Word: katanga
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Katangese were to be believed, it all began one dark night outside the little Katanga town of Mutshatsha, near the border of Portuguese Angola. There Lumumba and two of his former aides sat interned in a lonely farmhouse. The Ford belonged to the tough 15-man guard charged with keeping Lumumba in total isolation from his countrymen. Unhappily, 13 of the 15, after a hard week, decided to turn in early, entrusting the watch to two yawning sentinels on the porch. When the time came, the prisoners simply slugged the lonely pair, and in a flash were...
...Land. Next morning, when the word of Lumumba's escape got back to the Elisabethville headquarters of Katanga's President Moise Tshombe, officials scurried into action, calling conferences, mobilizing troops. Out went a helicopter and a small spotter plane to scan the back roads for signs of a speeding car. There was little chance of the fugitives crossing an Angolan border point, for the heavily armed Portuguese police would hardly welcome a notorious revolutionary at this stage (see below). If Lumumba was free, a safer bet was that he and his friends were making their way toward...
...Hammarskjold for an immediate investigation. Moscow radio-which has reason to be expert in such matters-went on the air with a prediction that the whole escape story had been manufactured as a cover ("shot while escaping") to explain away the fact that Lumumba would be found dead. In Katanga, Moise Tshombe, busy in conferences with a visiting foreign dignitary, seemed totally unconcerned. "President Tshombe does not feel that Lumumba's escape justifies comment," announced one of his aides. "It is not important enough...
...only trace of the vanished VIP was the cops' black Ford itself. Somewhat battered, it was found on the road 45 miles from the scene of the escape. Perhaps, suggested the Katangese, Lumumba was trudging through the bush in the hope of reaching Bukamu, a Katanga town held by the pro-Lumumba rebels. But this was 200 miles away, a tough week's walk for a city lad like Lumumba...
...left. But Mr. Lumumba offered only the friendship of an independent Congo, while the government seemed to demand the commitment of a dependent nation. Making a pathetic joke out of respect for "duly elected" government, the U.S. transformed the definition of "duly elected" into "pro-Western," by favoring the Katanga secessionists instead of remaining neutral...