Word: congos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Wherever they have operated in the Congo, they are known as "the white giants." But for all their fierce reputation, Colonel Jean ("Black Jack") Schramme and his band of white mercenaries are beginning to look a lot less tall. Not that the Congolese army is cutting them down to size; the swaggering "meres" could probably hang on for a while at Bukavu, the old resort town on the Congo's eastern frontier where they holed up three weeks ago. President Joseph Mobutu's regulars are bothering them so little that the only raiding that the mercenaries have been...
...time is all on the side of the Congolese troops-however reluctant they are to attack. Only two weeks ago, Schramme proclaimed that his mission was to bring down Mobutu's "dictatorial and tribal" regime, and restore Moise Tshombe to his rightful place in a "democratic" Congo. Now Schramme has abandoned that ambitious task and an nounced his willingness to call off the two-month-old revolt in exchange for an amnesty and a safe conduct for his men, including an estimated 1,000 Katangese gendarmes...
...organized by President Joseph Mobutu's Mouvement Populaire Revolutionnaire, the only legal political party in the Congo. Outside the Belgian embassy in Kinshasa, it began to work up quite a head of steam for its "spontaneous anti-imperialist demonstration." Primary object was to protest the seven-week-old rebellion of the Congo's white mercenaries, who were fired by Mobutu and subsequently captured the border city of Bukavu by force. Loudspeaker trucks promised immediate satisfaction to all loyal Congolese right there in Kinshasa. Before the shouting was over, announced the sound trucks, the Belgian, French and British ambassadors...
...Brussels, the reaction was angry and immediate. Fearful that another anti-white bloodletting was imminent, Foreign Minister Pierre Harmel flew home from a vacation in southern France to appear on radio and television and demand that Mobutu guarantee the safety of the 40,000 Belgians who live in the Congo. Otherwise, Harmel implied, Belgium would cut off its $70 million-a-year aid program and order its citizens home, a move that could mean the virtual col lapse of all the Congo's industries, communications and civil service...
Such a step seems unlikely, if for no other reason than that the Congolese capital is 1,000 miles from Bukavu. But unless Schramme gets his way, he may be tempted to march southward into Katanga, where the great copper mines supply most of the Congo's wealth and the tribesmen still revere the man who led the Congo's first armed revolt, Moise Tshombe of Katanga...