Word: mobutu
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Ever since May, when Moise Tshombe emerged from nationwide parliamentary elections as the most dazzling politician in the Congo, he and President Joseph Kasavubu had been locked in battle for the presidency. All the while, there was a third man in the ring -Major General Joseph Mobutu, 35, who as army commander was the only Congolese powerful enough to referee...
Last week Referee Mobutu abruptly ended the match and proclaimed him self winner and new President. While he was about it, Mobutu deposed Kasavubu, canceled the upcoming presidential election and decreed for himself a five-year term as head of a "regime of exception...
...bloodless coup. No tanks rumbled through the streets, nobody was arrested or shot, no special patrols were dispatched to maintain the peace. Mobutu simply ordered the government radio station in Leopoldville to broadcast his proclamation, then sent a delegation of staff officers over to the presidential palace to ask Kasavubu to start packing, followed that up with a formal letter offering him a permanent seat in the Congolese Senate. "The race for the top is finished," Mobutu declared. "Our political leaders had engaged in a sterile struggle to grab power without consideration for the welfare of the citizens. Political bank...
Forest of Banners. What bothered Mobutu was the dangerous direction in which the struggle had been leading the nation. Police Boss Victor Nendaka had begun banning anti-Kasavubu newspapers and mounting a hate-campaign that seemed to aim toward Tshombe's arrest. Worse, to gain leftist support, Kasavubu had restored relations with the Peking-oriented Brazzaville Congo across the river, was cozying up to Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, and had promised to kick out the white mercenary troops that were the muscle of Mobutu's Congolese army...
...their staging area at Kindu, crossed the Lualaba River, and, in 35 U.S. Army trucks, five Swedish troop carriers and four British armored cars, began their 350-mile march up the rutted rain-forest road to the rebel capital of Stanleyville. E.T.A. hopefully announced by Congolese Army Commander Joseph Mobutu: some time this week...