Word: kasai
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Tshombe's narrow-eyed provincialism strikes an echoing chord in many, perhaps most, Congolese. From Coquilhatville came word last week that Equator province had been declared a republic by the local native leaders. In the big central province of Kasai, Baluba tribesmen declared the independence of something called Mining State, which, they hoped, would allow them to retain the huge industrial diamond lodes that supply three-quarters of the free world's production...
...Belgian merchants crept back into the cities, taking down the shutters from their shop windows in hasty compliance with the Congo Cabinet's decree that stores and factories must reopen by August 8 or be confiscated. Reports of continuing tribal warfare among the Baluba and Lulua in the Kasai interior hardly ruffled Léopoldville's street crowds. Here and there local commanders of the Congo's restive Force Publique set up as semi-independent potentates. One Sabena pilot on a routine flight to Stanleyville suddenly heard on his radio the voice of the "commander...
...explained to reporters that his seeming about-face was "simply a cover-up to allow Belgium to move additional troops into Katanga," and that "it was prudent to help Belgium with this little story so that Belgium could help us." He also boasted that parts of Kivu and Kasai provinces, including the valuable Tshikapa diamond fields, were ready to join his Katanga state, and he was hopefully eying populous Ruanda-Urundi, the home of the tall and stately Watutsi tribesmen...
...Kindu and the province of Kasai, candidates who believed that they had been defeated nullified the results by setting fire to polling stations and ballot boxes...
Everywhere young King Baudouin went on his flying inspection trip through the major towns of the Congo last week, he heard the insistent cries of nationalist leaders for Congolese independence. But from the dark interior of the Kasai province came ominous notice that, once Belgian control ends, the self-rule everyone seemed to want will bring with it barbarism and strife...