Word: lunda
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...invasion apparently caught Mobutu's troops in Shaba by surprise. The rebels came from two directions. Some moved along the Benguela railroad, which runs from Shaba through Angola to the Atlantic Ocean. Others passed through the northern tip of Zambia, whose Lunda tribesmen are friendly kin of the Katangese exiles. They traveled in small groups and wore native dress, but carried AK-47s and other Soviet-made equipment over their shoulders. They insisted that no "Cubbanos" had come with them. Nonetheless, guerrillas declared that their goal was not simply the liberation of Shaba from Kinshasa's rule...
...troops also behaved like soldiers -or worse. People suspected of helping the rebels were herded into huts, which were then doused with gasoline and set afire. Only the presence of the Moroccans, tribesmen say, prevented the death toll from rising into the thousands. As it is, the Lunda people are terrified of reprisals if the new rebel attack on Shaba is turned back. "We want to be left in peace," says Chief Lukama, leader of a Lunda contingent that sought refuge in Zambia. "We are eager to go back home to Zaïre when it is peaceful...
Open Enthusiasm. The Kantan-gese invaders are drawn mainly from the Lunda tribe, traditionally among Central Africa's fiercest warriors. Shaba villagers have received them with open enthusiasm. Government troops, who speak Lingala-the language of the Congo River basin-rather than the local variant of Swahili, are, by contrast, feared and shunned...
...strangely, the new Mwata Yambo is more popular among tribal elders and even some youth than his predecessor. Says one young Lunda just back from the bright lights of Elisabethville: "While I was away I began to think all this tribal ceremony was perhaps a lot of nonsense. But now that I am back home it seems perfectly natural, and I like...
...pale substitute for an earlier practice, banned years ago by the Belgians, which employed sinews from the penis of a Lunda warrior ceremonially slaughtered for the occasion...