Word: congos
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...country where the unpredictable is commonplace and panic constantly threatens, any progress at all is remarkable. Despite its recent mercenary uprising and new rounds of racial violence and pillaging, the Congo has cause for hope. Last week, as the country marked the second anniversary of the army coup that overthrew Joseph Kasavubu in 1965, the mercenaries who have plagued it for years were in neighboring Rwanda, waiting with their suitcases and women for a one-way ticket out of Africa. Moreover, President Joseph Mobutu can claim credit for a lot more than driving out the "meres." In his two years...
Computers & Embezzlers. Mobutu has put the Congo on a sounder course partly by bringing into the government a group of bright young Congolese who are graduates of such schools as the Sorbonne and the London School of Economics. His government has installed computers to prepare the payroll, thus saving about $1,000,000 a year that would normally be lost to embezzlers. It has fired 40,000 relatives and friends of politicians from the bloated bureaucracy. And, at the urging of international monetary authorities, it has made some basic economic reforms, including a tight rein on credit and devaluation...
...have consolidated his position. Many of his political enemies are either in prison or in exile, including ex-Premier Moise Tshombe, who was kidnaped last June and remains in an Algerian jail. (Algeria has so far refused Mobutu's request for Tshombe's extradition to the Congo, where he is under a death sentence.) The flight of the 123 white and 950 black Katangese mercenaries, under pressure from Mobutu's army, has for now restored the prestige of his army officers, who might otherwise have been tempted to depose him as a scapegoat for their failures...
...killed on both sides, at least 27 of them white civilians; the halt of practically all economic activity in rich Kivu province; and heavy damage to Bukavu, the mercenaries' stronghold. Last week the Organization of African Unity demanded that the mercenaries' home countries pay reparations to the Congo as the price of their release...
Shortly after a delegation of the International Red Cross left from Switzerland to help in arranging for the evacuation of mercenaries from the Congo, and President Kuanda stated that he was finalizing transport. Since then, however, things have not worked out so well. Serious fighting has resumed, and it turns out that Zambia was offering only one plane for the entire operation, leaving the Katangese troops to fend for themselves. Not increasing the prospects for a truce is the American decision to provide transport planes for Mobutu's troops. However, there is still a possibility that a settlement...