Word: mobutu
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...almost every new African nation has made a show of changing many of the place names imposed by its former colonial masters. None, though, have gone quite so far as the Zaïre Republic, once known as the Belgian Congo. This month President Joseph Désiré Mobutu held a mass rally in Leopoldville (today known as Kinshasa), his capital city on the mighty Congo River (sorry, the Zaïre), to announce a sweeping "return to Zaïre authenticity...
...Thus there was more than a little Israeli concern last week when four self-styled "Messengers of Peace"-Senegal's Poet-President Léopold Senghor, Cameroun's President Ahmadou Ahidjo, Nigeria's Chief of State Yakubu Gowon, and the Zaire Republic's President Joseph Mobutu-flew almost simultaneously into Lod International Airport outside Tel Aviv. They had been dispatched by the Organization of African Unity to help bring peace between Arabs and Israelis "by means of a dialogue," as Senghor...
Prime Minister Golda Meir gamely went through two elaborate welcoming ceremonies-the second one for Mobutu, who landed an hour after the other three in a DC-8 whose fuselage bore the freshly painted words Air Zai're to denote that he had changed the name of his country from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the Zai're Republic a week earlier. The same name change compelled the Israeli Foreign Ministry to revise all its programs and invitations. All told, it was a trying time for the ministry; when it ordered 400 flags, 100 for each...
...tour, in which he isolated himself from ordinary citizens and from most of the sights and sounds of the countries he visited, the Vice President delivered himself of some gratuitous remarks about blacks. Having met with three African leaders -Ethiopia's Haile Selassie, the Congo's Joseph Mobutu and Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta-Agnew told U.S. newsmen traveling with him that those Africans were "dedicated, enlightened, dynamic and extremely apt for the task that faces them." Then he added: "The quality of this leadership is in distinct contrast with many of those in the United States...
...military aid has also made friends for Israel. President Joseph Mobutu of the Congo received his paratroop training and wings in Israel; Uganda's General Idi ("Big Daddy") Amin recently overthrew President Milton Obote with Israeli-advised armed forces. Occasionally, however, such programs give rise to ironic situations. When Arab leaders visit Addis Ababa to attend meetings of the Organization for African Unity, for instance, they are closely guarded by Ethiopian security men who received their training in Israel...