History, Democratic Republic of the Congo

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The area now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo was populated as early as 10,000 years ago, and settled in the 7th and 8th centuries by Bantus from present-day Nigeria. European exploration and administration took place from the 1870s until the 1920s. The area was first discovered and mapped by the British explorer Stanley. He prepared the region for European colonisation. Congo was given to King Leopold II of Belgium in the Conference of Berlin in 1885. He made the land his private property and called it 'Congo Free State'. In this Free State, the local population was brutalised in exchange for rubber, a growing market with the developement of rubber tires. The selling of the rubber made a fortune for Leopold, who built several buildings in Brussels with that money to honour himself. During the period between 1885 and 1908, over 10 million blacks were killed by the Belgians. After a few years however, the international community, including such famous writers as Mark Twain, started protesting the incredible cruelties of King Leopold. In 1908, the international pressure was so great that Leopold was forced to give his property to the Belgian state as a colony. From then on, it became the Belgian Congo. The native polulation was well-treated compared to the natives in other colonies: the Belgians are the only European power that built a university in their colony and the colonists were carefully picked by the Belgian Governement, to name only a few examples. World War II smashed the idea that the white population was superior (the small Congolese army had several victories agaist the Italians in North-Africa), a fact that initiated the decolonisation process. Congo became independent on June 30th, 1960 under a populist Prime Minister, Patrice-Emery Lumumba (1925-61). A member of the Batatele tribe, he was educated in mission schools and later worked as a postal clerk. He became a member of the permanent committee of the All-African Peoples Conference (founded in Accra, 1958) and president of the Congolese National Movement, an influential political party. After the uprising (January 1959) in the Congo, he fled the country to escape arrest but soon returned. Late in 1959, accused of instigating public violence, he was jailed by the Belgians but was released (1960) to participate in the Brussels Congo conference, where he emerged as a leading negotiator. When the Republic of the Congo came into existence (June, 1960) Lumumba was its first premier and minister of defense. Shortly after independence, the army mutinied, the Belgian government flew in troops to protect Belgian citizens, and Katanga province declared its independence. Lumumba appealed for aid to the United Nations, which sent troops to reestablish order. In September, President Kasavubu, his rival for power, dismissed him as prime minister and he, in turn, dismissed Kasavubu as president. Shortly afterward, Lumumba was put under house arrest by Colonel Joseph Mobutu. Lumumba escaped but was recaptured and then flown (January, 1961), on orders from Mobutu and Kasavubu, to Katanga (now Shaba), where in February, it was announced that he had been killed. Riots of protest took place in many parts of the world. See his Congo: My Country (1962) and Lumumba Speaks (ed. by Jean van Lierde, tr. 1972); study by T. R. Kanza (1972). Mobutu became president of Congo. Mobutu sucked the country of recources and collected an enormous fortune. He lived in luxury while the general population lived in misery. He implemented some strange alterations: the country was renamed Zaire, as well as the river, and promoted the old African values and traditions. He called himself Mobutu Sese Seko from that point. Since 1994, DR Congo has been rent by ethnic strife and civil war, touched off by a massive inflow of refugees from fighting in Rwanda and Burundi. The government of Mobutu Sese Seko was toppled by a rebellion led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila in May, 1997; his regime was subsequently challenged by a Rwanda- and Uganda-backed rebellion in August 1998. Troops from Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, Chad, and Sudan intervened to support the Kinshasa regime. See Foreign relations of Congo. A cease-fire was signed on July 10, 1999; nevertheless, fighting continues apace especially in the eastern part of the country, financed by revenues from the illegal extraction of minerals such as coltan. Kabila was assassinated in January 2001 and his son Joseph Kabila was named head of state. The new president quickly began overtures to end the war. Fighting continued, even after an accord signed in South Africa in 2002. But by late 2003, a fragile peace prevailed. Kabila appointed four vice-presidents, two who had been fighting to oust him until July, 2003.

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General Tips about Democratic Republic of the Congo

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