The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is located in central sub-Saharan Africa, bordered by (clockwise from the southwest) Angola, the South Atlantic Ocean, the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania across Lake Tanganyika, and Zambia.
MAP OF CONGO
The president, Joseph-Desire Mobutu, changed the country’s name to Zaire in 1971 (and changed his name to Mobutu Sese Seko). Upon overthrowing Mobutu in 1997, Laurent Desire Kabila changed the name back to Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is slowly recovering from a conflict known as Africa’s first world war, which led to the loss of some five million lives between 1994 and 2003, but many eastern areas are still plagued by violence as various rebel groups continue to operate there.
Poverty has worsened in the Republic of Congo since the 1980s and half the country’s people now live below the poverty line. This average, however, masks wide geographic and economic inequalities. Most of the country’s poor people (64.8 per cent) live in rural areas and women are among the hardest hit by poverty.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is potentially one of the richest countries on earth, but colonialism, slavery and corruption have turned it into one of the poorest, writes historian Dan Snow. The world’s bloodiest conflict since World War II is still rumbling on today.
TYPES OF MINERALS FROM CONGO
The Congo Crisis was a period of political upheaval and conflict in the Republic of the Congo (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo)[c] between 1960 and 1965. The crisis began almost immediately after the Congo became independent from Belgium and ended, unofficially, with the entire country under the rule of Joseph-Desire Mobutu. Constituting a series of civil wars, the Congo Crisis was also a proxy conflict in the Cold War, in which the Soviet Union and United States supported opposing factions. Around 100,000 people are believed to have been killed during the crisis.
A nationalist movement in the Belgian Congo demanded the end of colonial rule: this led to the country’s independence on 30 June 1960. Minimal preparations had been made and many issues, such as federalism and ethnic nationalism, remained unresolved. In the first week of July, a mutiny broke out in the army and violence erupted between black and white civilians. Belgium sent troops to protect fleeing whites. Katanga and South Kasai seceded with Belgian support. Amid continuing unrest and violence, the United Nations deployed peacekeepers, but UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld refused to use these troops to help the central government in Leopoldville fight the secessionists. Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, the charismatic leader of the largest nationalist faction, reacted by calling for assistance from the Soviet Union, which promptly sent military advisors and other support.
The involvement of the Soviets split the Congolese government and led to an impasse between Lumumba and President Joseph Kasa-Vubu. Mobutu, in command of the army, broke this deadlock with a coup d’état, expelled the Soviet advisors and established a new government effectively under his own control. Lumumba was taken captive and subsequently executed in 1961. A rival government of the “Free Republic of the Congo” was founded in the eastern city of Stanleyville by Lumumba supporters led by Antoine Gizenga. It gained Soviet support but was crushed in early 1962. Meanwhile, the UN took a more aggressive stance towards the secessionists after Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash in late 1961. Supported by UN troops, Léopoldville defeated secessionist movements in Katanga and South Kasai by the start of 1963.
With Katanga and South Kasai back under the government’s control, a reconciliatory compromise constitution was adopted and the exiled Katangese leader, Moïse Tshombe, was recalled to head an interim administration while fresh elections were organised. Before these could be held, however, Maoist-inspired militants calling themselves the “Simbas” rose up in the east of the country. The Simbas took control of a significant amount of territory and proclaimed a communist “People’s Republic of the Congo” in Stanleyville. Government forces gradually retook territory and, in November 1964, Belgium and the United States intervened militarily in Stanleyville to recover hostages from Simba captivity. The Simbas were defeated and collapsed soon after. Following the elections in March 1965, a new political stalemate developed between Tshombe and Kasa-Vubu, forcing the government into near-paralysis. Mobutu mounted a second coup d’état in November 1965, now taking personal control. Under Mobutu’s rule, the Congo (renamed Zaire in 1971) was transformed into a dictatorship which would endure until his deposition in 1997.
Colonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century. King Leopold II of Belgium, frustrated by Belgium’s lack of international power and prestige, attempted to persuade the Belgian government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexplored Congo Basin.
The First Congo War. In 1996 Rwanda and Uganda invaded the eastern DRC in an effort to root out the remaining perpetrators of the genocide. A coalition comprised of the Ugandan and Rwandan armies, along with Congolese opposition leader Laurent Desire Kabila, eventually defeated dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
The 23 poorest countries in the world. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ranks in as the poorest country in the world based on its GDP per capita over the 2009-2013 periods.
By 2008, the war and its aftermath had caused 5.4 million deaths, principally through disease and starvation, making the Second Congo War the deadliest conflict worldwide since World War II.
The majority of deaths were resulted from preventable disease rather than directly from war violence. Malaria, diarrheal, respiratory infections and malnutrition topped the list, as a result of health services either being cut off because of the war or reduced because of limited access.
The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has certainly had devastating economic consequences for Congo itself, but it has also affected the whole of the central Africa region and even some countries not bordering on Congo, notably intervening Zimbabwe and Namibia. There can be no doubt that the economic potential of the entire African continent has been indirectly muted by the war’s huge disruptive impact. At the same time, of course, narrow constituencies of individuals including smugglers, arms dealers, and corrupt military officials have profited handsomely from the war. Poverty has worsened in the Republic of Congo since the 1980s and half the country’s people now live below the poverty line. This average, however, masks wide geographic and economic inequalities. Most
of the country’s poor people (64.8 per cent) live in rural areas and women are among the hardest hit by poverty.
The Second Congo War (also known as the Great War of Africa or the Great African War, and sometimes referred to as the African World War) began in August 1998 in the congo little more than a year after the first congo war and involved some of the same issues. The war officially ended in July 2003, when the CONGO took power. Although a peace agreement was signed in 2002, violence continued in many regions of the country, especially in the east. Hostilities have continued since the ongoing lords in residance army in surgery and the kivu and ituli conflict.
The war in the DRC began in 1993 in Walikale, Masisi and Bwito/Rutshuru in Northern Kivu. The conflict, also known as the ‘Masisi war’, took a new turn in 1996, with the start of the Tutsi-led uprising in Kivu, the so-called ‘First Banyamulenge Rebellion’. This first wave of the Tutsi rebellion, which began simultaneously at the Congo-Uganda borders in Rutshuru (Northern Kivu) and the Congo-Burundi borders in Uvira (Southern Kivu), attracted the attention of the international community early on. It was referred to in the media and in official discourses, not as the war in Kivu, but as ‘the Eastern Congo crisis’. Then, in 1999, when the second wave expanded to Ituri, in the Northeast, the international community’s interest in the Banyamulenge Rebellion dwindled, as the focus shifted to the conflict in Ituri, which for many people was synonymous with the Congo war. Despite the particularities of the two seats of the Congo war, that is Kivu and Ituri, they do have certain common characteristics, which can be traced back to the end of the nineteenth century.
When Kabila gained control of the capital in May 1997, he faced substantial obstacles to governing the country, which he renamed the Democratic republic of congo(DRC) from Zaire . Beyond political jostling among various groups to gain power and an enormous external debt, his foreign backers proved unwilling to leave when asked. The conspicuous Rwandan presence in the capital also rankled many Congolese, who were beginning to see Kabila as a pawn of foreign powers.
Tensions reached new heights on 14 July 1998, when Kabila dismissed his Rwandan chief of staff,James kabarebe, and replaced him with a native Congolese, Celestin Kifwa. Although the move chilled what was already a troubled relationship with Rwanda, Kabila softened the blow by making Kabarebe the military advisor to his successor.
MAHANYU NEWS 