Democratic Republic of Congo History

Democratic Republic of Congo - National Flag

Democratic Republic of the Congo - National Flag, The flag, officially reinstated in 1997, was originally hoisted at independence in 1960. The flag of the flag is King Leopold of Belgium's flag for the "Association Internationale du Congo" flag in 1877. It was blue with a yellow star in the middle. The six stars in the vertical line added to independence stand for the unity of the country. All seven stars are said to symbolize hope, the yellow color of prosperity.

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Democratic Republic of Congo History

Democratic Republic of Congo history, Up to a million-year-old traces of people have been found in several places in the country, including at Lake Albert. The area was inhabited by pygmies as Bantu people from around the birth of Christ immigrated from the north. From 1400-t. several great bantu-language realms emerged; in 1482 the Portuguese Diogo Cão was the first European to reach the mouth of the Congo River and found the Kingdom here, and later explorers found several kingdoms in the interior of the country. The Lund kingdom and the Lubar kingdom.

The European voyages of discovery became the beginning of an extensive exploitation of the area, not least by Portuguese and Dutch slave traders. The Delta of the Congo River became a center for slave exports. Henry Morton Stanley explored the area of ​​Belgium's King Leopold II, and in 1885, under the name of the Congo Free State, it was recognized as the king's personal estate. Among other things. the rubber production, which was now greatly expanded, came about through the use of forced laborers and with dire consequences for Congo's people. Leopold was internationally condemned and in 1908 had to hand over the area to the Belgian state. Under the name of Belgian Congoit became a colony and copper mining in Katanga now became Belgium's main economic interest in the Congo. The most serious assaults ceased, but the regime remained essentially unchanged until the 1950's. The educational system was left to Catholic missionaries, and the Congolese had no influence on the colony administration. Yet, eventually, an educated native elite emerged, and from this came the cultural and nationalist leaders, who in the 1950's formed the first political parties and supported the demand for independence.

In 1958, Patrice Lumumba formed the Mouvement national congolais (MNC), which received wide support in four of the colony's six provinces. Other independence movements were either ethnically or regionally based. An uprising in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) in 1959 accelerated independence, and on June 30, 1960, the Republic of Congo was proclaimed with Joseph Kasavubu as president and Lumumba as prime minister. Politically, however, the country was divided; a few days after independence, the army revolted and the Belgians fled the country. The situation became more chaotic as the copper-rich province of Katanga (Shaba), under the leadership of Moïse Tshombe and with the support of Belgian mining companies, at the same time became detachedThe Congo crisis was a reality. Belgium's military interference prompted Lumumba to call on the UN for help, and 10,000 UN troops were dispatched to the country.

UN uncertainty and the split between Kasavubu and Lumumba, which also sought Soviet support, prompted the army in September to conduct a coup under the leadership of Chief of Defense Mobuto. Kasavubu was reinstated while Lumumba fled. The military later captured him and the following year he was assassinated in Katanga. However, the crisis continued; it was not until 1963 that the UN troops had defeated Katanga's forces. The following year, the UN left the country and Tshombe became prime minister, but it was not until 1965 that the government gained control of the entire country.

Divorce between Tshombe and President Kasavubu gave Mobuto the opportunity to carry out yet another military coup with US and Belgian support, but this time he retained power and initiated a long-standing dictatorship. He launched a comprehensive Africanization campaign, replacing European names with African ones; Among other things, Congo was renamed Zaire in 1971. A nationalization campaign that year had catastrophic consequences for the country's economy, which along with military defeat to the MPLA regimein Angola and rebel forces in Katanga weakened the dictatorship. Mobuto therefore became heavily dependent on the support he received from especially France, Belgium and the USA despite the severe human rights abuses of the regime. Corruption and bad administration deepened the economic crisis; but at the same time as the impoverishment of the population, Mobuto built up a huge personal wealth with public funds.

Following pressure, Mobuto began a democratization process in 1990. Opposition parties were allowed, but the pursuit of political opponents continued and the promised elections were never held. Mobuto became increasingly unpopular, and especially in the eastern part of the country, the unrest grew. The clashes here were in particular between government- supported Hutu groups and Tutsis, supported by Uganda and Rwanda, first and foremost. In 1996, a number of East Zaire's rebel groups united in the AFDL movement with the Tutsi group banyamulenge as the most powerful. With the support of Rwanda and Uganda, the AFDL quickly gained control of the eastern part of the country, and after astonishing rapid progress, the rebel forces were able to conquer Kinshasa in May 1997. The debilitated Mobuto went into exile and the AFDL leaderLaurent Kabila, who for years led a minor rebel movement in the Katanga area, was inaugurated as new president.

Kabila renamed Zaire to the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, the change of power did not bring the Republic closer to peace, and the human rights situation did not improve. When, in August 1998, Kabila decided to throw the Rwandan troops who had helped him to power out of the country, new conflicts erupted on the one hand with eastern rebel movements strongly supported by Rwandan and Ugandan troops and on the other the Congolese army supported by Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia. After increasingly intense disputes, often involving control of the Democratic Republic of Congo's rich natural resources, all parties involved signed international pressure on the Lusaka Agreement in July 1999. Despite mediation efforts by the United Nations and South Africa in particular, the agreement's provisions on the withdrawal of foreign troops were never signed. carried out. The international and complicated nature of the conflict has led to the designation "Africa's First World War". When Kabila was killed in an attack in January 2001, the power passed to his sonJoseph Kabila. With the Security Council's intervention, a new agreement was concluded, aimed in particular at securing the withdrawal of foreign troops, but despite some progress, the unrest continued. It is estimated that the civil war has cost about 6 million. people life.

In 2012, a rebel movement called itself the M23 and supported by Rwanda, the city of Goma; the goal is to remove Kabila from the post. Later that year, however, they surrendered the city to UN forces and withdrew from the city.