Word: balubas
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Katanga, Mining State was the virtual creation of Belgium's powerful Societe Generale, which, through a company called Forminiere, for years held the concession to mine the world's biggest source of industrial diamonds. After independence came in 1960, the Belgians put their weight behind an eccentric Baluba chief named Albert Kalonji, and went right on mining diamonds while the Congolese central government floundered helplessly in Leopoldville. Wallowing in Forminiere's lavish tax and dividend payments, the bearded Kalonji donned a diamond-studded crown and leopard apron, found himself a scepter, and dubbed himself Kasai...
Tshombe was speaking not only for himself. A powerful faction inside his Cabinet, led by tough Godefroid Munongo, Katanga's Minister of the Interior, refused any compromise whatever with the central Congolese regime. On the other side were Katanga's Baluba tribesmen-many of them displaced by the war and living precariously in U.N. refugee camps-whose leaders hate Tshombe and demand not secession but union with the Congo; the Baluba represent half of all Katanga's people...
...beauty parlor and shattering the windows of the Belgian airline, Sabena, as well as other offices along the street. U.N. salvos also hit Prince Leopold Hospital. The U.N. troops' performance seemed particularly sloppy, but Katangese fire often was not much more discriminating: many rounds fell into the Baluba camp, killing at least ten hapless tribesmen...
...policy of secession, no one could say with accuracy that Tshombe spoke for all Katanga, or even half. But Tshombe's supporters, including the Lunda, make up no more than one-third of the population; he would risk his life by traveling in some regions of the Baluba north, where he is hated for his tribal affiliation and for the murderous, plundering raids of his Lunda army units against opposition Baluba villages last summer...
...Elisabethville, Tshombe had problems even more immediate than the possible invasion. Although the opposing armies grudgingly kept the truce, the city was in danger of attack by 30,000 starving Baluba tribesmen camped on the outskirts. Already Baluba raids had taken 40 lives, claimed Tshombe, announcing grimly: '"I will not tolerate this situation." The Congo political cycle was turning dangerously close to where it all began during the first bloody months of independence only 15 months ago. Preparing for a possible new round of civil war, U.N. forces got their first shipment of eight jets (from Sweden and Ethiopia...