Word: congo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...style and mandatory adulation are not necessarily all an egregious ego trip. By making himself the center of a national personality cult, Mobutu has succeeded in forging an unprecedented degree of unity among the nearly 200 tribes speaking more than 75 different languages that make up the former Belgian Congo's population. In 1965 when Mobutu, then an army commander, led the bloodless coup that deposed President Joseph Kasavubu, the country had endured five disastrous years of anarchy, civil war and bloodshed. Although rich in natural resources, Zaire was totally unequipped to utilize them when Belgium granted independence...
...does try to subvert or overthrow unfriendly governments?as in the Congo (now Zaire) in 1963 and Ghana in 1966. In Mexico, authorities uncovered a KGB-sponsored guerrilla group in 1971. Just last week officials in Belgrade disclosed an unsuccessful Soviet attempt to set up a pro-Moscow underground party in Yugoslavia. Moreover, the KGB's Disinformation Department tries to sow suspicion abroad by circulating false rumors and forged documents. A case in point: the KGB campaign now going on to convince Indians that American exchange scholars and Peace Corps volunteers are actually CIA agents...
...this week's Sport preview of the George Foreman-Muhammad Ali title fight in Zaïre, Nairobi Bureau Chief Lee Griggs revisited the capital city of Kinshasa. When he was last there in 1962, the city was known as Leopoldville, the country was the Congo, and the story was about a bloody revolution. "Needless to say, things are much more pleasant today," says Griggs. "The sight of a press card in the old days often provoked soldiers into prodding you with bayonets or banging you in the kidneys with rifle butts. Today they wave you through roadblocks...
...March, Kinshasa has been agog. Though initial predictions that 30,000 foreign visitors would descend on the ill-equipped capital have proved far too optimistic, fight preparations are still elaborate. Thousands of precooked frozen meals have been flown in. As le super combat approaches in the former Belgian Congo, the weed-infested median along Kinshasa's main boulevard has suddenly blossomed with flowers; new street lights have been installed and virtually every building in town has been scrubbed or painted...
...would be a crime to leave, like the Belgians did in the Congo," said a foreign ministry spokesman last March...