On July 11, 1960, the separatist leader Moïse Tshombe proclaimed the independence of Katanga from Elisabethville, current Lubumbashi. A secession that precipitated the just independent Congo into a bloody civil war against a backdrop of cold war.

The secessionist government of Katanga is funded by the Mining Union of Haut-Katanga, a Belgian company that feared the independence of the Congo proclaimed on June 30.

In January 1961 near Elisabethville, Katangese officials and their Belgian advisers took part in the assassination of ex-Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, considered too progressive and too close to the Soviet Union.

The big powers are closely following the secession of Katanga, whose uranium was used to make the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945, according to Belgian specialists.

The civil war took on an international dimension, with the intervention of the Blue Helmets against the Katangese.

The mystery of the death of Dag Hammarskjöld

Media around the world turn to Katanga after the death of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld in a plane crash on September 18, 1961, as it approached Ndola in neighboring Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). The Swedish diplomat came to meet Moses Tshombe there.

The thesis of the simple accident has only been ruled out very recently, in favor of a possible "external attack or threat" causing the crash, according to a report to the Secretary General of the United Nations in 2017.

Who Killed Mr. Hammarskjöld? Pro-Katangese foreign mercenaries, opponents of the United Nations, according to a survey published in 2019 in France ("They killed Mister H - The plot of French mercenaries against the UN", by Maurin Picard).

Equally tragic was the fate of Moses Tshombe, who went into exile in Spain when the United Nations ended the secession of Katanga in January 1963.

Back in Congo, Moïse Tshombe experienced a brief return to grace thanks to the post of Prime Minister.

He was dismissed shortly before the coup d'état of November 24, 1965 carried out by the future Marshal Mobutu (1965-1997). The Katangese returned to exile in Franco's Spain, where he was sentenced to death in absentia by Mobutu for subversive activities.

 In 1967, he fell into a trap set by a French accused, probably in the pay of Mobutu's services. His plane was hijacked over the Balearic Islands to Algeria, where he died in 1969.

Troubling the "pax Mobutu", the Katanga remakes to speak powder in 1978, when separatist rebels seize the mining city of Kolwezi where they kill Congolese and Occidentals.

"They mainly attacked the French, whom they accused of being mercenaries," recalls a Belgian, Willem Boulanger.

Mobutu mobilizes its foreign supporters and France sends its paratroopers from the Foreign Legion to quell the rebellion.

The battle of Kolwezi   

Entering the legend of the French army, the battle of Kolwezi killed more than a thousand, including 120 to 170 European civilians, five legionaries and a Belgian paratrooper, as well as around 250 rebels. 

The last nostalgics of Tshombe take up arms from time to time. In March 2013, nearly 250 fighters from the "Kata Katanga" movement (detaching Katanga) challenged the security forces in Lubumbashi (around 30 dead), before going ... to the United Nations.

Large like Spain, Katanga was divided into four provinces in 2015.

In the 2000s, China negotiated preferential access to its mineral resources with the DRC in exchange for infrastructure. 90% of Katangese cobalt and copper is exported to China.

 Chinese companies have control over the region's basements. In 2017, one of them, China Molybdenum, invested $ 2.6 billion in the open-pit deposit of Tenke and Fungurume (TFM, copper and cobalt) between Lubumbashi and Kolwezi.

But like the rest of the country, most of the Katangese population lives in misery.

The Katanga authorities have not planned any commemoration this Saturday. They announced a confinement of Lubumbashi, not for fear of a return of the separatists, but to fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

With AFP

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