THE BELGIAN CONGO: Return of the Mundele

For a prosperous half-century, tiny Belgium successfully ruled the vast, mineral-rich Congo with what seemed to be the most foolproof of colonial formulas: steady economic progress, combined with almost no political progress at all. But as the virus of nationalism spread across Africa and the newly autonomous republics of Charles de Gaulle's French Community sprang up throughout the continent, the Belgian Congo suddenly caught freedom fever. Early this year, after Leopoldville, capital of the Congo, exploded in the bloodiest race riots the colony had known in a decade (TIME, Jan. 19), Belgium...

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