Word: katanga
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...week for Zaïre's beleaguered President, Mobutu Sese Seko. After all, he had been struggling for a month to combat, both politically and militarily, the invasion of his country's Shaba region by exiles who had fled the former secessionist province of Katanga in the mid-1960s. Finally, last week, Mobutu got some important signs of support from his friends...
...possibility being considered by Western diplomats in Kinshasa last week as the 2,000 to 5,000 Katangese exiles invading Zaire's Shaba region continued to gain ground easily. In a strange war without battles, the exiles seemed to be conquering sizable swatches of what was once called Katanga province without effective opposition from Mobutu's forces there...
Torrential rains turned much of Zaïre's mineral-rich Shaba region (formerly Katanga province) into a knee-deep quagmire last week. The downpour further obscured the mysterious war being waged between about 2,000 invaders from neighboring Angola (TIME, March 28) and the forces of Zaïre's autocratic President Mobutu Sese Seko. After launching a few pinprick air raids, Mobutu's Army Chief of Staff Bumba Moaso Djogi claimed that the intruders were in retreat, "abandoning thousands of corpses" behind them...
...Cubans were involved actively and the Russians indirectly. In fact the soldiers were Zaïrian rebels who had fought in the army of Katangese Leader Moise Tshombe in the early 1960s. Remember Tshombe? He tried to set up his own regime in the copper-wealthy province of Katanga and secede from the Congo. After the central government crushed that movement (with U.N. and U.S. help) in 1963, many Katangese soldiers fled across the border to Angola. Eventually they joined forces with the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (M.P.L.A.), largely because their old enemy, Zaïrian President...
Imperial Manner. The invasion started quietly a fortnight ago when the Zaïrian rebels-probably no more than 2,000, though Kinshasa placed their number at 5,000-slipped across the border into Zaïre's Shaba region (the former Katanga province) and began to move toward the copper mines. According to U.S. reports, the Katangese had crossed the border in trucks provided by Angola, and were equipped with Soviet-made rockets. They were accompanied by a number of white troops; these could have been Cuban soldiers, but they could also have been Belgian or other European...