RHODESIA Mobutu suggests simple solution

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32801, 29 December 1971, Page 13

RHODESIA Mobutu suggests simple solution

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) KINSHASA, December 28. Britain has only to force the “settlers” in Rhodesia to go home, and hand over the country to the local people, to settle the Rhodesia problem, President Mobutu of Zaire has suggested.

In an interview at the epd i of a three-week tour of Zaire 1 (formerly the Congolese Re- ( public) General Mobutu com-] plained bitterly that there i had been no real British 1 reaction “when the white settlers revolted” (at the uni- ' lateral declaration of independence in November, 1965). “Those chiefly responsible are our British friends,” he said . “Rhodesia has always been, and remains, a British colony. The recent BritishRhodesian settlement proposals merely represent complicity with the settlers.” General Mobutu' claimed that his decision to rename the Congo “Zaire,” had given the nation “an authentic definition” "The River Congo was named Zaire on a fifteenthcentury map of Africa, so all I did was to restore the original name of our region,” he said. "The people are now proud to have a distinct personality, and no longer have to share, as they did when there were two Congos” (a reference to the neighbouring People’s Congo (Brazzaville). .

"The objective now is to put the economy at the service of the Zaireans, around whom the revolution has to be built. If the people are

not satisfied, the revolution is a nullity.” Foreign investment was the basis of Zaire’s economic policy. General Mobutu went on. Saying that he was satisfied, but not very satisfied, with present investment programmes, he repeated assurances that there was full security for capitalist investment in Zaire, vhich respected to the let .er ’its very liberal investment code.