Congo, Democratic Republic of the

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One of the largest and most ethnically diverse African countries, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (henceforth Congo) is extremely rich in natural resources, including diamonds, copper, and gold, as well as the enormous hydroelectric potential of the Congo River. Historically, however, these resources have benefited only the political and commercial elite. Subjected to one of the most oppressive regimes in all of colonial Africa, then to the thirty-two-year rule of Mobutu Sese Seko, Congo is now impoverished and unstable. In 1996 rebel leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila seized power on promises to revitalize and democratize the country. He was unable, however, to withstand a subsequent rebellion backed by armies from Rwanda and Uganda, and was assassinated in 2001. Though a truce agreement was signed in 2002, the years of fighting and alleged government corruption have seriously undermined Congolese society.

Precolonial History

Although relatively little is known about the early history of the Congo, it is believed that the first inhabitants were Pygmy groups who lived as hunter-gatherers in the rainforests of the northwest. During the first millennium B.C.E. Bantu-speaking peoples migrated from the north and settled throughout the Congo basin. They established agricultural communities and, after contacts with non-Bantu speaking people, herded cattle. Some of these communities were eventually incorporated into relatively centralized states such as the fourteenth-century Kongo at the mouth of the Congo River, and the fifteenth-century Luba and Lunda kingdoms to the west of Lake Tanganyika. Other smaller states in the Congo basin area included the Teke, the Kuba, and the Chokwe.

The first documented contact with Europeans occurred in 1483, when a Portuguese explorer, Diogo Cam (also spelled Cão), sailed into the mouth of the Zaire River (later known as the Congo River) and encountered Kongo villages. Two years later, he took a group of Kongo emissaries back to Portugal. The group returned to Africa in 1491 with priests, soldiers, and European goods. The emissaries and Portuguese baptized the Kongo king, Nzinga a Nkuwu, and built a Catholic church in the capital. Although Nzinga a Nkuwu later abandoned Catholicism, his son, Nzinga Mbembe (later Afonso), became a devoted Christian. Upon his accession he made Catholicism the state religion.

Subsequent relations between the Portuguese and the Kongo were based on missionary pursuits and trade. Afonso encouraged missionaries to Christianize the Kongo. He also traded slaves and ivory to the Portuguese in exchange for European luxury goods to increase his prestige and authority. The slave trade, however, eventually resulted in the demise of the Kongo kingdom. Kongolese slave raids on neighboring peoples, including the Teke and Kuba, led to retaliation and wars, such as the Jaga War in 1569, that eventually destroyed the Kongo kingdom. Neighboring states such as the Luba and Lunda continued selling slaves and ivory to the Europeans through the late nineteenth century.

Congo Free State

In 1874 Anglo American journalist Henry Morton STANLEY was commissioned by the New York Herald and Daily Telegraph to finish the explorations of David Livingstone, a Scottish missionary who had spent several years mapping the Congo basin. For three years, Stanley explored the Zaire River, returning in 1877 to Europe, where his reports of the region’s untapped natural wealth caught the attention of King Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold, keen to extend his personal domain, hired Stanley to return to the Congo basin to secure treaties with local chiefs and establish contracts necessary to form a commercial monopoly, which would be called the African International Association. Stanley also put hundreds of men, both European and African, to work building a road along the Congo River. Leopold’s actions spurred the Scramble for Africa, in which other European powers quickly staked claims to other parts of the continent, and then met to formalize their claims at the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. There, Leopold was recognized as the legitimate authority in the region. In return, he promised to provide European traders and missionaries free access to the territory, which he named the Congo Free State.

Leopold subsequently declared all land not actively occupied or cultivated to be “vacant land” belonging to him and the Free State government. He also appropriated land that was not vacant, which led to violent conflicts between the Free State military, the Force Publique, and the region’s powerful traders, Tippu Tip and Msiri. Keeping a significant portion of the territory for his own enterprises, Leopold granted vast concessions of land to various companies for mining, rubber-tapping, and railroad construction. Free State companies, including Leopold’s, regularly used threats of torture and execution to force Africans to tap rubber or work in the mines. Reporting on the conditions in the rubber tapping regions, Reverend J. B. Murphy wrote that the system of compulsory labor had “reduced people to states of utter despair. Each town in the district is forced to bring a certain quantity of rubber to the headquarters of the commissaire every Sunday. If they will not they are shot down, and their left hands cut off and taken as trophies to the commissaire.” Under the Congo Free State, the Congolese population declined by between one-third and one-half due to famine, epidemics, and state-sponsored violence. By 1900 the brutality of the Congo Free State was notorious and international groups pressed for reform, which it haphazardly instituted in 1906. By 1908, however, it was clear that the reforms had been unsuccessful and Leopold, anxious to relieve himself of a burgeoning debt, handed the colony over to the Belgian government, which renamed it the Belgian Congo.

Belgian Congo

Although the new colonial government promised to abolish Leopold’s abusive practices, it was also keenly aware that the colony must remain a profitable venture. As a result, the African population saw few real improvements. The government prohibited slave labor but imposed high taxes, which effectively forced adult males to continue working for the rubber and mining companies. In addition, the government required Congolese villagers to spend at least sixty days each year cultivating export crops for the government. It also conscripted thousands to work on large infrastructure projects, such as the building of railroads, and to serve in the Allied forces during World War I and World War II.

Compared to some of the British and French colonial regimes, Belgian colonialism allowed Africans few opportunities in civil service or private trade. It did, however, encourage missionary work in order to “civilize and Christianize” the African peoples. Missionaries did actively convert Africans to Christianity and also built schools that became the primary source of education available to Africans, especially at the secondary and higher levels. Many of the missionary school graduates subsequently became teachers or employees at other mission-run enterprises. They formed an elite class of Africans known as the évolués, many of whom lived in major cities such as Elizabethville and Léopoldville.

In the early 1950s the évolués began petitioning the colonial government for reform, demanding the rights to own land, participate in elections, and serve in public office. The colonial government conceded these demands and permitted Africans to run in local municipal elections in 1957. These changes did not appease growing anticolonial sentiments in the Congo, however, and when the general population broke into riots in 1959 the évolués were the first to demand immediate independence.

The Belgian colonial government was caught off-guard by these demands. Although France and Britain had been discussing decolonization since the early 1950s, the Belgian government did not even consider the possibility until 1956, when Belgian law professor A. A. J. Van Bilsen published “A Thirty Year Plan for the Political Emancipation of Belgian Africa.” The riots of 1959, however, forced the government to realize that it had neither the force nor the authority to maintain control. As a result, when it met with African delegates at the Brussels Round Table Conference in 1960, it offered to grant independence within six months, an extraordinarily short time frame. The government encouraged the évolués to form political parties and hold elections, and proposed that Belgian nationals would help smooth the transition by staying in their government and military positions.

In May 1960 the first national elections were held in the Belgian Congo. Nearly forty parties fielded candidates and, after much controversy, a coalition was finally formed between Patrice Lumumba’s Congolese National Movement and Joseph Kasavubu’s Bakango Alliance, in which Kasavubu was named president and Lumumba was named prime minister. On June 30, 1960, King Baudouin I of Belgium declared the Republic of Congo independent.

Early Independence in the Republic of Congo

Within a week of independence, however, large-scale chaos erupted. The Force Publique mutinied and violent conflicts broke out between Belgians and Congolese as well as between Congolese ethnic groups fighting over animosities fostered during colonialism. In addition, secessionist movements threatened to break up the republic. On July 11, 1960, Moise-Kapenda Tshombe, supported clandestinely by Belgium and the Union Minière mining company, declared Katanga (Shaba) an independent state, and in August, Albert Kalonji declared the independence of South Kasai.

Belgium deployed troops to the Republic of the Congo to protect Belgian citizens, a move quickly interpreted as an attempt to restore Belgian authority. In the face of continuing riots, Lumumba asked the United Nations (UN) for assistance. The UN Security Council authorized a military force, comprised mainly of African troops, to restore order in the Republic of the Congo and oversee the withdrawal of the Belgian troops. The UN troops arrived on July 15, 1960, but when they proved unable to move out the Belgian troops quickly, Lumumba accused the UN of supporting Western imperialists and asked the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) for assistance. Dag Hammarskjöld, UN Secretary General, attempted to ameliorate the situation, but died in an airplane crash on his way to negotiate talks in the Republic of the Congo.

Lumumba’s action angered President Kasavubu, who fired Lumumba and replaced him with Joseph Ileo. Before Ileo could take office, however, Colonel Joseph Mobutu (later Mobutu Sese Seko) seized power through a military coup. Claiming that Lumumba had incited army mutiny, Mobutu ordered the prime minister’s arrest. He was killed in January 1961 allegedly after torture by Mobutu’s troops. In February 1961 Mobutu returned power to Kasavubu and Ileo.

For the next three years, UN forces and the Congolese military attempted to reunite the fragmented Republic of the Congo. In 1963 Tshombe finally surrendered the Katanga province, and, ironically, was named prime minister in July 1964. A month later the Kasavubu and Tshombe government adopted a new constitution and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Their coalition, however, was short-lived. Taking advantage of widespread civil conflict, Mobutu again seized power in a military coup d’etat and on November 25, 1965, named himself president.

The Mobutu Era

Immensely popular in the early years of his rule, Mobutu centralized and consolidated his power by crushing burgeoning rebellions in outlying provinces and executing dissident politicians. In 1970 he held presidential elections and was elected to a seven-year term. During this term, Mobutu implemented the ideology he called authenticité (French for “authenticity” also called “Mobutuism”), which he used to justify his dictatorial power as well as his economic and social policies. He changed the name of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Zaire and required citizens to Africanize all Christian names and adopt African-style dress. In addition, in an economic policy called Zaireanization, he nationalized foreign businesses, reclaiming the copper and diamond mines in the Shaba region (formerly Katanga), which would become the mainstay of the Zairean economy.

From 1970 until the late 1980s Mobutu built a cult of personality around his presidency, calling himself Citizen-President-Founder and father of the nation. Comparing his role to the patriarchal authority of traditional chiefs, he claimed he had the authentic right to exercise absolute power over his “children,” the Zairean people. He used the army, the police, and the Centre National Documentation, an internal spy agency, to enforce his dictates and quell dissent. Mobutu also destroyed political opposition by replacing political parties with one official state party, the Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution (MPR), and making every Zairean a member.

Although Mobutu’s policies of authenticité and Zaireanization primarily benefited Mobutu and his friends, it also fostered a rich musical scene. Because authenticité forbade certain kinds of foreign music, Zaireans coped with the harshness of daily life by creating their own genres, such as a vibrant music called Soukous that combines modern music with traditional instruments. Kinshasa, which many consider the music capital of Central Africa, became home to musicians such as Franco Luambo Makiadi (known as the king of Zairean music), Wemba, and Abeti Masiniki, and bands such as O.K. Jazz, and Docteur Nico et l’Orchestre African Fiesta. Mobutu also acted as a patron to some of the Zairean musicians and sometimes invited them to play at his palaces.

By the early 1980s Mobutu’s government was notorious as a kleptocracy in which public funds were used for private gain, especially for the private gain of the president himself, who diverted vast sums of revenue into his personal bank accounts. Meanwhile, the Zairean economy and infrastructure deteriorated. Mobutu managed to maintain his authority over an increasingly disenchanted populace partly because he portrayed himself as a staunch anticommunist and therefore received generous financial and military support from France and the United States. Although the Western powers hoped their support would not only deter Soviet influence but also stabilize the mineral-rich region of Central Africa, Mobutu in fact aided insurgent movements in neighboring countries such as Angola, Chad, and Sudan.

At the end of the Cold War, however, Mobutu’s power began to slip. Economic depression due to falling copper prices and unrest among civil servants and military—many of whom had been unpaid for years—forced Mobutu to make concessions to the political opposition. In 1990 he announced the creation of a multiparty democratic system. Although elections were never held, Mobutu agreed to a coalition government with étienne Tshisekedi. Tshisekedi was fired in less than a month but reinstated in 1992 and served until 1994, when Léon Kengo wa Dondo was appointed prime minister.

Mobutu maintained a low profile in the early 1990s but again became the voice of power in 1994, when he allowed millions of people fleeing civil conflict in Rwanda to take refuge in Zaire and the UN and France urged him to play a role in helping resolve the crisis. This renewed authority, however, was only temporary. Sick with prostate cancer, Mobutu was caught off-guard by an insurrection movement that began in October 1996. During the next six months the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo, a Zairean militia backed by Rwanda, Uganda, and Angola and led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, rapidly advanced on the capital of Kinshasa. Kabila’s forces consisted largely of soldiers from eastern Zaire’s small Banyamulenge minority, often known as Tutsi because of their close ethnic ties to the Tutsi of neighboring Rwanda. These forces attacked not only the remnants of Mobutu’s army, but also the Hutu refugees whose presence on the border of Rwanda threatened that country’s predominantly Tutsi government. Kabila’s army was supported by villagers throughout the countryside and faced little resistance from Zairean army troops, who were unwilling to risk their lives for a government that had not paid them for several months. Western powers refused to intervene of behalf of Mobutu. On May 16, 1997, with Kabila’s army ready to take control of Kinshasa, the ailing dictator stepped down from power and flew with his family to Morocco. Kabila immediately declared himself head of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Democratic Republic of the Congo

After taking power, Kabila pledged to revitalize the country, stop corruption, and rebuild the infrastructure, including the mines, which need an estimated $8 billion to resume operation. Denying offices to any politicians or civil servants associated with Mobutu, including the extremely popular étienne Tshisekedi, Kabila established his government and pledged not to hold elections for at least four years, or however long it took to build the necessary political and social institutions. Kabila’s Banyamulenge supporters occupied several prominent positions in his new government.

Originally welcomed as a liberator, Kabila lost some of his popularity soon after taking office. The Congolese were upset by the continued presence of foreign troops, as well as by some of his policies, such as banning pants and short skirts on women. In addition, Kabila faced criticism from the international community, who suspected that his troops were responsible for the disappearance and assumed massacre of thousands of Hutu refugees. Although Kabila did not deny the allegations, during 1997 and 1998 he prevented UN officials from investigating the disappearances.

Meanwhile, Kabila ousted many of his Banyamulenge (or Tutsi) supporters from office and replaced them with members of other Congolese ethnic groups, mainly from Kabila’s own home region, Shaba. This shift in ethnic allegiances accompanied a gradual deterioration in relations with Kabila’s former allies, Uganda and Tutsi-ruled Rwanda, who accused him of harboring armed rebels opposed to the Rwandan and Ugandan governments in the forested borderlands of the eastern Congo. In mid-1998, Kabila’s ousted Banyamulenge supporters, including former foreign minister Bizima Karaba, joined by former supporters of Mobutu and opposition figures such as Arthur Z’Ahidi Ngoma, mounted an armed rebellion against Kabila. The rebels accused Kabila of ethnic discrimination and autocratic misrule. The rebel forces, known as the Congolese Movement for Democracy, quickly took control of parts of the eastern Congo with the assistance of troops from Uganda and Rwanda. Troops from a number of African countries, including Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia, came to the aid of Kabila and defeated a rebel offensive on Congo’s capital, Kinshasa. Kabila was assassinated in January 2001. His son Joseph Kabila was named president soon thereafter.

The warfare ruined Congo’s chances of recovering from decades of economic and political deterioration. More ominously, the participation of other African nations in the conflict threatened to spark a broader regional conflict extending beyond the country’s borders. In 2003 the International Rescue Committee (IRC) estimated that 3.3 million people died in eastern Congo between mid-1998 and early 2001 due to violence and starvation, disease, and privation caused by the conflict.

Though Joseph Kabila succeeded in getting Rwandan troops to withdraw from Congolese territory, prompting a truce agreement in 2002, his government continued to face serious challenges. In 2003 a UN report concluded that senior officials linked to Kabila have colluded with Ugandan and Rwandan authorities in selling Congolese resources for their personal benefit; they have denied this charge. The report further indicates that the war was not driven by political goals, as stated, but by economic motives that continue to fuel instability. Kabila won a new term in office in the elections of 2005.