The Congo Crisis
The Belgians were always reluctant colonizers. The vast territory of the Belgian Congo was inherited as part of the discredited legacy of King Leopold II. When, in the late 1950s, African nationalist movements began agitating for independence, the Belgians were only too glad to give it to them. Fearful of an Algeria-style civil war, power was handed over to the first candidate to hold his hands out for it, and that someone was a firebrand idealist by the name of Patrice Lumumba.
The Belgians, however, made the same mistake as many other colonial powers, and that was to construct a glass ceiling above which no indigenous African could rise. The result was a civil service with no senior black bureaucrats, and a defense force with no black officers. Handing over power, therefore, to a black political elite was all well and good, but as whites began to leave, the administration was staffed at a senior level by those without any training to govern.
In the case of the Army, Belgian officers were retained, simply because no indigenous officers existed, and the army could not be handed over to a corps of major generals who had been corporals a week earlier. Within a month, the Force Publique mutinied, which set the spark to the tinder of probably one of Africa’s ugliest wars.
The armed forces mutiny set in motion a series of secessionist declarations, that each devolved very quickly into a civil war. The southern province of Katanga, the mineral-rich region of Congo, was quick to declare separate independence, but because of its mineral wealth, and the weight of Belgian investment, Belgian boots were on the ground fairly quickly. Into the picture dropped a United Nations multi-national forces, and suddenly the world body found itself in the only hot war of its existence.
In the meanwhile, central government began to crumble very quickly. Lumumba was dismissed by his deputy, who was in turn dismissed by Lumumba. When his appeals for Western military support were ignored, Lumumba began talking to the Soviets. That certainly did not go down well, and before long, Lumumba was arrested, and held incognito while significant damage was done to his person.
Who was behind it has never been fully ascertained, but by February, Lumumba was dead, with fingers pointing at the US, at the Belgians and at the UN.
The bloody chaos continued until 1965 when a massively over-promoted staff officer of the army called Joseph Mobutu seized power in a military coup. The country became Zaire, and Mobuto its de facto king. Mobuto would define African kleptocracy and would rule Zaire as his personal bank for over thirty years. The Congo never recovered and is still the original African basket case.