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| Democratic Republic of the Congo République démocratique du Congo Repubilika ya Kôngo ya Dimokalasi Republíki ya Kongó Demokratíki Jamhuri ya Kidemokrasia ya Kongo Ditunga dia Kongu wa Mungalaata | |
|---|---|
 Flag
 Coat of arms
| |
Motto: Justice – Paix – Travail | |
 | |
| Capital | Kinshasa |
| Official languages | French Kituba Lingala Swahili Luba-Kasai |
| Dominant mode of production | Semi-feudalism |
| Government | Unitary Bourgeois Republic |
• President | Félix Tshisekedi |
• Prime Minister | Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde |
| History | |
• Kingdom of Kongo | ~1390 CE |
• Belgian colonization begins | 17 November 1879 |
• Congo Free State forms | 1 July 1885 |
• Independence from Belgium | 30 June 1960 |
• Republic of Zaire forms | 27 October 1971 |
• Bourgeois democracy established | 30 July 2006 |
| Area | |
• Total | 2,345,409 km² |
| Population | |
• 2022 estimate | 108,407,721 |
| Currency | Congolese franc |
- Not to be confused with the Republic of the Congo, a neighbouring country
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, colloquially known as Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, is a nation in Africa. It is the largest country in Central Africa, and the second largest in Africa in general. The DRC shares a border with the Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, and South Sudan.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has historically been the victim of Western imperialism and colonialism. From 1885 to 1908, the area which would be the modern DRC was under the brutal and genocidal rule of the so-called "Congo Free State", which was under the despotic absentee-control of the Belgian Leopold II.[1] In modern times, the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to suffer from economic exploitation and unequal exchange, with atleast twenty-five mining corporations, often of Anglo-American, European orgin.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is presently a member of the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, the African Union, the East African Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, the Southern African Development Community, and the Economic Community of Central African States. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is also projected to be a part of the East African Federation, should it form.[2]
Nomenclature[edit | edit source]
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, like its neighbor, the Republic of the Congo, is named after the Congo River.[3] Occasionally, the nation, along with the river itself, are archaically and informally called "Zaire".
History[edit | edit source]
Kingdom of Kongo (1390–1885)[edit | edit source]
Before European imperialism, from around the year 1390 CE, the region that would become the modern-Democratic Republic of the Congo was under the rule of a centralised monarchical state, known by modern historians as the Kingdom of Kongo. Based from the city of Mbanza (in what is now Angola),[4] the Kingdom of Kongo likely formed from a single, smaller realm, that later would form into a commonwealth of city-states, headed by a single centralized authority. The Kingdom of Kongo would reach its economic and political hight during the 16th century CE, gaining a large amount of economic wealth via its part in the, at the time, growing Transatlantic Slave Trade.
The Kingdom of Kongo would later decline, likely do to internal instability among its ruling class, and would ultimately become victim to European expansionism.[5]
Congo Free State (1885–1908)[edit | edit source]
During the late 19th to early 20th century, the area now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo was under the rule of the Congo Free State. A product of the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 (in which Africans were given little-to-no representation), the Congo Free State was effectively the personal fiefdom of Leopold II of Belgium (who never even set foot in the territory, ruling from Europe).
The Congo Free State was infamous for its genocidal acts against the native populations, and brutal exploitation of the local resources, particularly ivory, rubber, and minerals. During this period, it is estimated that many millions of men, women, and children were killed.
The Congo Free State would later be directly annexed by the Kingdom of Belgium in 1908, after a large amount of international pressure following the discovery of King Leopold's crimes.[6]
Belgian colonialism (1908–1960)[edit | edit source]
During the direct colonial governance of the Kingdom of Belgium from 1908 to 1960, many of the Leopold-era policies of repression and brutal exploitation were slowly eased, and some small developmental projects, mostly in the form of infrastructure, took place in the Belgian Congo. However, imperialism still continued in full-force during the Belgian rule, and oppressive systems of racial segregation remained in place for the remainder of the colonial administration.
The long-term economic development of the modern-day DRC was further stunted as a result of the Belgian education policy. The colonial government made use of Christian clergy (which has historically been used as an instrument to uphold the existing societal order) to maintain the white-supremacist rule. The Christian clergy failed to provide meaningful education to the people of the Belgian Congo, restricting any form of higher-education to those who were already members of the church exclusively, and greatly discouraging all other natives of the Belgian-ruled Congo to find any other form of education.
Ultimately, by the end of the Belgian administration in 1960, the extreme colonial exploitation, usage of reactionary religion, and general mismanagement resulted in there being no engineers nor physicians, and only sixteen native African university graduates out of a population of more than thirteen million.[7]
Immediate post-colonial period and the Congo Crisis (1960–1971)[edit | edit source]
Following a large increase in the activity of native separatist movements and militant organisations in the Belgian Congo, as well as massive pro-independence demonstrations in the capital city of the colony, Léopoldville (modern-day Kinshasa), the colonial government finally capitulated, holding talks with native figures and agreeing to allow the colony to be made independent and for a new state, known as the Republic of the Congo, to be formed, which would hold bourgeois-democratic elections. In June 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the country's first prime minister and called for political and economic liberation against imperialism.[8]
Almost immediately after the post-colonial bourgeois democracy was created, and after the first president of the Republic of the Congo, Joseph Kasa-Vubu was elected into his office, the newly-created republic faced a political crisis, commonly known as the Congo Crisis. During this crisis, the power of local separatist movements increased, a rival government formed, and support for revolutionary socialists grew.[9] The mineral-rich region of Katanga, whose resources were still owned by Belgium, seceded. In September 1960, the United States overthrew Lumumba, and he was assassinated in January 1961.[8]
During 1965, Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, then a Lieutenant General in the national military, as well as a fascist and hardline anti-communist, overthrew the liberal government, creating a fascist dictatorship. This coup d'etat was greatly supported by the United States of America, whose ruling class had an interest in creating a servile government which would repress communists and give the imperial core access to the country's vast natural resources.[10] In 1971, the country was renamed to the Republic of Zaire.[11]
Republic of Zaire (1971–1997)[edit | edit source]
The Republic of Zaire under Mobutu's regime, existing until 1997, was characterised by a highly dictatorial government, extreme anti-communism, and a rampant kleptocracy, with rates of bribery and embezzlement of government funds being particularly high.[12] The fascist government was also greatly supported by the Western bloc, including by United States of America,[9] the French Republic,[13] and the Kingdom of Belgium.[14][15] While most of the country lived in poverty, Mobutu became a multibillionaire.[8]
In 1977, Jimmy Carter airlifted Moroccan troops to Zaire to put down a rebellion.[8]
The fascist regime ended in the late 1990s, during the First Congo War, when after a large withdrawal of NATO support, major ethnic tensions, and foreign intervention, Mobutu's dictatorship was overthrown, and the country was remained to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with a bourgeois-democratic government being created.[16]
Congo Wars (1997–present)[edit | edit source]
Rwanda and Uganda invaded the Congo in 1996 with US support and pillaged its natural resources, including gold, diamonds, tantalum, and niobium. They installed Joseph Kabila as the puppet ruler of the Congo and displaced half a million people from the Ituri region. Rwanda began a second invasion in 2022 and has also supported the M23 rebel group.[17][18]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Adam Hochschild (1998). King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 9780395759240
- ↑ “8 April 2022
The Democratic Republic of the Congo accedes to the EAC Treaty”
"Quick Facts about EAC". eac.int. Retrieved 2022-7-23. - ↑ "Democratic Republic of the Congo". Wiktionary. Retrieved 2022-7-23.
- ↑ “The Kingdom of Kongo was a large kingdom in the western part of central Africa. The name comes from the fact that the founders of the kingdom were KiKongo speaking people, and the spelling of Congo with a C comes from the Portuguese translation. Kingdom was founded around 1390 CE through the political marriage of Nima a Nzima, of the Mpemba Kasi, and Luqueni Luansanze, of the Mbata, which cemented the alliance between the two KiKongo speaking peoples. The Kingdom would reach its peak in the mid 1600s. The Kingdom of Kongo would eventually fall to scheming nobles, feuding royal factions, and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, initiating its eventual decline.
The Kingdom was centered around the great city of Mbanza Kongo, located in what is now northern Angola, (location: 6°16′04″S 14°14′53″E), which was later renamed to São Salvador.”
"Kingdom of Kongo 1390 – 1914" (2016-5-18). South African History Online. Retrieved 2022-7-24. - ↑ John Thornton (2001). The Origins and Early History of the Kingdom of Kongo, c. 1350-1550, vol. 34. Boston University African Studies Center. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3097288 [HUB]
- ↑ “Force Publique acted simultaneously as an army of occupation and as a police force which served the interests of the trading companies. The Force had to deal with several rebellions, which were put down with horrifying savagery. In practice, the Free State of the Congo was an enormous concentration camp.
During the 1890s, and thanks to the widespread use of slaves, a more reliable transport network was built up, thus making it possible to export even more of the Congo’s natural resources. The construction of these infrastructures, all created exclusively for personal interests, resulted in the deaths of many workers of all ages. Their working days were long and hard, and required an enormous amount of physical effort. According to historical documentation, between five and 10 million people died as a result of the colonial exploitation under the rule and administration of King Leopold II and his functionaries.”
"The Free State of the Congo, a hidden history of genocide". ajuntament.barcelona.cat. Retrieved 2022-7-30. - ↑ “Perhaps most crucially, the lack of centralized education left the new nation in a stunted state of growth. Across the African continent, educated Africans had often played a key role in the independence movements and these leaders had then stepped in to govern the new nations which emerged in the 1960s. In many of these new African states, a uniform educational system had helped to promote national unity and identity---both of which were desperately needed as the colonial map had created artificially constructed nations that had numerous different and even competing ethnic groups.”
Jessica Achberger. [https://ultimatehistoryproject.com/belgian-congo.html "BELGIAN COLONIAL EDUCATION POLICY:A POOR FOUNDATION FOR STABILITY"] The Ultimate History Project. Retrieved 2022-8-14.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 William Blum (2002). Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower: 'A Concise History of United States Global Interventions, 1945 to the Present' (p. 117). [PDF] Zed Books Ltd. ISBN 9781842772201 [LG]
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 François Soudan (2021-1-13). "DRC: How the CIA got Patrice Lumumba" The Africa Report. Retrieved 2022-8-15.
- ↑ Stephen R. Weissman (2014). [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/democratic-republic-congo/2014-06-16/what-really-happened-congo "What Really Happened in Congo The CIA, the Murder of Lumumba, and the Rise of Mobutu"] Foreign Affairs. Retrieved 2022-8-15.
- ↑ “In the 1950’s, protests and riots lead to the country gaining its independence from Belgium and in 1960, Patrice Lumumba was elected prime minister. It seemed like things would finally improve for the Congolese.
However, the DRC has a huge abundance of natural resources such as copper, diamonds, cobalt, gold, uranium and oil. Lumumba’s resistance to Western powers’ attempts to continue mining lead to the West backing his opponents. In 1961 he was arrested, tortured and publicly executed. After a period of uncertainty, a man named Mobutu Sese Seko emerged as the president of DRC. Friendly to western powers, he built an extravagant life for himself with the money that came from foreign mining, including building himself palaces, collecting Mercedes-Benz and taking regular shopping sprees to Europe. When the Cold War with Russia came to an end in the 90’s, the United States and other countries became less dependent on the DRC for oil and Mobutu’s wealth drastically dwindled while he simultaneously began to face health concerns.”
Natasha Tworoski. "Democratic Republic Of Congo: A Brutal History of Conflict" PASA. Retrieved 2022-8-15. - ↑ “For 28 years, Mobutu Sese Seko has carefully and thoughtfully refined his system for transforming the public resources of Zaïre into private wealth, while using bribery, coercion and violence to thwart all movements for change. The consequences of his system, commonly known as ‘kleptocracy’ or government by theft, are well known: immiseration of the people; destruction of the nation's infrastructure; enrichment of Mobutu and his collaborators; the transformation of Zaïre into the prime staging ground for foreign intervention against other African nations. This article will focus neither on the consequences of kleptocracy nor the growing opposition which, for the past three years, has aggressively but so far unsuccessfully challenged Mobutu's rule.”
Steve Askin; Carole Collins (2007). Review of African Political Economy. 57, vol.20 (pp. 72-85). Taylor & Francis Group. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/03056249308704005 [HUB] - ↑ "France Is Again Strengthening Ties With Zaire" (1977-4-17). The New York Times. Retrieved 2022-8-17.
- ↑ "Belgium link in Lumumba death" (2001-10-16). BCC. Retrieved 2022-8-17.
- ↑ Eduard Bustin (1987). The Foreign Policy of the Republic of Zaire, vol. 489. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716287489001006 [HUB]
- ↑ “n the 1970s, during the ruinous 30-year dictatorship of General Mobutu, periodic rebellions required the hasty insertion once again of Belgian and French paratroops to save European lives. From the mid-1990s the country split again, becoming the battleground for the largest African war in history, as armies and rebel groups from Rwanda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Namibia and other countries crossed into the Congo to support one side or the other, or simply to loot the rich resources. Major operations ended – or paused – in 2002, but the old hatreds and constant lure of the Congo's natural resources continue to boil over into periodic outbreaks.”
Peter Abbott (2014). Modern African Wars (4): The Congo 1960–2002. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781782000778 - ↑ Maurice Carney (2022-06-17). "A Quarter Century of a Western-backed War of Aggression Against the Congolese People" Black Agenda Report. Archived from the original on 2022-08-22. Retrieved 2022-09-08.
- ↑ Jeremy Kuzmarov (2022-05-19). "International Court of Justice Ruled that Uganda Must Pay $325 Million in Reparations to the Democratic Republic of Congo—But What About U.S. and UK?" CovertAction Magazine. Archived from the original on 2022-08-22. Retrieved 2022-12-24.