Word: kasavubu
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Wiry, goateed Patrice Lumumba, 34, the Batetela tribesman from Stanleyville, whizzed about grandly in a black limousine as he dickered desperately to get control of the first government. Chubby, 43-year-old Joseph Kasavubu, loyal to his Bakongo people, was also deep in negotiation with key faction leaders such as Paul Bolya of the Mongo tribe and Jean Boli-kango, the Ngombe spokesman. The corridors of Leopoldville's new Palais de la Nation echoed to the jabber of a score of languages and dialects, for the Congo's first legislators represent a nation of more than 150 separate...
...other areas other tribal groups were at loggerheads. In the Congo's western tip, around Leopoldville, Kasavubu and his Bakongo supporters refused to sit in the provincial assembly as a minority, decided to set up their own regional legislature. Jealous tribal leaders in the mineral-rich southeast, defeated at the polls, talked of setting up a separate province of their...
...capital would be, and controversy even raged over the new flag (yellow stars on a blue field). The man with the largest bloc of votes in the first Parliament, goateed Patrice Lumumba, 34, was a convicted embezzler; the only other leader who might command a following, chubby, erratic Joseph Kasavubu, 43, just three months ago was vowing to destroy the new nation by pulling his own Lower Congo region out and merging it with the French territory next door...
Some followers of the two men reportedly flocked into the towns, staking claims to white settlers' homes-and to their wives. Kasavubu's party newspaper darkly suggested that "in former days, African women had to slave to bring up the white man's mulatto children, but in the future, white women will have to rear the mulatto offspring of the black man." As if all this were not enough, the Congo's finances were chaotic; $230 million in capital escaped the country before exchange controls were imposed, leaving scarcely enough in currency reserves to back...
Brussels seemed hopeful that something might yet be salvaged from the chaos by installing in power a coalition headed by Kasavubu, who has been cooperating with Belgians recently. He controls only 12 of the Lower House's 137 seats (v. 36 for Lumumba), but with Belgian help might attract enough support from among the 18 other elected parties to form a coalition government. In pursuit of this scheme, Kasavubu last week flew to Brussels to dicker with Belgium's Minister of the Congo and to call on young King Baudouin, who is scheduled to open the Congo...