Word: mba
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Charles de Gaulle when tiny Gabon's 400-man army rose against its President last month. The coup, De Gaulle decided, had no popular support, so into the mineral-rich West African republic roared hundreds of tough French paratroopers. Overnight, De Gaulle's old, autocratic friend Leon Mba was back in power. It looked so simple, but. by last week Charles de Gaulle had learned something even simpler: nothing cures an African nation of political sterility like high-handed intervention...
...outset, Gabon's 450,000 citizens couldn't have cared less about the coup. But the combination of French steel and Mba's flinty threats of "total punishment" once he was back in office finally struck a spark. In Libreville's La-lala quarter, a dissonant mob formed. Fired up on payday whisky, it marched on the capital's central market, screaming: "Frenchmen go home!" The rioters were finally dispersed in a crunching whirl of para rifle butts...
...Kwilu province in the latest chapter of that sad nation's four-year history. In the Sudan, black secessionists battled the Arab government of Dictator Ibrahim Abboud. And last week, in Gabon, mobs hurled stones and bottles at the French troops who had restored bold, autocratic President Leon Mba to power last month after an abortive, 42-hour coup...
...General René Cogny, the hero of Dienbienphu. At 2 p.m. they began landing at the Libreville airport, where the rebels providentially had failed to erect obstacles on the runway. The troopers swept through the city with little resistance, but the coup leaders made a stand at Baraka. Sending Mba off under guard to a village near Dr. Albert Schweitzer's hospital at Lambarene, the rebels prepared to meet the imminent French attack. It came next morning as French fighters stooped like falcons from the tropic sky, sent ball and tracer lashing into the army camp...
Returning to Libreville, Mba made it clear that if he had been tough on the opposition before, he now would be hell on wheels. Pledging "no pardon or pity" but rather "total punishment"-probably death-for the insurrectionists, he seemed to have reached his original goal: an unopposed oligarchy...