Word: gizenga
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First, the two trucks waiting to transfer the equipment broke down and had to be pushed off the airstrip; then Simon Losala, Gizenga's provincial president, realizing that a dusty sport shirt was inappropriate for the occasion, rushed off to find a jacket and tie. When he returned, his tipsy words of welcome were: "I have been diddling around all day to ensure that these generators serve the population. In about three days or three weeks, I forget which, we shall have light again. It has meant a lot of work but, by God, I have...
...Boat traffic along the Congo River was virtually at a standstill; in the towns, shops were closed and deserted; the battered government cars on the streets of Stanleyville, with their smashed fenders and broken windows, looked like stock-car racing relics. The once menacing empire of Antoine Gizenga, heir to Patrice Lumumba's mantle, was crumbling fast...
...boss himself had not been seen publicly for a month, preferring seclusion in his large riverside villa. From there, the stream of brusque orders still went out-to his troops, to his police, to his aides in the African Solidarity Party. But now many of Gizenga's decrees were being ignored. His army chief, General Victor Lundula, had declared his loyalty to the central government regime of Premier Cyrille Adoula in Leopoldville; when Gizenga angrily sent a platoon of Stanleyville police out to arrest Lundula, the cops began bickering among themselves, broke up and returned to their barracks without...
...Second Thought. Obviously, this was the time for Adoula's central government to begin its crackdown, forcing Gizenga to drop his secession threats and rejoin the Congo. Out went an angry parliamentary demand for Gizenga to return to Leopoldville and take the Deputy Premier's seat he had abandoned last October. Some of Gizenga's own party followers in the Leopoldville Chamber of Deputies supported the resolution against him. Said one: "We have had enough of the anarchy and terror that reign in our province. If he does not return within 48 hours, we must take...
...first, Gizenga replied with a sneering refusal. On second thought he reversed himself and vaguely promised to come; but by then, the government was so angry that it sent orders to Lundula to "take all necessary steps to restore order" in Stanleyville. It might be a bloody task, for Gizenga still had a nucleus of determined soldiers behind him; sure enough, at the very first clash, a battle royal resulted. Gizenga's force lost eight men, but it also killed six of Lundula's troops before the shooting ended. The way things looked, many weeks of bitter struggle...