Word: congos
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...height of her husband's power, 28-year-old Pauline Lumumba wore diamonds and high heels and Paris frocks. Last week she bared her breasts in the Congo's traditional sign of mourning, and led a wailing procession of other bare-breasted women through the streets of Léopoldville. Coldly and without regrets, her husband's archfoes in far-off Katanga province had just proclaimed that Patrice Lumumba was dead and buried deep...
Last Look. The last time Patrice Lumumba was seen alive by anyone but his captors was Jan. 17. It was the low point in the career of a man who had dreamed of bossing a united Congo in the grand style of the man whom he admired, Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah. He had failed, but as a Western diplomat put it, "being the best demagogue around, he kept anybody else from running it either." Taken from a military prison in Thysville, where in typical fashion he had almost fast-talked his guards into mutiny, Lumumba was flown to Elisabethville...
While the world outside burst into uproar, the Congo itself received the news with sluggish calm, as if Lumumba's death was to be expected. There was some scattered violence-but not the widely predicted blood bath. In Léopoldville, Lumumba fans rioted for a night, and somebody cut a man in half. In Bukavu, drunken Congolese soldiers seized a Roman Catholic priest, cut off his ears and then beheaded...
...Congo's squabbling politicians seemed more concerned about the line of succession. Almost to a man they found at least qualified praise for the man they had fought. They called days of mourning and turned out for Requiem Masses...
Gizenga has sent out an urgent appeal for help. Last week nine Communist-bloc countries and seven left-leaning neutrals lined up to extend him diplomatic recognition as the "legitimate" government of the Congo. But even if Gizenga gets support from abroad, he is a poor stand-in for Lumumba as a national leader. He has little political presence, is a faltering orator who does not even speak the Eastern province's Swahili...