Independence and Collapse

The Belgian Congo won its independence on June 30, 1960, catastrophically unprepared — a vast territory the size of Western Europe with a handful of university graduates, no African army officers, and a colonial power that had done almost nothing to ready it for self-rule. At the independence ceremony the young prime minister Patrice Lumumba electrified his people and appalled the departing Belgians with a searing, unscheduled speech cataloguing the humiliations of colonial rule.

Within five days it all came apart. The Force Publique, the colonial army still entirely officered by Belgians who blithely told the soldiers that independence meant nothing for them, mutinied; the revolt swept the country, order collapsed, and terrified Belgian settlers fled. Belgium poured in troops, ostensibly to protect its nationals — a violation of the new nation's sovereignty.

Then came the fatal blow. On July 11 the mineral-rich southern province of Katanga, home to the copper and cobalt that were the Congo's real wealth, declared independence under Moïse Tshombe, propped up by Belgian officials, the mining giant Union Minière, and white mercenaries. A second diamond province, South Kasai, soon followed. The new state had lost its richest lands and its revenues in a fortnight. Lumumba appealed to the United Nations, which rushed in the largest peacekeeping force it had ever assembled — but when the UN would not use it to crush the secession, the desperate prime minister turned to the Soviet Union, and sealed his fate.