Word: mobutu
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...wine during a Congolese banquet, and his entourage brushed their teeth with beer rather than risk the water. Humphrey handed out tickets to the U.S. Senate gallery to Liberian youngsters and implied in Kinshasa that he would seek a second vice-presidential term, promising Congolese President Joseph D. Mobutu to wear a leopard-skin cap on the campaign trail...
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...
Politically also, Mobutu seems to have consolidated his position. Many of his political enemies are either in prison or in exile, including ex-Premier Moise Tshombe, who was kidnaped last June and remains in an Algerian jail. (Algeria has so far refused Mobutu's request for Tshombe's extradition to the Congo, where he is under a death sentence.) The flight of the 123 white and 950 black Katangese mercenaries, under pressure from Mobutu's army, has for now restored the prestige of his army officers, who might otherwise have been tempted to depose...
Modicum of Confidence. Though the disorder and violence have naturally frightened off most foreign investment, Mobutu's government is gradually managing to win a modicum of confidence. Intercontinental Hotels Corp., for example, is going ahead with plans to put up a $6,500,000 hotel in Kinshasa, the first to go up there since independence in 1960. Two American and several European companies are studying the possible construction of auto-assembly plants in the Congo. The Union Minière mining empire, now nationalized and called Gecomin, is operating almost at full capacity; half of the company...
Last week, in an anniversary speech, Mobutu called the Congo "the rising star of Africa." With the mercenaries gone-they signed a pledge never again to fight in Africa-and the country on a more sensible course at least temporarily, the Congo finally has a chance. It is richer in natural resources-copper, tin, cobalt, industrial diamonds-than almost any other African nation. With the opportunity to exploit them in peace, it could become a model of prosperity rather than of chaos...