A Letter From The Publisher, Jun. 5, 1978

When it was over and the rebels had retreated from Zaïre to the Angolan border, the vastness of Africa seemed to swallow them up. For Johannesburg Bureau Chief William McWhirter, who had flown north to enter devastated Kolwezi on the private plane of Zaïre President Mobutu Sese Seko, that vastness was a large part of the challenge. The complications of communication and transportation made the job of staying with the news especially difficult for this week's cover story (see WORLD).

The essential problem was that no telephones — let alone telex machines —...

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