Sentence:  Ordinarily a father permits his children to grow up in due time - but when the colony received independence in 1960 the Congolese child , if one imagines him to have been born in 1908 , <WSD>was</WSD> 52 and had until then been treated as an infant . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)