Word: luluabourg
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...followers to return one day and drive out the white man. The result was a pitched battle with black Congolese police, which left six Africans dead. But of all the troubles that beset the Congo last week, none so clearly foreshadowed the future as the massacre at Luluabourg, 500 miles east of Léopoldville...
Until 1891 Luluabourg belonged solely to the Lulua, a tribe of warriors who hated work in any form. Then a pair of nomadic Arab tribes invaded the area, driving before them a batch of captives from the unwarlike Baluba people. When the Lulua finally drove the invaders off, the captives settled down happily in Luluabourg as voluntary serfs of the Lulua -a state of affairs that persisted until last January, when the downtrodden Baluba finally began to listen to Albert Kalondji, a Baluba politician who told them that they deserved to own the land they tilled...
...hold him long. When he was released last month, the Lulua howled in rage. Last week they sought revenge. Smeared with war paint, Lulua warriors began by burning two Baluba villages to the ground and killing their inhabitants with spears and homemade muzzle-loading rifles. In the suburbs of Luluabourg, naked Lulua women swarmed through the streets screaming to their men to kill, kill, kill. Like a grass fire, murder and mutilation swept over an area of 40 miles until the number of deaths mounted to an estimated...
...week's end, as reconnaissance planes droned ineffectively over the bloodstained jungle around Luluabourg, Belgian officialdom was hopefully awaiting the reaction of Congolese politicians to Schrijver's timetable for independence. But to outsiders-and to many Belgians as well-it seemed doubtful that any timetable, however reasonable, could ward off the chaos that was descending upon one of the world's richest colonies...
This week the urban elections (or "consultations," as the Belgian authorities prefer to call them) will be extended to Elisabethville and Jadotville, the largest towns in the mining province of Katanga. Next in line: Stanleyville, Bukavu, Luluabourg, Matadi. But not even unlimited economic opportunity can still the demand for political expression, which runs through Africa like a fever. Said one Congolese last week: "This didn't come soon enough, and it isn't enough...