyond the lurid posters, I could see in the putrid water of Jakarta’s roadside canals golden-skinned naked women and children bathing downstream from where
