Word: congo
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Maurice Van Hemelrijck, 57, a man with a flair for dramatic decisions, is Belgium's Minister for the Congo-and hopes very much to be the last one. Long before the bloody Léopoldville riots last January, he had warned his government that unless it began giving the Congo democracy and some sort of independence, it would face "catastrophe" and lose the colony altogether. When he flew into Léopoldville last week, he got the kind of ugly welcome that France's Premier Guy Mollet once got in Algiers. Angry white settlers shut up their shops...
...plane landed in Brussels, everyone from Premier Gaston Eyskens on down was astounded. Van Hemelrijck had done some daring things in his time, but no one had ever expected him to bring home in freedom the very person the press had been calling the most dangerous man in the Congo...
...first his colleagues in the Cabinet bitterly attacked Van Hemelrijck for his lone-wolf gamble, but since at this delicate moment in Congo affairs Belgium does not wish to appear divided, he got their grudging approval. When a Member of Parliament asked the Premier whether Van Hemelrijck had given advance notice to the Cabinet, Eyskens answered: "No, but the minister has such heavy responsibilities that he must be free to make quick decisions...
...week, Kasavubu's overeager followers, thinking that their leader had been invited to negotiate, were already laying plans for a seven-day celebration as soon as independence is announced. And Kasavubu himself, a deceptively mild-looking man who dreams of rebuilding the fabled 14th century Kingdom of the Congo, broadly hinted that his people would not wait forever. "I love visiting Belgium," he said. "But it must not be for too long...
South of the Border. Dr. Koprowski's Wistar version of live vaccine got its mass test in 215,000 subjects in the Belgian Congo and Ruanda (TIME, Aug. 11). Variants developed by Lederle Laboratories since he left are being widely used in Latin America...