Word: belgians
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...York, McWhirter was forced to use his hotel phone in the beleaguered capital of Kinshasa. Within a week, he made five trips over the 1,000 miles of grassland between Kinshasa and Kolwezi by hitching plane rides on paratroop convoys, with U.S. cargo shipments, and once on a Belgian 727 converted to a refugee carrier...
...Communism" and ridiculing those who thought it imperative to react "every time [Leonid] Brezhnev sneezes." What eventually brought the President to the point of taking a different line was the latest crisis in Africa, this one in the huge copper-rich nation of Zaïre, once known as the Belgian Congo. There, a force of 1,900 French and Belgian paratroops, assisted by 18 U.S. jet transports, had just routed another invasion of Zaire's Shaba region (formerly Katanga province) by secessionists based in Angola...
...there; and France, which thinks of itself as a mentor to French-speaking Africa. Carter immediately asked Paris and Brussels how the U.S. could help; at their suggestion, he quickly supplied 18 Air Force C-141 transports to assist in the emergency airlift. Considering the magnitude of French and Belgian assistance, it is doubtful that Carter would have wanted to take a more active role in the operation. But he has been increasingly concerned about the limitations Congress has placed on the President's freedom to conduct foreign policy as he chooses...
Economic violence was the quieter accompaniment to the obvious political repression: the colony's economy was structured to benefit the Belgians, and the Belgians alone. When the Congo gained independence, social security payments in Belgium dropped 40 per cent--an indication of the importance of the huge African country for its colonial masters. The rich copper mines in Shaba, then Katanga, were owned by a Belgian state monopoly. The Belgians had hoped to continue their economic control even when political power had passed into African hands...
Only one area of town seems almost untouched. The section where the white workers in the copper companies live resembles a pleasant Belgian suburb, with well-kept gardens and roads, European cafes and restaurants. African mine workers, of course, still live in overcrowded one-and two-room shacks. Although the older mines are now nominally owned by Zaire, there are only a handful of Africans in management positions. New mining investments by Japanese and South African firms maintain the same pattern: Never hire an African for an upper-level job when an expatriate can be imported...