Congo becomes independent

On June 30, 1960, the Belgian Congo became the independent Republic of the Congo. Joseph Kasa-Vubu was president and Patrice Lumumba was prime minister. At the ceremony, King Baudouin praised Belgium's work, and Lumumba answered with a bitter speech about colonial humiliation. Belgium had decided on rapid independence after riots in Leopoldville in January 1959 and talks in Brussels in early 1960. Lumumba's speech on independence day, delivered after the king's, recalled the forced labor and humiliation of the colonial years and is remembered as one of the great speeches of decolonization.¹²

Colonial rule had been paternalistic and extractive, with few Congolese in senior posts. Only a handful of Congolese had university degrees, and all the army's senior officers were Belgian. Within days, soldiers in the Force Publique mutinied against their Belgian officers. Belgium sent troops, and on July 11 the mining province of Katanga, under Moise Tshombe, declared secession. The United Nations sent a peacekeeping force, and Lumumba turned to the Soviet Union for help, alarming the United States and Belgium. Few Belgians had expected the handover to go so fast, and the new government had almost no time to prepare.¹⁵

The result was the Congo Crisis of 1960 to 1965. Lumumba was dismissed in September, and killed in January 1961. Joseph-Desire Mobutu took power in a coup in 1965 and ruled until 1997 over a country renamed Zaire.¹²³