Word: coppers
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...year ago, Carter was rejecting his critics' "inordinate fear of Communism" and ridiculing those who thought it imperative to react "every time [Leonid] Brezhnev sneezes." What eventually brought the President to the point of taking a different line was the latest crisis in Africa, this one in the huge copper-rich nation of Zaïre, once known as the Belgian Congo. There, a force of 1,900 French and Belgian paratroops, assisted by 18 U.S. jet transports, had just routed another invasion of Zaire's Shaba region (formerly Katanga province) by secessionists based in Angola...
Kolwezi was a city of the dead. Almost as swiftly as it had begun, the seven-day battle for control of the industrial heart of Zaïre's copper-rich Shaba province ended last week. Driven from the city by the hard-fighting paratroopers of France's Foreign Legion (see box), an estimated 2,000 Katangese rebels faded back into the bush, retreating toward their home bases in eastern Angola. The paratroopers took up new positions at Lubumbashi, 160 miles away, turning over their guard duty to Zaïrian troops loyal to President Mobutu Sese Seko...
...European exodus would mean economic disaster for Zaïre, which does not have enough competent black technicians and managers to run the shuttered copper mines that provide about two-thirds of the country's foreign exchange earnings. Belgium's mine holdings were nationalized eleven years ago, but Belgians continue to run them and to export much of their product to Europe. Even if all the whites who worked at the vast Gé;camines mines that dominate Kolwezi could be lured back, it could still, after the last weeks' destruction, require up to a year...
Only one area of town seems almost untouched. The section where the white workers in the copper companies live resembles a pleasant Belgian suburb, with well-kept gardens and roads, European cafes and restaurants. African mine workers, of course, still live in overcrowded one-and two-room shacks. Although the older mines are now nominally owned by Zaire, there are only a handful of Africans in management positions. New mining investments by Japanese and South African firms maintain the same pattern: Never hire an African for an upper-level job when an expatriate can be imported...
...French and Belgians have shown their willingness to intervene in southern Africa to protect their interests--interests in Zaire's copper mines that are run by French and Belgians, interests in propping up the shaky regime of a "safe" pro-Western-exploitation dictator, Mobutu. The future looks grim for the people of Zaire: Mobutu has wiped out all possible opposition, except for the Katangans; the worldwide recession and drop in copper prices has left Zaire's economy in a shambles; and the International Monetary Fund is imposing "austerity" on Zaire. We can be sure, however, it will not mean austerity...