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Censorship in Congo, 1960

PostPosted: Mon May 04, 2020 9:33 pm
by townshendp
1960 Congo censor.jpg
I've just bought the attached cover, posted from Baraka to Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) on 30.12.1960. Baraka is on Lake Tanganyika, opposite and a bit further south than Bujumbura. If I remember right the inland postage at the time was 2FC, so the 5FC rate probably included airmail. This almost certainly would have gone via Bujumbura or possibly Kavumu (then Bukavu's airport, but actually over the border near Cyangungu in Rwanda) -- or even conceivably via Elisabethville (now Lubumbashi), since Baraka is near the Katanga border and the railhead at Albertville (after 1966 called Kalemie) -- and since neither Rwanda nor Burundi were independent in Dec 1960 it could be the Belgian colonial authorities who censored this cover, or the Congolese (in Leopoldville) or Katangans (in transit at Elisabethville) in the light of Katanga's breakaway in July 1960.
Does anyone have any information relevant to this instead of my speculation?
Philip Townshend