Word: mobutu
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When he came to power eight months ago, Congolese President Joseph Mobutu faced a tricky military problem. The Simba rebellion had been crushed, but the armies that had done the job were still in business-and dangerous tensions existed among them...
Dawn Riser. With army backing, Mobutu has put a violent end to the political intrigues that confounded every Premier from Leftist Patrice Lumumba to Rightist Moise Tshombe. He organized a youth corps to report any political activity, and he hanged four politicians, including ex-Premier Evariste Kimba, whom he caught plotting against...
...Mobutu's whip hand has been felt everywhere. He consolidated the number of provinces from 21 to a more easily managed twelve, appointed the governors and their Cabinets himself. He rides herd over his own ministers, overruling their decisions at will and firing them at the slightest sign of disaffection. "What the Congolese need most is discipline," Mobutu says. "I have been teaching them discipline, and they have been listening to me. This gives me pleasure...
Discipline is Mobutu's way of life. He rises at dawn every morning, takes a breakfast consisting mainly of Eno's Fruit Salts, a sparkling laxative, then settles down for an hour to read the biographies of the world's political and military leaders ("to know how they acted in difficult times"). His own most difficult problem is reconstruction of the northeast Congo, which the two-year Simba rebellion left in ruins. An average of 400 refugees a day are still pouring into Kisangani (formerly Stanleyville), which is itself a city half dead: half its shops...
Bribe Squeezers. Mobutu realizes that the first necessity for the northeast is the re-establishment of fundamental order. The Simbas killed or carried off almost all the trained civil servants, leaving vast areas of the north east governed by second-rate profiteers who squeeze bribes and extortion mon ey out of the population at every chance. They are in for trouble: Mobutu has opened an interprovincial police training school in Kisangani that has already sent 250 cops throughout the northeast...