Word: mobutu
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Congo President Joseph Mobutu last week nationalized the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga, the Belgian company that provided a living for 100,000 Congolese, accounted for about one-half of the government's revenues and 70% of the nation's foreign exchange. He thus took revenge on an institution that he held responsible for Moise Tshombe's Katanga secession in 1961, and that he charged with bilking the Congo out of its rightful share of the company's profits...
While President Mobutu celebrated the first anniversary of his military regime in the Congo last week, everyone showed a special interest in his highest-ranking official guest, King Ntare V, 19, of neighboring Burundi. At a round of parties, guests wondered openly how the shy boy King would fare in Maryland-sized, blood-torn Burundi, from which he only last July ousted his own royal father...
Micombero warned that if King Ntare tried to return to Burundi he would be treated "as a criminal." No difference. Ntare could find little support for any comeback attempt. Mobutu offered his sympathy, but was not about to do more. An ex-King at an age when he still has time to pick a less perilous career, Ntare sadly abandoned the Congo and headed off for Europe...
Diplomatic Break. Mobutu seized the occasion to launch a general political attack on his enemies everywhere. Tshombe, he claimed, was using his exile in Madrid to mount a plot against the Congo's military government, hiring mercenaries in Europe, training them in southern France, and, with Portuguese collusion, massing troops across the Congolese border in Angola...
Tshombe and the Portuguese government denied everything, but none of the disclaimers had any effect. Still ranting about "the satanic plans of the enemies of our country," Mobutu last week broke relations with Portugal and ordered all foreign countries, friend and foe alike, to close their consulates in the Congo's interior...