Word: mobutu
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...hope. Last week, as the country marked the second anniversary of the army coup that overthrew Joseph Kasavubu in 1965, the mercenaries who have plagued it for years were in neighboring Rwanda, waiting with their suitcases and women for a one-way ticket out of Africa. Moreover, President Joseph Mobutu can claim credit for a lot more than driving out the "meres." In his two years of rule, he has laid at least the foundations for a more stable and efficient country...
...Mobutu has cracked down on warring tribes and moved to prevent secessionist governments. He has abolished the 22 provinces and replaced them with eight large provinces whose governors have neither full control of provincial police, as in the past, nor strong tribal ties. To reassure whites, he recently formed a "committee of intervention" composed of army men, government officials and whites whose job is to discourage racial strife. He has also removed the radical leadership of his wild Jeunesse (youth) movement, whose members last summer sacked the Belgian embassy and menaced whites in the streets of Kinshasa, the capital...
Computers & Embezzlers. Mobutu has put the Congo on a sounder course partly by bringing into the government a group of bright young Congolese who are graduates of such schools as the Sorbonne and the London School of Economics. His government has installed computers to prepare the payroll, thus saving about $1,000,000 a year that would normally be lost to embezzlers. It has fired 40,000 relatives and friends of politicians from the bloated bureaucracy. And, at the urging of international monetary authorities, it has made some basic economic reforms, including a tight rein on credit and devaluation...
Against this background, nobody expected much unity to result from the Organization of African Unity, especially under the dubious leadership of General Mobutu, who had enough troubles of his own trying to persuade Algeria to release Moise Tshombe so he could execute the former President...
...have not worked out so well. Serious fighting has resumed, and it turns out that Zambia was offering only one plane for the entire operation, leaving the Katangese troops to fend for themselves. Not increasing the prospects for a truce is the American decision to provide transport planes for Mobutu's troops. However, there is still a possibility that a settlement may be worked out, though the future of Kuanda's plans formulated at the OAU Conference remains a question mark...