Word: minis
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...thousand miles to the east, in Katanga's little copper-rich capital of Elisabethville, the flame trees were out in glorious profusion alongside the spacious swimming pools of the Union Miniére officials, whose mines and refineries were working at capacity. If the service had deteriorated at the little Hotel Leopold II, the cannibal sandwich (raw hamburger, raw egg, chopped onion) remained excellent at the terrace dining room. No one much cared when news arrived that Katanga's mercenaries had clashed with the U.N.'s Ethiopian troops up north where President Moise Tshombe was clearing...
...cabs that "ply for hire" on the streets. They insist they answer only calls that are phoned to the main office and then radioed to a parked or cruising minicab that makes the pickup. One shrewd owner, an Irish-Indian go-getter named Michael Gotla, will allow his mini cabs to be flagged down by passengers; the driver will then hand his car phone to the customer and ask him to place his order with the dispatcher at headquarters, who will solemnly repeat it to the driver. Since the average minicab costs only half the price of a regulation-bound...
...government office, every Congolese minister has hired a Belgian as an "adviser." The Belgian government argues that the military men are there as private citizens and mercenaries, cannot be called back if they prefer to work for the Africans; it also insists it has no control over Union Minière, whose subsidies make Tshombe's government one of Africa's richest...
Tshombe is backed in his province by a humming economy still run by the Belgians. Despite all of the Congo's troubles, the copper mines of Katanga's Belgian-owned Union Minière set production records last year, paid $50 million in taxes into Katanga's treasury. With his Belgian adviser, Colonel Guy Weber, always at his shoulder, Tshombe has launched an offensive to clear his province of Gizenga's invading soldiers. In partnership with the Léopoldville military boss, Major General Joseph Mobutu, Tshombe would like to go after Gizenga himself...
...public fancy. One of his earliest successes was a 1924 three-wheel truck, still widely copied. In the postwar years, Borgward put out the bestselling LP-300 Minicar, catching the bugmobile craze on the rise. If Borgward had concentrated on tiny cars, he might easily have dominated the mini-car market. But after he had sold 350,000 of them, he grew bored, moved on to expand his bigger cars-and failure...