State of Katanga

• 1. Introduction

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  The State of Katanga declared its independence from Congo-Léopoldville on the evening of the 11th of July 1960, when Moïse Tshombe accused the new central government of communist leanings and dictatorial rule. Tshombe led CONAKAT, the Confédération des associations tribales du Katanga, and his declaration split one of the richest provinces in Africa away from the rest of the Congo. The breakaway republic, also called État du Katanga or Inchi Ya Katanga, would survive barely three years.

  CONAKAT insisted the split was a purely local, nationalist choice. But a foreign mining company had already been funding Tshombe's party for months before that speech, and entire communities inside Katanga wanted no part of the secession. Who was really paying for this new state? Why would a Belgian king push for its recognition while his own foreign minister refused? What became of the prime minister who had opposed the breakaway from the very start? And how did a United Nations peacekeeping mission end up fighting a war of its own before Katanga finally collapsed?

• 2. The Copper Behind the Split

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  In 1906, the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga was founded and granted exclusive rights to mine copper across the province. Its principal shareholders were the Comité Spécial du Katanga, the Société Générale de Belgique, and the British Tanganyika Concessions. The Belgian state itself was the largest shareholder in the Comité Spécial. Beyond copper, Katanga's mines also produced uranium and tin.

  By the 1950s, mining wealth had drawn about 32,000 Belgian settlers to Katanga. That made it the province with the most Belgian settlers in the entire Belgian Congo. Copper sold from Katanga's mines accounted for 33.7% of all revenue earned by the Congo. Control of the mining company therefore mattered enormously to leaders of the Congolese independence movement. The Belgian government, for its part, was reluctant to give up its own share, and did not do so until 1967.

  In January 1959, Belgium announced it would grant the Congo independence in June 1960. Starting that March, the mining company began funding CONAKAT directly and paying bribes to its leader, Moïse Tshombe, in exchange for policies favorable to the company. Four months later, that funding would help bankroll a declaration of independence.

• 3. A Fractured Declaration

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  Katanga's economy ran through the Central African Federation, which joined Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, and Southern Rhodesia under a single, white-dominated government. Gerrymandering there had left much of the Federation's black population without a real political voice. Before Congolese independence, Katanga's Belgian settler leaders held quiet talks with Federation leaders about breaking away from the Congo and joining the Federation instead.

  In March 1960, Etienne Harford, the Belgian consul in Salisbury, told Federation prime minister Sir Roy Welensky that Belgium wanted a political association between Katanga and the Federation. That same month, Welensky told journalist Rene McColl of the Daily Express that he fully expected Katanga to break from the Congo and join the Federation.

  When the Belgian Congo became independent on the 30th of June 1960, the country was already strained by ethnic factionalism and political tension. A coalition of CONAKAT politicians and Belgian settlers had tried to declare Katanga's independence even before that date. The Belgian government blocked that earlier attempt. CONAKAT feared that Patrice Lumumba's incoming government would remove its members from the provincial administration and replace them with his own supporters.

  To help fund the new state, Union Minière advanced Tshombe 1,250 million Belgian francs, worth roughly 25 million US dollars at the time. Tshombe's first move afterward was to ask Belgian Prime Minister Gaston Eyskens for assistance. When a newly appointed commander arrived to take charge of the Élisabethville garrison, Katangese authorities detained and expelled him from the territory.

  That officer flew to Luluabourg and told Lumumba and President Joseph Kasa-Vubu what had happened. The two leaders decided to fly to Katanga themselves. Katanga's Minister of Interior, Godefroid Munongo, refused them landing rights. He radioed that Kasa-Vubu could visit if he wished, but that Lumumba was barred from entering. Furious, both men turned back to Luluabourg.

  Tshombe answered by naming Colonel Norbert Muke of the Force Publique to organize a new military force. Belgian officers, seconded to Tshombe as advisers, staffed the unit from the start. Within days, Eyskens extended informal recognition to Katanga, and by the 22nd of July his government had created a technical mission to funnel arms and advisers to the new state.

  Tshombe and CONAKAT described the secession as a grassroots nationalist movement. Yet the Baluba population of Katanga's northern districts actively opposed independence. Even in the more sympathetic south, ordinary residents were never consulted on the question. Katanga also held an unusually large community of Belgian settlers and expatriates who had invested heavily in the province, and most of them openly backed the break. Unlike Lumumba, Tshombe had courted these residents directly, wary that their departure would cripple Katanga's economy.

  The state Tshombe built came with its own constitution, promulgated on the 5th of August 1960 across 66 articles. Katanga's president served as both head of state and head of government, chosen not by popular vote but by a two-thirds majority of the National Assembly's 64 deputies, 58 of whom belonged to CONAKAT. A separate Grand Council of 20 tribal chiefs held veto power over constitutional and mining matters, though the Assembly could override that veto with its own two-thirds vote.

  That governing structure impressed no one back in Brussels, where Belgium's own leaders could not agree on what to do about Katanga at all.

• 4. Belgium's Two Minds

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  Within the Belgian government, King Baudouin was Katanga's strongest supporter. He used the full weight of the royal court to push for diplomatic recognition. His Foreign Minister, Pierre Wigny, wanted no part of it, aware that the United States opposed any breakup of the Congo.

  Wigny feared a repeat of the Suez Crisis of 1956, when Britain, France, and Israel were humiliated after the United States opposed their attack on Egypt. In his eyes, the Congo now played Egypt's role, with Belgium cast as the aggressor. Belgium's representative at NATO, André de Staercke, shared that same fear of angering Washington.

  Other Belgian officials pulled the opposite way. Henri Crener, the Belgian consul in Élisabethville, was a fierce supporter of Katanga's cause. Harold Charles d'Aspremont Lynden, Eyskens's most influential adviser, saw the secession as a chance for Belgium to keep hold of the Congo's most valuable territory.

  Caught between his Foreign Minister's caution and the King's pressure, Eyskens hesitated for weeks. Despite his own fear of provoking Washington, he ultimately gave way to Baudouin and d'Aspremont Lynden and backed the Katangese state. That decision would soon collide with an international body already gathering troops for the Congo.

• 5. A World Divided Over Katanga

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  Within a week of Katanga's declaration, Lumumba sent a telegram to the United Nations Secretary-General accusing Belgium of military aggression against his country. He requested urgent military assistance, since his own army lacked the strength to restore order. On the 14th of July 1960, the Security Council answered with Resolution 143, calling on Belgium to remove its troops and authorizing the UN to assist Congolese forces.

  The first UN peacekeepers arrived the very next day, but disagreement over their mission began almost immediately. Lumumba wanted the new force, ONUC, to subdue Katanga by military force. He wrote to Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld that the resolution's text clearly allowed it. Hammarskjöld disagreed, treating Katanga's secession as an internal Congolese matter that Article 2 of the UN Charter forbade the UN from touching.

  Two further resolutions failed to settle the dispute. On the 22nd of July, Resolution 145 reaffirmed that Congo should remain a unitary state and repeated the call for Belgian withdrawal. On the 9th of August, Resolution 146 named Katanga directly for the first time. It allowed UN troops to enter the province while barring them from influencing any internal conflict there.

  Reaction among UN member states split sharply. Britain and France stayed neutral, though France was quietly hostile to the whole peacekeeping effort. Britain, having helped the mission get underway, later refused to help move against Tshombe's government. Portugal and South Africa openly backed Katanga instead, letting arms and mercenaries cross into the province from Angola and from within South Africa itself.

  Sir Roy Welensky wanted to send Federation troops into Katanga outright. His own army numbered only 3,270 men, too few to spare amid rising unrest elsewhere in the Federation. Instead he let Katanga keep exporting copper over Federation railroads, allowed arms to be smuggled across the border, and permitted the recruitment of white mercenaries, most of whom came from Southern Rhodesia. The town of Ndola became the main staging point for mercenaries heading into Katanga.

  In a letter to Britain's Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, Welensky wrote: "I am unwilling to stand by idly and watch Mr. Tshombe destroyed...if he is in danger of being destroyed by Afro-Asian pressures masquerading as United Nations operations, I shall do everything within my power to assist in his survival."

  Frustrated by this deadlock, the Congolese government launched its own incursion into Katanga on the 27th of August, trucking soldiers in on a scattered collection of Soviet vehicles. It was poorly organized and only deepened hostility between Léopoldville and Élisabethville. Sporadic fighting would continue for the next two years, beginning with the ambush of an Irish Army platoon at Niemba on the 8th of November, when nine soldiers were killed by Baluba tribesmen.

• 6. Gendarmes and Mercenaries

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  Katanga's new army took shape under Major Crèvecoeur, who spent August 1960 racing to build an effective gendarmerie before Belgian regular troops withdrew, according to the historian Jules Gérard-Libois. Crèvecoeur recruited former officers of the Force Publique who had either left Congo after July's unrest or were already in Katanga. The new force was set at 1,500 volunteers, aged 16-21, drawn from what officials called "safe" ethnic groups.

  Nearly all of the old Force Publique's aircraft, transferred earlier to the base at Kamina, were simply requisitioned by Katanga to form its own small air force. Brussels backed this buildup with direct technical, financial, and military aid meant to keep Katanga's public order intact. Belgian advisers even counseled the incoming UN force against unnecessary intervention, warning it would only "risk increasing the confusion."

  By this point, Katanga's government employed 1,133 Belgian technicians running its civil service, 114 Belgian Army officers and 117 NCOs commanding the Force Publique, and 58 Belgian civil servants staffing its ministries. Between the 4th and the 8th of August 1960, Pierre Kauch of the National Bank of Belgium visited Katanga to explore setting up a central bank. He returned to Brussels reporting the province was close to chaos, its stability resting on the "watchfulness" of d'Aspremont Lynden.

  Most Belgian military personnel withdrew from Katanga in September 1960. More than 200 stayed behind, shifting into paid roles as mercenaries within the Gendarmes. As late as 1963, several were still active, having traded their uniforms for civilian clothes. The first UN peacekeepers, mostly Swedish troops, had already entered Katanga's capital, Élisabethville, on the 12th of August 1960.

  By February 1961, Tshombe was importing still more foreign fighters to reinforce his Gendarmes, a trend the UN mission came to call the "Mercenary Problem." Around 117 white volunteers of Belgian descent were already serving under his direct command. Brief efforts that January and February to remove these fighters only opened space for roughly 500 new British, Rhodesian, French, and South African irregulars.

  Many of the new arrivals took command posts within the Gendarmes. Others formed a separate unit called the International Company, made up mostly of white South Africans. Among the French recruits were veterans of the Algerian War, several of whom ran a commando training program for Katanga's forces. A report on the 30th of March 1961 described the mercenary contingent as including "Belgians, Italians, and 100 South Africans."

  Fighting escalated after ONUC sent elements of the nearly 5,000-strong 99th Indian Infantry Brigade into Élisabethville. Tshombe began urging both civilians and mercenaries to turn on the peacekeepers. On the 5th of April 1961, Hammarskjöld publicly criticized the Belgian mercenaries and condemned Tshombe for inciting the public against the UN. Three days later, Belgian and South African Gendarmes attacked the Baluba town of Kabalo in the north, clashing with Ethiopian peacekeepers stationed there.

  At least 30 mercenaries were disarmed and captured at Kabalo. It took until the 30th of April for Katanga to agree to stop hostilities against the UN force, a truce that would not hold for long.

• 7. Katanga's Case to the World

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  On the 3rd of October 1960, Katanga opened an unofficial diplomatic office in New York, hoping to win recognition from the United States and a seat at the UN. Its head, Michel Struelens, was described as an "urbane and soft-spoken" Belgian who had previously worked promoting tourism to the Belgian Congo. Since Washington had no formal relations with Katanga, Struelens traveled to New York on a Belgian passport, a detail critics used to dismiss Katanga's cause as a front for Belgian interests.

  Struelens told one journalist his job was to tell Katanga's story in the Western Hemisphere. He framed the state as the only barrier against communist influence in the Congo. Washington never recognized Katanga, but Struelens still won support across much of the American right. One ally, the ultra-right-wing Liberty Lobby, published a pamphlet complaining that Western nations kept yielding ground, moving in its words from "infant independence" toward newly acquired luxury cars for the region's new elites.

  The conservative writer James Burnham praised Katanga in a column, arguing that African nationalists wanted to strip white residents of their property and reduce them to servants. Liberal critics countered by comparing Katanga to Manchukuo, the supposedly independent state Japan had installed in 1931 under Emperor Puyi. In both cases, a local figurehead, Puyi there and Tshombe here, appeared to rule while real power stayed in foreign hands.

  Katanga opened a second office in Paris that December, run by Dominique Diur, though it functioned mainly as a recruiting post for mercenaries, an activity illegal under French law. Its recruits included the French soldiers Roger Faulques, Roger Trinquier, and Edgard Tupët-Thomé. A third mission in Brussels, headed by Jacques Masangu, served the same recruiting purpose.

  By late 1961, President John F. Kennedy's administration had concluded that a united Congo under Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula offered the best chance of stability. Adoula was a committed anti-communist, and officials judged his government could not survive economically if Katanga's secession continued. That reasoning pushed Kennedy firmly toward Congolese unity.

  Struelens kept fighting back from New York. He told one press conference that whenever the UN denied committing atrocities in Katanga, he circulated photographs to prove otherwise. The Kennedy administration briefly canceled his visa, intending to expel him, but backed down after Katanga's allies in Congress raised a public outcry. To counter him directly, Kennedy had Undersecretary of State George Ball argue in a widely published speech that most Katangese did not actually support Tshombe's government, and that Belgian officials, not Tshombe, held the real power there.

  That speech, printed and distributed by the State Department, marked Washington's clearest public break with Katanga's cause.

• 8. The Fall of Katanga

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  Patrice Lumumba never lived to see any of this play out. Ousted in a coup by Mobutu Sese Seko, he was sent to Élisabethville on the 17th of January 1961, where he was tortured and executed shortly after his arrival. The next day, Katanga's Secretary of State of Information, Lucas Samalenge, visited bars around the city telling patrons that Lumumba had been murdered, until police took him away.

  News of Lumumba's death reached the UN Security Council in an atmosphere charged with anti-colonial anger. On the 21st of February 1961, the Council passed Resolution 161, authorizing "all appropriate measures," including force if necessary, to prevent civil war and to expel Belgian troops and foreign mercenaries. It stopped short of explicitly ordering offensive combat, though local UN commanders later read it as justification for ending Katanga's secession by force.

  Even so, the UN launched no major operations for the following six months, focusing instead on political talks. Fighting nonetheless intensified between pro-Tshombe loyalists and Baluba communities loyal to Léopoldville, alongside smaller clashes against Congolese army units. Thinly spread and often outgunned, UN troops struggled just to keep the violence from turning into outright civil war. By mid-1961, Katanga's presidential security forces had killed nearly 7,000 Baluba people, and growing peacekeeper numbers only provoked further Baluba attacks on both sides.

  That June, Tshombe and his Foreign Affairs Minister, Évariste Kimba, were arrested just as they were about to board a plane home from the Coquilhatville Conference of Congo's leaders. Held under house arrest, Tshombe faced charges of inciting revolt, illegally seizing arms and aircraft, and printing counterfeit Katangese currency. He signed a pledge to reunite Katanga with the rest of the country and was released, but by August he had shown no intention of honoring it.

  While Tshombe was away, a triumvirate of three ministers, Godefroid Munongo, Jean-Baptiste Kibwe, and Joseph Kiwele, temporarily ran the government, and posters bearing his image appeared across Élisabethville. That August, Tshombe declared publicly that he would defend Katanga's sovereignty against all opposition.

  In August and September 1961, UN forces launched two operations to forcibly arrest and repatriate the foreign mercenaries and Belgian advisers propping up Tshombe's government. The first, carried out by Indian troops starting at 5 am, rounded up nearly 400 men without firing a single shot. About 300 were ultimately expelled from Congo, though several mercenaries later slipped back in, and white Katangese deeply resented the operation.

  Tensions boiled over after UN personnel were caught planning a conspiracy to remove Tshombe, seize Élisabethville's radio station, and capture his Gendarmes. Katangese officials uncovered the plot and confronted the UN with solid evidence, an embarrassing revelation for the mission. The following day, 155 Irish soldiers guarding civilians in Jadotville were surrounded by a much larger Gendarme force. Despite airstrikes from Katanga's small mercenary-piloted air force, the Irish troops held out and inflicted heavy losses before being forced to surrender and held as prisoners for roughly a month.

  ONUC commanders then agreed on a broader plan to seize post offices and radio stations and remove the Katangese government outright, but the initial attempt on the post offices was repulsed. In the eight-day battle that followed, 11 UN personnel were killed while Tshombe's forces bombed and strafed UN positions in Jadotville, Élisabethville, and Kamina unopposed. Much of ONUC's failure came down to equipment. The Gendarmes fielded automatic rifles, heavy machine guns, mortars, and armored cars, while UN troops made do with outdated rifles and makeshift-armored civilian vehicles.

  As peace talks resumed, Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others died when their plane crashed near Ndola in Northern Rhodesia. The circumstances were never fully explained, and some evidence suggests the aircraft was shot down. His death triggered a succession crisis at the United Nations, since no formal line of succession existed and the Security Council had to vote on a replacement.

  Negotiations under the new acting Secretary-General, U Thant, went nowhere. His three-stage reunification plan remained an agreement on paper only. A follow-up UN proposal called for a federal Congolese constitution within thirty days, an end to the rebellion, a unified currency, and a fifty-fifty split of mining revenue between Katanga and the central government. Congo's Prime Minister, Cyrille Adoula, accepted immediately, but Tshombe attached conditions. On the 19th of December, an exasperated Tshombe walked out of the talks after U Thant imposed economic sanctions.

  As 1962 wound down, a report from the Brookings Institution claimed Katanga's forces had grown to some 40,000 troops and Gendarmerie, with at least 400 mercenaries and 20 aircraft, though those figures were later found to be exaggerated. On the 20th of December, the United States announced it would send its own military mission to Katanga, drawing protest from roughly a hundred local students at the American consulate.

  Fighting broke out again on the 24th of December 1962 near a UN observation post outside Élisabethville, and a helicopter was shot down before Tshombe promised to pull back his forces. When the shooting had not stopped by the 27th of December, ONUC warned it would act in self-defense, and Operation Grandslam began the next day. Within three days, UN troops controlled Élisabethville, Gendarmes were captured or driven west, and more than 70 air sorties destroyed all but two of Katanga's remaining fighter jets on the ground.

  Tshombe escaped the fallen capital and threatened a counteroffensive unless the UN held its fire, and a truce held until the 1st of January. Defying explicit orders from New York, ONUC forces then advanced on Jadotville, where Katangese troops had demolished the bridges over the Lufira River. UN soldiers crossed using the wreckage despite sniper fire, a crossing later blamed on slow communications, and the fall of Jadotville ended any chance of a Katangese stand there.

  Civilian deaths at UN checkpoints, including two Belgian women shot while in a car, prompted U Thant to briefly halt operations while Belgian and British officials pressed Tshombe to give up. On the 11th of January 1963, peacekeepers entered Sakania near the Rhodesian border against little resistance, and the last mercenaries fled toward Angola rather than follow orders to burn everything behind them. Tshombe conceded defeat on the 15th of January and let UN officials into his final stronghold, Kolwezi, on the 21st of January, telling his remaining supporters: "For the last two and a half years you have twice fought heroically against the enemy. Now their superiority has become overwhelming."

  The Congolese government moved quickly to absorb Katanga back into the country, folding the Gendarmes into the national army and naming former Prime Minister Joseph Ileo as Resident Minister of the reunified province. U Thant, warning against "fanatics or diehards" attempting a second secession, still called for a gradual drawdown of UN troops. He later reflected that for a peace force, "even a little fighting is too much, and only a few casualties are too many."

  Tshombe himself was not finished with Congolese politics. In July 1964 he returned from exile to serve as the country's Prime Minister, before being dismissed from that same office in October 1965.