Word: bakongo
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Congolese leader found that the party he heads had split in two while he was flying from Leopoldville to Brussels last week. The most powerful Congolese politician is Joseph Kasavubu, 42, one of Leopoldville's ten native commune burgomasters. But Kasavubu's Abako Party represents mostly the Bakongo people of the southwest, who want immediate independence only for themselves. Abako's chief rival is the National Congolese Movement Party, headed by a flamboyant convicted embezzler who wants independence without bothering with elections until later. From a Belgian point of view, there is little to choose between...
Corned Beef & Congolese. Besides bombarding Belgian officials and missionaries with letters threatening them with death unless they clear out, the Congolese have begun quarreling among themselves. Last week, at the Kitona paratroop base, 180 men were wounded, after a band of Bakongo tribesmen threw up picket lines to keep non-Bakongo workers away from their jobs. In Moanda, where the" Abako Party has been accusing chiefs of selling out depinda (independence) for a million Congolese francs, at least one chief's house has been burned to the ground, and tension runs so high that Belgian youngsters...
...Leopard Skin. Among the blacks there had sprung up a quasi-religious group called Abako, which Belgian newspapers brushed off as merely a tribal organization. Originally it had been formed by the Bakongo tribe of the south as a sort of protective union against the harder-working and more favored Bangalas. But under the leadership of a slight, timid-looking but steel-willed fanatic named Joseph Kasavubu, 41, it gradually turned its anger upon bigger targets...
None of the candidates represented a political party, and the native voting generally followed tribal lines, with the numerically strong Bakongo emerging on top. Although women could not vote, they could be candidates. One African woman was elected councilor; the two white women candidates were defeated. The Belgian authorities have agreed to "consult" with the newly elected councilors but not necessarily follow their recommendations. A colonial official explained: "We will allow them to make little mistakes-but not a big nonsense...