The Belgian Congo was created in 1885. This huge region of southern-central Africa was no orthodox colony but was, in fact, the personal property of the Belgian monarch, King Leopold II. The Belgians provided nothing other than the minimum infrastructure necessary to support the extraction of the country’s vast mineral wealth, setting a pattern which has dominated this benighted country ever since. In 1925, under a mandate from the League of Nations (the precursor of the UN), the territories of Rwanda and Urundi (now Burundi) were incorporated into the Belgian Congo. (Both subsequently became
separate countries.) After the end of World War II, the Belgian Congo was another African colony whose occupiers were concerned simply to dispose of it with minimum fuss and maximum commercial advantage. The Belgian Congo was duly granted independence, with minimal preparation, in 1960.
The first short-lived post-independence government was led by Joseph Kasavupu and Patrice Lumumba, a legendary African leader whose radical politics and close relations with the Soviet Union had raised serious concerns among Western governments. With the support of the Americans and Belgians, and exploiting the country’s myriad factional, tribal and regional disputes, the government was deposed after six months in an army coup led by Colonel Joseph Mobutu. In 1961, a civilian administration backed by Mobutu was installed under Cyrille Adoula. Four years later, Mobutu, now army Chief of Staff, took control for himself and established the regime which ruled Zaire – as the country had been renamed – for the next three decades. Under its self-styled philosophy of ‘Mobutuisme’, Zaire became a byword for gargantuan corruption, nepotism and state-sponsored larceny. In the 30 years before his demise, Mobutu Sese Seko (his adopted title) had reduced the country to penury and to the point where it barely functioned as a nation state.
From the perspective of the Cold War, however, Zaire under Mobutu was a valuable strategic ally preventing the encroachment of communism in southern and central Africa. But after the end of the Cold War, Mobutu’s close relationship with the major Western powers became more of an embarrassment than an asset. The political settlement in South Africa brought it to an end and marked the beginning of the current phase of the country’s history. It seemed almost impossible that the country’s situation could get worse after Mobutu. Unfortunately, it did.
The military campaign which finally brought down the Mobutu regime began in the remote northeastern part of the country in 1994. It was triggered by events in neighboring Rwanda where militias from the majority ethnic group, the Hutu, has been engaged in a campaign of genocide against the minority Tutsi (see
Rwanda country section for more detail). The genocide had been brought to an end by the intervention of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Tutsi-led force based in Uganda. The Hutu militia, who were largely responsible for the mass killings, had mostly fled into northeastern Zaire. The RPF pursued them, but their incursion took on a different aspect and a momentum of its own as other groups, including many long-term exiled opponents of Mobutu, coalesced around the RPF. Laurent Kabila, then a little-known Zairian opposition figure who had been based in Uganda for several decades, was adopted as leader of this newly-formed anti-Mobutu coalition. By the autumn of 1996, this disparate formation, operating as the
Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Liberation du Congo-Zaire (AFDL), had completed their takeover of the entire country. (Mobutu left for Morocco where he died shortly afterwards.) However, once in power, Kabila proved incapable either of handling the multifarious elements in his coalition or tackling the huge problems which faced the country, which was renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo.
By the middle of 1998, full-scale fighting had broken out in the northeast of the country between disenchanted former allies and forces loyal to Kabila, who appealed for support from other African countries: Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe came in on Kabila’s side; Uganda and Rwanda against him. Over the next five years, the war disintegrated into a complex set of distinct and savage conflicts pitting a variety of foreign national armies, guerrilla groups and armed factions against each other: the country’s lack of the most basic transport and communications infrastructure means that the conflict zones remain isolated from one another. Most of the participants are at least as concerned with securing access to the country’s copious mineral and other resources as with stabilizing the country, or part of it. The mineral-rich southern province of Katanga, in particular, is semi-detached from the capital, Kinshasa. As ever, it is the civilian population who have suffered the most. Thousands of refugees escaping from the fighting are scattered throughout the country, desperately searching for food and shelter from aid agencies barely able to function. Outside the mining zones, where there is still some activity, the ruined economy, compounded by lack of medical care and a high rate of HIV/AIDS, have all contributed to a humanitarian disaster whose scale has only recently become apparent. By the most conservative estimates, at least two million people have died during the last four years of conflict.
Laurent Kabila was assassinated in 2001 by one of his bodyguards; his son Joseph took over the presidency. There have been a number of attempts by the UN and the South Africans to broker a settlement. The most recent one, signed in April 2003, brought a European-led peace-keeping force into the north-eastern region where much of the fighting has taken place. The next election scheduled for 2007. However, it will be several decades at best before the Democratic Republic of Congo is able to function properly.
GovernmentA constitutional decree issued in May 1997 placed all executive and legislative powers in the hands of the President of the Republic.
EconomyWith rich agricultural land and extensive mineral and energy deposits, the Democratic Republic of Congo is potentially one of the richest countries on the African continent. However, decades of chronic neglect at the hands of the corrupt Mobutu left it as one of the poorest, with a per capita annual income of just US$150. Such plans as the Kabila governments may have had for development have been undermined by the civil war.
At least two-thirds of the population are engaged in subsistence farming: farmers produce palm oil, coffee, tea, cocoa, rubber, cotton, tropical woods, fruit, vegetables and rice. Industry runs well below capacity due to a lack of spare parts and foreign exchange with which to buy them.
The country could be one of the world’s largest producers of copper and cobalt, but production is far short of its potential; what is produced has typically been sold by the warring party in control of the mine to finance continued fighting. (In some cases, mining concessions have been handed over to a government ally in exchange for military support: Zimbabwe, which controls several copper mines in the south is the most notable example.)
The mining sector can also produce manganese, zinc, uranium and tin. There are also some oil deposits located off the short Atlantic coastline.
Manufacturing for domestic consumption dominates the industrial sector, producing textiles, cement, food and beverages, wood products and plastics.
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