Independance+of+the+Congo

Jalen Grady

The Democratic Republic of the Congo had a long and painful fight in order to gain independence form the Belgium empire and has yet to stabilize their Country.
= ﻿They brought with them waffels doused in suffering. = >
 * Belgium colonized the DRC in 1877, when king Leopold II commissioned journalists Henry Morton Stanely to explore the Congo so that he could form a commercial monopoly of the land.
 * This oppressive regime was the setting of Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness.
 * the belgins brought their own educational system along with their own religion and anyone who denied this "generous offer" was either tortured or executed

= Free at last, free at last. =

Screw you Belgium, We are free at last
= Lumumba to the rescue? = = We're tired of your $@%! = >
 * At the Brussels Round Table Conference of 1960, the Belgian government granted Congo its independence.
 * Joseph Kasavudu was elected president of DRC, and Patrice Lumumba was named the first ever Congolese prime minister.
 * Patrice Lumumba was born in Katako-Kombe in the Kasai Province of the Belgian Congo in 1925.
 * In October 1958, he formed the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC), which was the only major party that had a truly national base
 * As nationalist and Pan-Africanist, he mobilized the Congolese people to press for independence.
 * Congo's government was troubled from the beginning. Merely five days after independence was granted, violent conflict erupted between Belgian and Congolese citizens
 * Lumumba asked the United Nations to intervene
 * Lumumba then asked the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics for help. It provided Lumumba's troops with weapons and military training.
 * Under the guise of fighting the spread of communism, the U.S. backed rebel Mobutu Sese Seko in a military coup that resulted in Lumumba's seizure, torture and eventual execution
 * Because this move was motivated more by U.S. interests in the vast mineral resources of this area than in securing a peaceful future for DRC, U.S. efforts to establish a stable government after the uprising were half-hearted