Word: katanga
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Tshombe's forces varied. "I was somebody; all those people looked up to me." said one status-conscious hireling. "Even a Katangese major always tried to salute me." Added a middle-aged former mercenary: "The Katangese didn't try to rape our wives." Some are more pro-Katanga than Tshombe himself: "The rest of the Congo can go to hell. We lived like brothers with our Katangese friends...
...most had gone for the adventure. "Plenty of lolly [money] and plenty of fun," said a South African masseur who had joined Katanga's army. One adventurer nostalgically recalled a successful campaign against a U.N. supply depot. "We lived like kings on the loot we found there," he says. "A pile of corned beef and 150,000 bottles of beer...
...tough babies," few are now left in Katanga. Most were removed by the U.N.; others quit when their pay and allowances were cut and their authority reduced. Never more than 700 in number, their strength has shrunk to approximately 100. Around this nucleus has formed a rag-tail army of European civilians-not so much mercenaries, says one U.S. correspondent, as minutemen...
They range from Belgian teen-agers to businessmen who moonlight as soldiers; at least half a dozen Union Miniére du Haut-Katanga executives have reportedly doffed their dark business suits for camouflage outfits. One Elisabethville butcher sells meat in his shell-pocked shop all day, fights the U.N. most of the night...
...since the days of the Suez crisis," wrote Editor Erwin D. Canham of the Christian Science Monitor, "has the Western world been more deeply divided than it is now over the Katanga. The situation is in a thorough mess.'' And not for years have the pundits and editorialists of the U.S. press been so deeply disturbed by a cold war maneuver. Last week, as the mess in the Congo showed no signs of abating (see THE WORLD), the U.S. press found little that made sense in the strange and unsettling collision of international armies half the world away...