State of central Africa imitated in the west by the Republic of Congo, in the south by Angola and Zambia, in the east by Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, in north by Sudan and Central Africa, in south-west by the Atlantic Ocean.
Before being touched by the great migration of the people of Bantu language, the country was initially inhabited by Pygmies. The mixing of populations which resulted from these movements explains the great diversity of the people and the languages of the Democratic republic of Congo, also called “Congo-Kinshasa”.
Traditional kingdoms
The official formations were very numerous before colonization. These kingdoms showed common characteristics: the succession with the throne was done rather in matrilinear descent and gave place to an election or a competition of the competitors, which degenerated sometimes into fratricidal quarrels. The writings of the European travellers us revealed the ostentation of the court of the sovereigns and the rigor of the ceremonial.
Such kingdoms based their richness on a very active trade. In the forest areas, the rivers allowed exchanges by relay: the products of the coast passed with hand in hand and went up on hundreds, even thousands of kilometers; those of the interior carried out the opposite way.
From the XVI E century, the imported products of Europe and especially of America were established inside the continent: the culture of the manioc, the tobacco, corn developed in most of central Africa. In the zones of savanna, the trade was done, by caravans, with the west then with the east of the continent. From the XVI E century, the draft of the slaves devastated the worldwide, involving fatal raids, ceaseless wars between tribes and kingdoms, and finally the dislocation of these official systems.
After 1860, the Atlantic draft disappeared but it was relayed by the Eastern and southern draft, under the impulse of the Swahili. This Arab draft, which continued until the end of the XIX E century, caused migrations of populations (Lubas) which explain the presence of Moslem minorities in the east of the country.
The kingdom of Kongo
The oldest State known in the area is the kingdom of Kongo, whose colonial division later on divided the populations between the States of the Democratic republic of Congo, of the Republic of Congo and Angola.
The kingdom kouba was constituted in Western Kasaï and Lulua. Its origins would go up, they also, to the XV E century, but it took really its rise only to the XVII E century, under the reign of Chamba Bolongongo. This “modernistic” sovereign encouraged the new cultures and spread the weaving of the raffia.
At the end of the XVII E century, Lubas invaded the kingdom kouba. This one continued nevertheless until its tender by the Belgians in 1904. The kingdom luba would have been founded in Katanga by Kongolo, come from the east to the XVI E century. At the end of the XVII E century, one of its successors, Kumwinbu Ngombé, extended the territory to the lake Tanganyika. The history of the kingdom was characterized by intense quarrels of being able and fratricidal fights which did not enable him to find stability.
To the XIX E century, it became the prey of its neighbors (Chokwé, Tétéla, Bayéké). On arrival of the Belgians, in 1892, his territory was limited to a small enclave with the source of Lomani. The kingdom lunda would have been born, to the XVI E century, of the union of various chefferies located in the south-west of Katanga.
Around 1660, the sovereign Mwata Yamvo (of which the name became the dynastic title) increases the territory until Kasaï and in the Zambezi. At the XVIIIe century, the kingdom still extended to the east and the south. In 1885, Chokwés invaded is kingdom. They were driven out by it in 1887 by two brothers, Mushiri and Kawelé, during the “war of the wood arrow”.
Other kingdoms had been established in savannas of the North-East among the populations zandés and mangbetus. The ethnic small groups disseminated in the forest areas of the basin, gathered under the name of Mongos, as for them, were not politically organized.
The revival of the XIXe century
To the XIX E century, new kingdoms were constituted under the leadership of “commercial princes”. Msiri, originating in Tanganyika, grows rich in the trade by the ivory, copper and the slaves, in Katanga, around 1850. Then he undertook to cut a true empire, named Garangazé. Around 1880, its power extended on all the south from the current Democratic republic of Congo.
Merchant originating in Zanzibar, Tippoo-Tip had a similar route, west of lake Tanganyika, in the years 1860. Its State became solid and prosperous thanks to the trade but also with the creation of large plantations and a driving highway network towards the coast. Other States were constituted at the same time: the zandé kingdom, founded at the end of the XVIII E century or the beginning of the XIX E on the plate of Oubangui and until Uélé; the kingdom mangbetu, founded by Nabiembali in 1815, in the north-eastern point of the current Democratic republic of Congo.
The period précoloniale
In 1482, the Portuguese who recognized the mouth of the Congo river revealed in Europe the existence of a “kingdom of Kongo”. During centuries, the Portuguese limited their establishment to the littoral area, in Angola. True explorations began only at the end of the XVIII E century, and it is only in years 1870 that Europeans, with at the head sir Henry Morton Stanley, the first to have traversed the whole of the course of the Congo river, raised the veil on the terrae incognitae of the black continent.
The king of the Belgians, Léopold II, which dreamed of an empire in Africa, created in 1876 the International association of Congo (AIC), name adopted in 1883, and charged Stanley with mission. To the beginning of the year 1880, this one entered in competition with Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza (with the service of France).
In 1881, the large British explorer went up the Congo river on his left bank and establishes the domination of the AIC there, while melting, in honor of king of the Belgians, Léopoldville, near the village of fishermen of Kinshasa. In 1885 was created by the European powers joined together with the conference of Berlin the “State independent of Congo” (EIC), personal property of the king of the Belgians, Léopold II.
Congo léopoldien
Léopold II made subdue with brutality many resistances. Under the pretext of fight against the draft of the slaves, the colonizers broke the States of the commercial princes. But resistances continued a long time. Tétélas were always unconquered in 1907.
As for Kasongo Niembe, sovereign of the kingdom luba, it remained imperceptible until 1917. Léopold II entrusted to companies with charter the responsibility to exploit the richnesses of the colony: rubber and ivory, mainly. A decree of 1889 establishes that the “vacant” grounds belonged of right to the State: in a saving of hunting, gathering and agricultural nomadism (culture on denshering), this system withdrew with the people their sources of revenue.
Whole populations were thus forced to work on behalf of the EIC. The tax, the forced labor, the ill-treatments, the drudgeries, the repression often of an inhuman brutality, the exactions made by the companies were worth at this period of the history of the Democratic republic of Congo the name of “time of the exterminations”.
In 1888, Léopold II created a Police charged to maintain the order. The convention signed by the EIC and the Holy See in Rome, in 1906, granted to the missionaries ground concessions which enabled them to live and, often, to grow rich.
Belgian colonization
In 1908, Léopold II, discredited by the scandals raised in Belgium by the revelation of the atrocities made under its authority by the colonial companies, was constrained to give up the EIC in Belgium.
With Belgian Congo, the colonial exploitation, always dominated by large agricultural or mining companies, changed nature. The Belgians, getting busy to erase the system léopoldien, restored the freedom of trade in 1910 and removed the monopoly of rubber and the ivory. The exploitation of the mining resources made new great strides with companies like the UMHK (mining Union of Haut-Katanga) and the General society of Belgium.
During the First World War, the violation of Belgian neutrality (in Europe), then the incursions of the Germans into Kivu and west of Tanganyika precipitated the Belgians in the conflict. They mobilized 18 ' 000 soldiers, but especially 200 ' 000 carriers, which took part in the conquest of German Cameroun (Kamerun), assisted the British of Rhodesia battling against the German forces of Tanganyika, and invaded Rwanda and Burundi, then Tanganyika.
Characterized by a caricatural paternalism, not excluding a wild repression from any protest movement, the colonial exploitation continued after the conflict. The common law was codified and the reinforced Administration. The populations were divided into ethnos groups, the colony divided into provinces, districts and territories or sectors. An intense urbanization involved the creation of centers extracoutumiers in the cities, entrusted to artificial chefferies. Belgian colonization was also marked by racial discrimination. The teaching, almost entirely entrusted to religious institutes, was limited to the primary education, according to the proverb into force “No elite, not of troubles!”. Only a negligible category of “advanced” had some privileges.
The colony profited from a not very important industrialization but which, at the time of independence (1960), gave him a certain advance on its neighbors: soap factories, margarineries, textile industries, factories of shoes, breweries, brickyards… It also had 30 hydroelectric stations, of a railway network (set up as from 1898), of an highway network and three international aerodromes.
During the Second world war, the colony took part in the engagements in Ethiopia. Certain soldiers were then sent in the Far East. In Belgian Congo, the days of drudgery increased to intensify the production of ore, rubber and palm oil.
Between 1945 and 1960, Belgian Congo thus knew a period of real economic development. More than 100 ' 000 Europeans (Belgian, Portuguese, Greek) the administration and the great sectors of the economy managed. After the war, the Belgians remained a long time hostile with the evolution of their colonies. In 1956, professor Van Bilsen published a thirty years Plan for the emancipation of Belgian Africa. The book made scandal. However, since 1946, some trade unions were authorized, but under the narrow monitoring of the Administration.
Towards independence
Freedom of expression being non-existent, the opposition took a religious turn a long time, under the aegis of syncretic Eglises: that of Simon Kimbangu, as from 1921, that of Kitawala (Watchtower), as from 1923, among others. But the paternalism which governed the relationship between Européens and Congolese did not resist the emancipation of the indigenous populations.
In the years 1950, the opposition was politicized. In 1956 the Proclamation of African Conscience appeared, written by a group of “advanced” which claimed independence. The example of the French colonies which, such Senegal and, more close, Gabon, reached sovereignty in 1960, quickly involved Belgian Congo in the gust of wind of an independence which had not been prepared.
In 1957, Abako (Association of Bakongos), first political party created in Congo, gained the municipal elections of Léopoldville. A decisive fact occurred on on January 4th, 1959: the inhabitants of the capital started a riot. Suddenly conscious of inevitable, the Belgians precipitated the decolonization. On January 20th, 1960, a round table meets in Brussels to organize independence. After skimped on negotiations, independence was fixed on June 30th, 1960.
Disorders of independence
Joseph Kasavubu became president. A few days later, Congo-Léopoldville (famous shortly after Congo-Kinshasa) was inserted in the disorder, with the mutiny of the Police; in July, under the control of Tschombé Brace, the rich mine field of Katanga made secession.
Thus one chaotic period started, setting ablaze more half of the territory, in particular Kwilu, Kivu and the town of Kisangani. On September 14th, 1960, benefitting from the personal competitions which opposed the chief of the government, Patrice Lumumba, and it chair Republic, Joseph Kasavubu, colonel Mobutu “neutralized” the two men.
Patrice Lumumba, one of the great figures of African nationalism, become Prime Minister in 1960, was imprisoned, then, after atrociously being tortured, delivered to the new Prime Minister, the leader katangais Moïse Tschombé. The Congolese crisis then took an international dimension, Congo ex-Belgian becoming even the first ground of intervention of the U.N. peace-keeping force of UNO in Africa (those reflect fine with the secession katangaise in 1963).
In 1963, disciples of Lumumba launched a revolutionary war in Kwilu; Laurent-Désiré Kabila appeared among them. The attempts at secession and the disorders in all kinds multiplied. After the forces of UNO, the Belgians, the USSR and the United States intervened.
From Zaire de Mobutu in democratic Congo of Kabila
In October 1965, Tschombé was in its isolated and constrained turn with the exile; then Mobutu got rid of Kasavubu: on November 24th, 1965, it seized the power by a coup d'etat and proclaimed president of the Republic of Congo. The Constitution was supendue, the dissolved Parliament.
On June 30th, 1966, the capital, Léopoldville, changed name to become Kinshasa; one year later, Mobutu instituted a sole party, the MPR (Popular movement of the revolution), support of its despotic mode. On October 27th, 1971, the Republic of Congo changed in its turn of name to become the Republic of Zaire. Lastly, in 1972, the policy of the “authenticity” brought the Africanization of all the names of European origin (toponyms and civil statue): giving the example, Mobutu gratifia itself of the name of Sese Seko Kuku Ngebendu wa za Banga (“Intrepid warrior terror of the leopards”).
This “zairisation” led, in 1974 with the nationalization of the large foreign mining companies which exploited the immense richnesses of the country (copper, cobalt, manganese, zinc, gold, money, diamonds, uranium…). But this policy did not benefit the miséreuse mass from the Zaireans. Mobutism, largely founded on the nepotism, generalized corruption and the diversion of the national wealths to the profit them close to the power (there resided what one called “the Zairean evil”), led little by little to a decomposition of the State. In 1977-1978, a new attempt at secession of Shaba (new name of Katanga) could be stopped only by one intervention of the forces Moroccan and French, called by Mobutu.
But, with the end of the cold war, Zaire ceased being a bastion anticommunist. After the departure of the cuban soldiers of Angola, the Americans left in their turn military bases which they used to support the UNITA (National union for the total independence of Angola). In same time, the ores of Shaba, for control of which French and Belgian had militarily intervened in 1978 in Kolwezi, lost of their strategic importance. The political crisis burst at the great day in 1990.
Like all the African countries, Zaire was seized by the claims of freedom and democracy which appeared after the collapse of the communist bloc. A National conference gave to the lifeblood of the country the opportunity to be expressed, and the multi-party system had to be restored. A few days later, the army killed more than 500 students who expressed in Lubumbashi.
A new National conference, in 1991, brought the creation of the Sacred union of the opposition and Mobutu had to appoint Prime Minister the chief of the opposition, Etienne Tshisekedi; but the confrontation between the opposition, carried out by Tshisekedi, and the Head of State, who was based on the army and his Praetorian guard, led to a political paralysis of the country; Tshisekedi, put in impossibility of controlling, was dismissed in 1993.
Vis-a-vis the decomposition of the State and with the collapse of the currency, the Zairean people tried to survive by deploying boundless ingenuity. The increasing insecurity caused the departure of the majority of Europeans who still resided at Zaire (September 1990).
The disorders, moreover, awoke a latent tribalism. Shaba was the principal theater of ethnic violences: the autochtones lundas drove out some 400 000 Lubas originating in Kasaï, area where they tried to be reinstalled. The north of Kivu knew to him also its batch of tribal massacres.
On November 14th, 1992, a national conference adopted an expect text that Zaire was to transform itself into a Federal republic of Congo. This text was to be subjected to referendum in 1997 in theory. But the events were going to precipitate. In 1994, the new chief of the government, Leon Kengo wa Dondo, had to face the by-effects of the disorders of Rwanda: in July 1994, a million Hutus fleeing the massacres which proceeded in Rwanda (from now on controlled by of Tutsis) had found refuge in the east of Zaire, where they wandered under abominable sanitary arrangements.
In October 1996, while after three decades of being able, Mobutu, being meanwhile proclaimed marshal, refused to withdraw political scene, an armed uprising massively supported by Rwanda and Uganda burst in the South-Kivu. Composed as a majority of Banyamulenges (Tutsis of Rwandan origin installed in the east of Zaire), supported by the powers in place in Rwanda and Uganda, the troops of the Alliance of the democratic forces of Congo-Zaire (AFDL) directed by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, attacked the refugee camps (Hutu) Rwandan, then seized gradually all the big cities of the East of the country. The AFDL progressed then towards north. Deprived of balance and badly equipped, the Zairean army opposed only one low resistance to him and was devoted to plunderings.
Entered on on May 17th, 1997 with Kinshasa, Kabila proclaimed the Head of State, whom it renamed Democratic republic of Congo, and was made allot the “supreme powers” as regards defense, of legislature and executive. In February 1998, it made stop the chief of the opposition, Etienne Tshisekedi, then assigned it with residence in its native village of Kabeya-Kamwanga (Kasaï Eastern). While being committed at UNO (on on March 26th) organizing pluralist elections in 1999, it constituted a new government in which it cumulated the functions of Prime Minister, Minister for the Armies and Home secretary.
Having become aware of the danger represented at the borders of Congo by governments “tutsis” in Uganda and in Rwanda, and by the armies banyamulenges present at Kasaï, Kabila, surrounded by a political personnel mainly resulting from his ethnos group (Luba, or Baluba, in Katanga and Kasaï), for which it had held the most lucrative employment, was turned over then against Tutsis which had helped it to reverse Mobutu.
In August 1998, in front of the rebellion of Kasaï, supported by Rwanda and Uganda, Kabila had the safeguard of its power only with the intervention of troops sent by the governments of Angola and Zimbabwe.
On April 18th, 1999, whereas the country engaged in a civil war which seemed without exit, president Kabila signed with the Ugandan president, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, an agreement of cease-fire, envisaging the deployment of a force of African peace in DRC and the withdrawal of the foreign troops who were there since 1998. This agreement was ratified, the following day, by the signature of a pact of peace with Chad, Uganda and Erythrée.
On August 31st, the leaders of the Congolese Gathering for democracy (RCD), main movement of the rebellion against the mode of Laurent-Désiré Kabila, signed in Lusaka, in Zambia, the peace agreement concluded on on July 10th, by the six States implied militarily in the conflict as a Democratic republic of Congo. However, the first six-month period 2000 was marked by a resumption of the combat, which caused a new exodus of the populations and increased the number of victims of the civil war on all fronts Congolese.