Word: belgians
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...Belgian brains and Bantu muscle have thrust back the forest and checked the dread diseases (yaws, sleeping sickness, malaria) which sapped the Bantu's strength. In some areas, the Congo's infant-mortality rate is down to 60 per 1,000-better than Italy's figure. More than 1,000,000 children attend primary and secondary schools-40% of the school-age population (compared with less than 10% in the French empire...
Tears in Africa. The Belgians compare the Congo with the state of Texas, though in fact the Congo is bigger and far richer in its natural resources. The Congo's gross national product has tripled since 1939. Money is plentiful. Belgian investors take more than $50 million a year in dividends alone. Once the Congo depended exclusively on mining and farming; today it manufactures ships, shoes, cigarettes, chemicals, explosives and photographic film. With its immense reserves of hydroelectric power (a fifth of the world's total), the Belgians expect the Congo to become "the processing plant...
Little Léo. The Belgian attitude is that these things will only change slowly. It is an attitude that is shared by the three big institutions which run Congo life: the state, which is absolute (no one has a vote in the Congo); the big corporations, which control one-third of the land area and at least half the Negro workers; and the Roman Catholic Church, which maintains the Congo's schools and most of its hospitals. The state is Governor General Léo Pétillon, 52, a diminutive Belgian barrister who stands...
...cannot always be satisfied by bread and machines alone. The Congolese, or those among them who have climbed fastest from darkness to light, are slowly starting to talk about such verboten things as self-rule and democracy. Their stirrings are not enough to disturb the massive calm of the Belgian administration, or impede the spectacular advance of the Congo economy, but they are perceptible. To some Belgians they are alarming. Says a top-ranking Congo official: "What would the Negroes do with votes? Votes mean Communism...
Belgium, in its strong position as a major supplier of raw uranium ore from the Belgian Congo (see FOREIGN NEWS), has had less trouble than most in getting U.S. aid and assistance. Its first low-power reactor, using 30 tons of U.S.-refined uranium and 500 tons of British graphite (as moderator), is under construction...