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Congo, Democratic Republic of
the
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National Name: Republique
Democratique du Congo
President: Joseph Kabila (2001)
Prime Minister: Antoine Gizenga
(2006)
Current government officials
Land area: 875,520 sq mi (2,267,599 sq km);
total area: 905,568 sq mi (2,345,410 sq km)
Population (2008 est.): 68,008,922
(growth rate: 3.3%); birth rate: 42.5/1000; infant mortality rate:
64.0/1000; life expectancy: 57.6; density per sq km: 30
Capital and largest city (2003 est.):
Kinshasa, 6,541,300
Other large cities: Lubumbashi,
1,105,900; Mbuji-Mayi, 938,000; Kolwezi, 832,400; Kisangani,
523,000
Monetary unit: Congolese franc
Languages:
French (official), Lingala, Kingwana, Kikongo,
Tshiluba
Ethnicity/race:
With over 200 African ethnic groups, the
majority are Bantu; the four largest tribes—Mongo, Luba, Kongo
(all Bantu), and the Mangbetu-Azande (Hamitic)—make up about
45% of the population
National Holiday:
Independence Day, June 30
Religions:
Roman Catholic 50%, Protestant 20%,
Kimbanguist 10%, Islam 10%; other syncretic and indigenous 10%
Literacy rate: 67.2% (2006 est.)
Economic summary: GDP/PPP (2007
est.): $18.84 billion; per capita $300. Real growth rate:
6.3%. Inflation: 16.7% (2006 est.). Unemployment: n.a.
Arable land: 3%. Agriculture: coffee, sugar, palm oil,
rubber, tea, quinine, cassava (tapioca), palm oil, bananas, root
crops, corn, fruits; wood products. Labor force: n.a.
Industries: mining (diamonds, copper, zinc), mineral
processing, consumer products (including textiles, footwear,
cigarettes, processed foods and beverages), cement, commercial ship
repair. Natural resources: cobalt, copper, cadmium,
petroleum, industrial and gem diamonds, gold, silver, zinc,
manganese, tin, germanium, uranium, radium, bauxite, iron ore, coal,
hydropower, timber. Exports: $1.108 billion f.o.b. (2004
est.): diamonds, copper, crude oil, coffee, cobalt. Imports:
$1.319 billion f.o.b. (2004 est.): foodstuffs, mining and other
machinery, transport equipment, fuels. Major trading
partners: Belgium, Finland, U.S., China, South Africa, France,
Zambia, Kenya, Germany (2004).
Communications: Telephones: main lines
in use: 10,600 (2005); mobile cellular: 2.75 million (2005).
Radio broadcast stations: AM 3, FM 11, shortwave 2 (2001).
Television broadcast stations: 4 (2001). Internet
hosts: 1,778 (2006). Internet users: 140,600 (2005).
Transportation: Railways: total: 5,138
km (2005). Highways: total: 153,497 km; paved: 2,794 km;
unpaved: 150,703 km (2004). Waterways: 15,000 km (navigation
on the Congo curtailed by fighting) (2004). Ports and
harbors: Banana, Boma, Bukavu, Bumba, Goma, Kalemie, Kindu,
Kinshasa, Kisangani, Matadi, Mbandaka. Airports: 234 (2006
est.).
International disputes: heads of the
Great Lakes states and UN pledge to end conflict but unchecked
tribal, rebel, and militia fighting continues unabated in the
northeastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, drawing
in the neighboring states of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda; the UN
Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC)
has maintained over 14,000 peacekeepers in the region since 1999;
thousands of Ituri refugees from the Congo continue to flee the
fighting primarily into Uganda; 90,000 Angolan refugees were
repatriated by 2004 with the remainder in the Democratic Republic of
the Congo expected to return in 2005; in 2005, DROC and Rwanda
established a border verification mechanism to address accusations
of Rwandan military supporting Congolese rebels and the DROC
providing rebel Rwandan “Interhamwe” forces the means
and bases to attack Rwandan forces; the location of the boundary in
the broad Congo River with the Republic of the Congo is indefinite
except in the Pool Malebo/Stanley Pool area.
Major sources and definitions
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Geography
The Congo, in west-central Africa, is bordered
by the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, the Sudan, Uganda,
Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, and the Atlantic Ocean. It is
one-quarter the size of the U.S. The principal rivers are the Ubangi and
Bomu in the north and the Congo in the west, which flows into the
Atlantic. The entire length of Lake Tanganyika lies along the eastern
border with Tanzania and Burundi.
Government
Transitional government.
History
Formerly the Belgian Congo, this territory was
inhabited by ancient Negrito peoples (Pygmies), who were pushed into the
mountains by Bantu and Nilotic invaders. The American correspondent Henry
M. Stanley navigated the Congo River in 1877 and opened the interior to
exploration. Commissioned by King Leopold II of the Belgians, Stanley made
treaties with native chiefs that enabled the king to obtain personal title
to the territory at the Berlin Conference of 1885.
Leopold accumulated a vast personal fortune from
ivory and rubber through Congolese slave labor; 10 million people are
estimated to have died from forced labor, starvation, and outright
extermination during Leopold's colonial rule. His brutal exploitation of
the Congo eventually became an international cause célèbre,
prompting Belgium to take over administration of the Congo, which remained
a colony until agitation for independence forced Brussels to grant freedom
on June 30, 1960. In elections that month, two prominent nationalists won:
Patrice Lumumba of the leftist Mouvement National Congolais became prime
minister and Joseph Kasavubu of the ABAKO Party became head of state. But
within weeks of independence, the Katanga Province, led by Moise Tshombe,
seceded from the new republic, and another mining province, South Kasai,
followed. Belgium sent paratroopers to quell the civil war, and with
Kasavubu and Lumumba of the national government in conflict, the United
Nations flew in a peacekeeping force.
Kasavubu staged an army coup in 1960 and handed
Lumumba over to the Katangan forces. A UN investigating commission found
that Lumumba had been killed by a Belgian mercenary in the presence of
Tshombe, who was then the president of Katanga. U.S. and Belgian
involvement in the assassination have been alleged. In a possibly related
development, Dag Hammarskjold, UN secretary-general, died in a plane crash
en route to a peace conference with Tshombe on Sept. 17, 1961.
Tshombe rejected a national reconciliation plan
submitted by the UN in 1962. Tshombe's troops fired on the UN force in
December, and in the ensuing conflict Tshombe capitulated on Jan. 14,
1963. The peacekeeping force withdrew, and, in a complete about-face,
Kasavubu named Tshombe premier in order to fight a spreading rebellion.
Tshombe used foreign mercenaries, and, with the help of Belgian paratroops
airlifted by U.S. planes, defeated the most serious opposition, a
Communist-backed regime in the northeast.
Kasavubu abruptly dismissed Tshombe in 1965 but
was then himself ousted by Gen. Joseph-Desiré Mobutu, army chief of
staff. The new president nationalized the Union Minière, the
Belgian copper mining enterprise that had been a dominant force in the
Congo since colonial days. Mobutu eliminated opposition to win the
election in 1970. In 1975, he nationalized much of the economy, barred
religious instruction in schools, and decreed the adoption of African
names. He changed the country's name to Zaire and his own to Mobuto Sese
Seko, which means “the all-powerful warrior who, because of his
endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest
leaving fire in his wake.” In 1977, invaders from Angola calling
themselves the Congolese National Liberation Front pushed into Shaba and
threatened the important mining center of Kolwezi. France and Belgium
provided military aid to defeat the rebels.
Laurent Kabila and his long-standing but
little-known guerrilla movement launched a seven-month campaign that
ousted Mobutu in May 1997, ending one of the world's most corrupt and
megalomaniacal regimes. The last of the CIA-nurtured cold war despots,
Mobutu deftly courted France and the U.S., which used Zaire as a launching
pad for covert operations against bordering countries, particularly
Marxist Angola. Mobutu's disastrous policies drove his country into
economic collapse while he siphoned off millions of dollars for
himself.
The country was renamed the Democratic Republic
of the Congo in 1997, which had been its name before Mobutu changed it to
Zaire in 1971. But elation over Mobutu's downfall faded as Kabila's own
autocratic style emerged, and he seemed devoid of a clear plan for
reconstructing the country. In Aug. 1998, Congolese rebel forces, backed
by Kabila's former allies, Rwanda and Uganda, gained control of a large
portion of the country until Angolan, Namibian, and Zimbabwean troops came
to Kabila's aid. In 1999, the Lusaka Accord was signed by all six of the
countries involved, as well as by most, but not all, of the various rebel
groups.
In Jan. 2001, Kabila was assassinated, allegedly
by one of his bodyguards. His young and inexperienced son Joseph became
the new president. He demonstrated a willingness to engage in talks to end
the civil war. In April 2002, the government agreed to a power-sharing
arrangement with Ugandan-supported rebels and signed a peace accord with
Rwanda and Uganda. More than 2.5 million people are estimated to have died
in the Congo's complex four-year civil war, which involved seven foreign
armies and numerous rebel groups that often fought among themselves.
On July 17, 2003, the Congo's new power-sharing
government was inaugurated, but the fighting and killing continued. In
April 2003, hundreds of civilians were massacred in the eastern province
of Ituri in an ethnic conflict. In 2004, an insurgency in Bukavu erupted,
other areas of the Congo grew restive, and Rwanda continued to support
various rebel groups fighting the government. By the end of 2004, the
death toll from the conflict had reached 3.8 million.
Despite instability, political progress
continued. In May 2005, a new constitution was adopted by the national
assembly, and overwhelmingly ratified in Jan. 2006. On July 30, 2006, the
first democratic election in the country since 1970 took place. President
Kabila received 44.8% of the vote, which was not enough to win the
election outright. Fighting broke out between factions supporting the two
major candidates, setting off the worst violence the country has seen
since the 2002 peace deal was signed. Kabila was declared the winner in
the October run-off election, winning 58% of the vote, the country's first
freely elected president in four decades.
In August 2007, a rebel general, Laurent Nkunda,
led battles between his militia, made up of fellow Tutsis, and the
Congolese Army. The fighting continued throughout the year, driving
hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in eastern Congo and
threatening to spiral the already fragile country back into civil war.
Nkunda claimed he was protecting Tutsis from extremist Rwandan Hutus. In
January 2008, the government and the rebels signed an agreement that has
both sides withdrawing their troops and the rebels disarming and
eventually being integrated into the national army. The cease-fire fell
apart in August, and fighting resumed between Nkunda's militia and the
army. By the end of October, the rebels had captured the major army base
of Rumangaboebel and were advancing towad Goma, the capital of North Kivu
province. In addition, angry civilians attacked UN peacekeeping troops,
who proved ineffectual in both thwarting the rebels and protecting
citizens. The rebels declared a cease-fire before taking Goma. With the
cease-fire appearing on the brink of collapse, leaders from several
African nations and Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the UN met in
Nairobi in November. They signed a pact that calls for an immediate end to
the fighting and agreed that if UN troops fail to protect civilians, then
African peaceekeepers would take over.
A report released in January 2008 by the
International Rescue Committee found that despite billions in aid, the
deployment of the world's largest peacekeeping force, and successful
democratic elections, some 45,000 people continue die each month in Congo,
mostly from starvation and disease.
Prime Minister Antoine Gizenga resigned in September 2008, citing
health reasons.
See also Encyclopedia: Democratic Republic of the Congo
(Zaire).
U.S. State Dept. Country
Notes: Congo (Kinshasa)
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