Word: bakongo
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Until last week, it was known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the name that the former Belgian Congo took when it won independence from Brussels in 1960. To the present government in Kinshasa, however, the name unduly celebrated the Bakongo tribesmen who reside along the lower reaches of the Congo River. Seeking a name to please the non-Bakongo majority, Kinshasa last week officially rechristened the country the Zaire Republic, and the river the Zaire River. Originally, the word was the result of misunderstanding-or mispronunciation -on the part of a Portuguese naval captain, Diogo...
...officials' crimes were ostensibly ideological; actually, the troubles were tribal. All 18 were members or close relatives of the Bakongo tribe, whose members make up nearly half of the country's 900,000 population. The current rulers are northerners, members of a group of anti-Bakongo minority tribes. As an African diplomat summed it up: "The Brazzaville Congo has become the world's first tribal Communist state -and that, of course, is a contradiction in terms...
...President out. Then he discovered that he and his fellow officers, divided by tribal jealousies, could not agree on who should take over. The coup makers, hailing from tribes in the north and the west, quickly came to realize that the only man with any control over the powerful Bakongo tribe of the south (who make up 53% of the population of 900,000 and dominate commerce) was Massamba-Debat, a Bakongo himself...
...Congo, the prevailing voice was that of President Fulbert Youlou, the cassocked, nonpracticing priest who runs the old French Congo. Living just across the river from Léopoldville, and a fellow Bakongo tribesman of Congo President Joseph Kasavubu, Youlou rallied the other delegates to a stand that urged the U.N. to cooperate with Kasavubu. said nothing at all about Kasavubu's archrival, Patrice Lumumba...
After Katanga's, the most serious secession threat came from the proud, million-strong Bakongo people, once rulers of an ancient coastal empire, who talk of amputating much of the Lower Congo. Here at the mouth of the huge Congo River, where the nation squeezes into the Atlantic with a mere 20 miles of coastline, is the Congo's solitary seaport: sultry, burgeoning Matadi...