The Congo: Balancing Act

THE CONGO

The weather-beaten monument in Stanleyville's Lumumba Square is wreathed in a spray of faded plastic flowers and surrounded by white bathroom tiles. It consists of a crude glass-encased portrait showing a goateed man, whose left hand rests on a multicolored globe. A rusty sign, rising from a scraggly bed of petunias, proclaims: "Here is the monument of the Liberator of the Congo, Premier Patrice Emery Lumumba, Hero of Independence and of Unity, assassinated 18 January 1961 in Katanga."

Up to the monument last week strode the latest Liberator of the Congo, Premier Moise Tshombe, onetime leader of secessionist Katanga and...

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