Word: mobutu
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...will go hungry to gain our economic independence," said the Congo's President Joseph Mobutu when he nationalized Union Minière du Haut Katanga on Jan. 1. General Mobutu's economically shortsighted advisers clapped their approval, scoffed at the prospect of a mass exodus of Belgian technicians. "Pay them," one aide predicted, "and they will do anything." It did not turn out that way. Union Minière's management immediately chose to pull out. Shipments and, consequently, sales came to a standstill. Only five of 2,000 engineers and technicians opted to stay on under...
...Mobutu searched the world for a new team of technicians, even dickered with a rival consortium about taking over the mines. In the end he found no one who would or could come...
...Mobutu turned all the company's copper-mining installations and other assets over to a new Congolese company, gave it a ten-man board of directors composed entirely of Congolese, and made the Congolese government the majority stockholder. He thus precipitated a crisis that, if allowed to develop, could plunge the Congo into economic and political chaos. "If we have to go hungry to be free and independent," he said, "then we'll go hungry. We prefer to remain poor and free to being rich slaves...
...running efficiently. In Brussels, the company reacted by withholding more than $10 million in royalties that it owes the Congo and ceasing its tax payments, which amount to about $2,000,000 a month. It also declared that it would regard any of the copper that is purchased from Mobutu's company by other countries as stolen property to be recovered in the courts, pointedly asked each of its 2,000 European employees in the Congo whether they would be leaving for home by month's end. Tanganyika Concessions Ltd., the British company that owns a share...
...rancor from past struggles, however, neither side is anxious for a real crunching showdown. While Nasser may have succeeded in running Suez without the British, Mobutu knows that keeping Union Minière's complex operations going himself would be almost impossible. He has appealed to young Belgian technicians "of good will" to stay on the job, and the company is asking its managers to cooperate for the time being in running the mines. If nothing else, Union Minière is anxious not to drive Mobutu into nationalizing other extensive enterprises in the Congo owned by its parent...