JOSEPH KABILA, THE CONGOLESE ENIGMA Joseph Kabila has been president in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 2001; and as foolish as it appears, President Joseph Kabila is an enigma for his people. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a country located in central Africa. The Congo became an independent state in 1960, and was mostly ruled by dictators; one of them, Laurent Désiré Kabila, is told to be Joseph Kabila’s father or step-father or foster father. Nobody really knows. Joseph Kabila became president after his father Laurent Kabila, but he does not have the confidence and the support of many of his people who see him as a criminal, a Rwandan who was the brain behind the President Laurent Désiré Kabila’s murder. Laurent Kabila became the president of the Congo in 1997 after a coup d’état to the previous president. In order to form his army, Laurent Kabila took kids in the eastern provinces of the Congo and made them soldiers. He had the support of Rwanda where he probably met Marceline, a Rwandan who would be Joseph’s mother. Marceline would have Joseph from her first marriage to the Rwandan Kanambe, according to Francois Misser. In 2001, Laurent Kabila was murdered, the Congo needed a leader. Some politicians from Laurent Kabila’s circle agreed that …show more content…
This is Joseph’s third mandate, he was supposed to leave after the second one but no one made it a big deal saying that the first one cannot be counted as a mandate since there was no election and that he was simply an interim president. And now that he must leave, he attempted to modify the constitution in order to change the number of president term, but the referendum did not vote that law (Congo Siasa). Rumors say that the reason he does not want to leave is that he would be arrested by the International Criminal Court right after he leaves the
Wallerstein, Immanuel, and Dennis D. Cordell. "Patrice Lumumba (Congolese Politician)." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. .
By forming the International African Association, King Leopold II took one step forward. He succeeded in convincing his would be competitors that his intention in the Congo was completely selfless. Although the International African Association met the following year, as per agreement, the ...
Adam Hochschild painted a very vivid picture of the cruelty and injustices done to the Congolese from 1885 to 1908 in his book King Leopold’s Ghost. Hochschild shows us how manipulative King Leopold was in his desire for fortune and more power. This paper will point out the how King Leopold was a silver tongued snake, how he used his charm to win him the colony of Congo, and how his greed caused many innocent lives to be lost. This can be seen in the examination of how he gained control of the colony and his management thereafter.
Leopold “bought” Congo by investing his own money and buying out other investors. He convinced everyone that he wanted to help Africans, and hosted conferences to receive donations. But it was all a scam. It
Christopher Mullins offers a history of every major power to be in control of the Congo in his article “Gold, diamonds and blood: International state-corporate crime in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” Colonized by the Belgians in towards the end of the nineteenth century, the explorer Henry Stanley was ordered to create a base that claims the land under Belgian rule. Africa was ripe with unused resources, such as trees, and multiple minerals. This area of Africa was subject to being dominated by whites looking to mine the resources for good money. After World War 2, Belgian began to lose p...
This project contains material from a variety of sources. Two of these sources include a newspaper article from the New York Times and a document found on the database ELibrary. The newspaper article, titled Congo’s War Turns to Brutal Killings on City’s Streets, is a primary source that was created by Norimitsu Onishi at the New York Times newspaper with the intention of informing people about the wars in the DRC. It was published August 28, 1998, the day after the events written about occurred. This document exists to inform the readers of the New York Times about the events happening in the DRC at the time of publication. The author thought that men and women over the age of about 25 would be reading this. In general, most people do not have the interest in
King Leopold’s role of playing philanthropist was essential to his success in the Congo. He was able to successfully manipulate the public by hiding behind a false identify of a philanthropist claiming to be in the Congo to help save the African people. While all through the 1980’s he used this fake role to seize control of the Congo and using the indigenous people as slave labor with over eight million people being killed during his tyranny. King Leopold first started his conquest over the Congo after meeting Henry Morton Stanley who told him of the potential of the region. It has good natural transportation systems and minimal military threat from the indigenes tribes because of the centuries of slave hunting in the area. When the Committee
It is widely debated why exactly King Leopold decided to conquer the Congo, but the general consensus seems to be that it was out of the belief that “the highlands of the Congo may be as rich in gold as the mountains of the western slope of the American Continent” (Stead). In the mid-1870s, the King hired Henry Stanley, who was familiar with many parts of Africa, to help him go about conquering. During the following years Stanley stayed in Africa, talking various tribes into signing over their lands and rights. After this was completed the King officially took over the Congo, renaming it the Congo Free State. This was especially ironic because all natives of the country were either forced to give up their way of life in exchange for virtual slavery in the ivory trade, agriculture, or the rubber traffic, or die trying to escape fate. Leopold was undeterred by the amount of suffering and death in the Congo, brought on by his rule. Belgian soldiers and officials were known for their cruelty in their methods to make, and then keep, Congo natives wo...
Koch, Kathy, ed. "CQ Researcher." Conflict in the Congo 5.7 (2011): 157-82. Global Researcher. Web. 20 Apr. 2014. .
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been and unstable area for decades. Between the wars, conflicts, and armed groups nothing about the country is safe. Armed rebel militias earn millions of dollars more than the country is worth every year by selling conflict minerals. Conflict Minerals are defined as minerals that have been retrieved from areas of war or strife. These minerals could be in our electronics devices, and other products we use everyday. Government troops and militias fight to control the mines, murdering civilians, fracturing the structure of society leaving the country weak. Locals in small, poor communities are exploited or forced into the gruesome mining economy. A statistic estimates that over 50% of the mines have rebel groups stationed in them. Money earned from the sale of conflict minerals is used for personal profit and to create more violence. Minerals are smuggled out of Congo through neighboring countries, then sold to smelters around the world for refinement. Once minerals are processed in this way, it’s difficult to trace their origin. Conflict minerals easily make their way to the U.S. and all over the world in consumer products. Companies need these minerals for as cheap as they can get them. There is no clear solution to the problem, and the issue could go on for decades. The country is weak and corrupted with no where to turn. The alleged Government has worked with the rebels, trying to get whatever money they can, even if it means their own citizens being slaughtered and forced to work. There are no good guy or bad guys, nothing is in black or white, just a murky shade of gray. The entire country is just trying to do whatever it can to survive.
During the colonial period, soldiers in Congo threatened both adults and children and took away all human rights. King Leopold wanted to make the most money he could in the Congo, but he needed workers
One can easily note the physical and sexual violence brought upon the people (black and white) of Congo after independence, but we must locate the other forms of violence in order to bring the entire story of Patrice Lumumba to light. The director’s attempt at bringing the story of Patrice Lumumba to the “silver screen” had political intentions.
The conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo following independence in 1960 was primarily inherited from its European colonizers. The notion that the 80-year exploitative occupation of Belgium could leave the Congo anything but traumatized and unstable is farfetched. This was cogently conveyed in the very first sequence of the film, Lumumba, which presented evidence using actual footage and archival images of the violent legacy of colonization. Far from the benevolent guardianship that King Leopold tried to claim, African rule under Belgium was marked by the physical, psychological, social, economic and cultural subjugation of the Congolese.
Belgium’s interference in the rewriting of the independent Congo’s constitution, under Prime Minister Lumumba, set the government of the African country up for failure. Belgium initially colonized the Congo as part of a plan to exploit the African nation for its abundance of natural resources. The Congo was set free from Belgian rule officially on June 30th, 1960, but Belgian forces played a powerful role in the country’s governmental structure. Therefore, when the country’s constitution was being rewritten to accommodate the new leadership of the progressing Congolese society, Belgium, the former colonizer, wanted to have input. The arrangements for the Constitution seemed destined to fail since Belgium was such a powerful force in its creation. As a result, “ a series of Belgian excesses led to a rapid breach between the objectives of the Belgians on the one hand, and the Lumumba government on the o...
Over a period from 1960-1965, the first Republic of the Congo experienced a period of serious crisis. There was a terrible war for power that displayed senseless violence and the desperation to rule. There were many internal conflicts among the people. The country eventually gained independence from Belgium. For many countries this would be a time for celebration. Unfortunately for the people of the Congo this became a time to forget. Almost immediately after independence and the general elections, the country went into civil war. Major developed cities like Katanga and Kasai wanted to be independent from the Lumumba government. Different factions started to fight the government and Katanga and Kasai tried to secede from the rest of the country out of fear of the mutinous army that was out of control looting and killing.