Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Lubumbashi (Fides Service)- “The events need still to be deciphered but from what has been said this was in actual fact an insurrection to overturn the nation’s political situation by detaching Katanga from the rest of the country” said a local source in Lubumbashi, main town in the southern region of Katanga, where at least 35 people were arrested on charges of planning an armed insurrection to separate the region from Democratic Congo.
“However the situation in Lubumbashi appears calm. There are no soldiers on the streets and people move about freely” the sources told Fides.
The people were arrested over the past 10 days. Those arrested include members of the police force and André Tshombé son of Moïse Tshombé, leader of a Katanga secession movement in the 1960s. André Tshombé is leader of the Congo National Confederation party which has its offices in Lubumbashi.
Several of those arrested belong to the Special Presidential Security Group and some are former “Katanga Gendarmes” a corps established in 1960 by Moïse Tshombé at the time of the Katanga secession from Congo which had just obtained independence from Belgium. The secession lasted a little more than 2 years and ended with the intervention of a United Nations mission. At the time the “Katanga Gendarmes” took refuge in Zambia and Angola, where they formed mercenary militia groups willing to fight for whoever paid the most. The Katanga Gendarmes were in the news again in 1977 when a group in exile in Angola attacked the Shaba mining region. They were held at bay by Moroccan troops backed by the French army. A year later there was a second attempt and several hundred Katanga Gendarmes from Zambia occupied the town on Kolwezi, the region’s economic lung, provoking an intervention of the French Foreign Legion which freed several western hostages.
In 1997 numerous “gendarmes” joined the forces of Laurent Désiré Kabila (father of today’s President Joseph Kabila) who overthrew the then president Mobutu. And it was precisely from Lubumbashi, on 17 May 1997 that Laurent Désiré Kabila proclaimed himself President. The troops were integrated into the regular army .
Katanga is rich in copper mines and has always attracted various greedy powers. Recently however the region’s economy was seriously affected when the state mining company Gécamines went bankrupt. In this situation social tensions can be exploited by anyone who wants to create social disorder. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 11/5/2005 righe 49 parole 466)
