Word: lumumba
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...circling DC-4 bounced through the tropical thunderstorm over Elisabethville, a cryptic message crackled down to the tower: "I've got a big parcel for you fellows." Minutes later, the parcel stumbled down the plane ramp into the eager hands of the tough Katanga gendarmes. It was Patrice Lumumba, blindfolded and shackled to two of his government lieutenants. The Katanga cops fell on all three, dropped them to the ground in a hail of swinging rifle butts. Then they flung Lumumba into a waiting Jeep. With four gendarmes sitting on him, Lumumba was whisked...
Using Kivu as their staging area, 600 of Gizenga's men invaded the Katanga stronghold of Secessionist Moise Tshombe. Installing two Lumumba supporters (one of them Lumumba's cousin) as heads of a new territory to be known as "Lualaba," the invaders occupied village after village in Katanga's northern wilds, where the local Baluba tribesmen were happy to welcome any enemies of the Tshombe regime. At Manono, center of Katanga's tin mining, the interlopers stopped, dug in, and announced establishment of Lualaba's new capital...
...urged Tshombe not to retaliate, but planes of Tshombe's little air force, manned by Belgian pilots, flew off to strafe the enemy with machine guns and hand-hurled bombs. In this first use of air power in the Congo crisis, ground fire from the pro-Lumumba force killed one of the Belgian copilots and riddled a second plane...
...Lumumba's Stanleyville pals now controlled more than 30% of the entire Congo, were clearly preparing to make it closer to 50% by grabbing sprawling Equator province in the northwest. Léopoldville's harassed Colonel Joseph Mobutu hastily packed two platoons of troops into planes and flew them to Lisala, one of Equator province's main towns. But how effective Mobutu's troops would be was anyone's guess, for there was trouble in the ranks; many of his soldiers wanted more pay. At the big Camp Hardy troop center at Thysville, where Lumumba...
Scooping up President Joseph Kasavubu himself, Mobutu charged down to Camp Hardy to quell the brewing revolt. What happened is wrapped in the inevitable confusion that surrounds every Congo crisis. One report had it that Mobutu was arrested temporarily by his own troops and that Lumumba was freed. But when it was all over, Patrice Lumumba still sat in jail. With his loyal supporters taking over more and more of the country, how long he would remain there was an open question...