DRC

By senditshirley
  • Period: 1500 to

    5 MILLION LOST

    5 million slaves are captured from what is now the DRC and sent to the Americas.

  • COLONIZATION

    Belgium’s King Leopold II launches a 90-year colonial period marked by forced labor, exploitation of natural resources, disease, and mass killings. Later academic research suggests that, during Leopold II’s rule and its immediate aftermath, Congo’s population may have been reduced by as many as 10 million people.

  • DASHED HOPES FOR INDEPENDENCE

    In May 1960 Patrice Lumumba is elected the Democratic Republic of Congo’s first Prime Minister. Four months later in September 1960, he is overthrown in a military coup led by Col. Joseph-Désiré Mobutu. With assistance from Belgium and the U.S., Mobutu begins a 36-year reign as dictator. Lumumba is executed in early 1961.

  • FROM CONGO TO ZAIRE

    Mobutu renames himself Mobutu Sese Seko, and the country of Congo is renamed Zaire.

  • AN INFLUX OF REFUGEES AND A CHOLERA OUTBREAK

    Genocide in neighboring Rwanda claims more than 800,000 lives. The country’s genocidal Hutu regime is removed by military force and hundreds of thousands flee into eastern Zaire. Some 50,000 will die in a cholera outbreak that sweeps through the overcrowded refugee camps around the city of Goma.

  • THE FIRST CONGO WAR

    Rwanda invades Zaire, in an effort to root out rebel groups taking refuge there, sparking the First Congo War. This draws in neighboring Uganda, Angola, Zambia, and other armed groups.

  • ZAIRE BECOMES THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

    The First Congo War comes to a gradual end as Mobutu is deposed by rebel leader Laurent Kabila, who declares himself president and reorganizes Zaire as the Democratic Republic of Congo. The human toll of the First Congo War isn’t fully known, but is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands.
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    THE SECOND CONGO WAR

    The Second Congo War begins with a rebellion led by ethnic Tutsi minority forces in the eastern DRC. Rwandan support fuels a march westward, while Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola and others support Kabila’s forces. Peace is achieved in 2003, but the war’s deadly legacy continues to be felt in continuing ethnic violence, instability, authoritarian leadership, and extreme poverty — all of which define Congo history to this day.
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    THE KASAI CONFLICT

    On top of continuing violence and instability driven by armed groups in DRC’s east, a conflict has been exploding in the Kasai region, to the south of the country since August, 2016. The result is DRC’s latest large-scale humanitarian crisis. In 2012, Jean-Pierre Pandi became chief of the Dibaya territory in Kasai — a stronghold of the main political opposition party. In DRC, chiefs hold a large amount of power and administrative control.