The day will come when history will speak. Africa will write its own history, and it will be one of glory --(Patrice Lumumba)
Congo’s history has been one of colonial betrayal. Patrice Émery Lumumba, a Congolese politician and independence leader who served as the first prime minister of what was then as the Democratic Republic of the Congo from June until September 1960.
Following the May 1960 election, he emerged as the leader of the Congolese National Movement from 1958 until his assassination in 1961. Lumumba carried with him a post-colonial vision his country and its people until he was assassinated
Understanding why the Democratic Republic of the Congo descended into catastrophic conflict after 1996 requires more than a glance at recent history. Congo’s tragedy was not born overnight; it is the result of a long sequence of colonial violence, Cold War engineering, regional upheavals, and internal fractures that were exploited and deepened over generations. The modern wars simply erupted on terrain already laid bare by a century of extraction, humiliation, and political manipulation.
The story begins in the late nineteenth century, when King Leopold II of Belgium acquired the vast Congo Basin as his personal property. Cloaked in the language of “civilisation,” Leopold built one of the most barbaric extractive regimes the world had seen. Millions of Congolese men, women, and children were forced to gather rubber under terror. Punishments were grotesque and systematic: whippings that left bodies shredded; severed hands collected as proof of obedience; villages razed to the ground; entire communities wiped out.
By the time international pressure finally ended Leopold’s personal rule in 1908, at least ten million Congolese were dead. Belgium’s takeover did not bring justice or development. It merely formalised exploitation. Infrastructure was constructed to transport minerals, not to uplift people. Education remained restricted to a tiny elite, and political participation was virtually nonexistent. Congo entered independence in 1960 with immense natural wealth but almost none of the institutions or trained professionals required for self-governance.
Yet the first days of independence were full of hope. Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first Prime Minister, envisioned a sovereign nation where the fruits of the land benefited its people rather than foreign corporations. He championed unity across ethnic lines and refused to allow Cold War powers to dictate Congo’s future. His vision was as bold as it was intolerable to Western governments, particularly Belgium and the United States.
Lumumba was overthrown within months, hunted, imprisoned, and ultimately assassinated in January 1961. His murder remains one of the darkest symbols of neo-colonial interference in Africa—a democratic dream violently extinguished before it could take root.
With Lumumba gone, Congo fell into the hands of Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, later Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country for over thirty years with Western backing. Mobutu understood the geopolitical game of the Cold War: anti-communism guaranteed support, weapons, and money. He built a system of patronage and corruption so deeply entrenched that the state slowly hollowed out. Ministries became mechanisms for personal enrichment.
The military preyed on civilians instead of protecting them. Hospitals, schools, and public services collapsed. Roads crumbled. The country’s extraordinary copper, cobalt, and diamond wealth flowed into the pockets of elites while ordinary Congolese grew poorer. Mobutu’s Zaire became a “shadow state,” functioning on the surface but hollow at its core.
In this weakened state, ethnic fragmentation deepened, especially in the eastern provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, and Ituri. These regions had long been characterised by complex patterns of migration and coexistence, dating back to pre-colonial movements and later intensified by Belgian labour policies that brought people from Rwanda and Burundi into Congolese territory. Among these communities were the Banyamulenge, Congolese Tutsis who had lived in South Kivu for centuries.
Yet, in moments of political desperation, Mobutu and local elites exploited ethnic anxieties, portraying these groups as outsiders to secure support from other communities. Land conflicts became ethnic conflicts. Citizenship became a tool of exclusion. The region was a fragile mosaic long before war erupted.
The true explosion came with the 1994 Rwandan genocide, one of the most horrifying episodes of the twentieth century. As the genocidal regime in Rwanda collapsed, nearly two million Hutu refugees poured into eastern Congo. Among them were tens of thousands of génocidaires, members of the Interahamwe militias who had orchestrated the slaughter of more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The refugee camps quickly transformed into armed fortresses.
Militias used them as bases to reorganise and launch cross-border attacks into Rwanda. They also targeted Congolese Tutsis and Banyamulenge, reviving the same hateful ideology that had fuelled the genocide.
Mobutu’s government, decaying and illegitimate, was incapable of responding. The military was fragmented, unpaid, and undisciplined. Local communities found themselves trapped between armed foreign militias, predatory government troops, and increasing tensions with their neighbours.
The international community, paralysed by indecision, allowed the situation to fester. What began as a humanitarian crisis mutated into a militarised confrontation with regional implications.
At the same time, eastern Congo’s immense mineral wealth—gold, coltan (essential for mobile phones), tin, and diamonds—made the region a magnet for armed groups and neighbouring states. Rwanda and Uganda justified military interventions by citing security threats from genocidal Hutu forces inside Congo, and in 1996 they supported a rebellion led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila to overthrow Mobutu. The First Congo War was brutal but swift; Mobutu fled in 1997, dying in exile.
Yet this transition did not bring peace. Instead, it opened the gates to the even more devastating Second Congo War, often called “Africa’s World War,” which eventually involved armies from at least eight African countries and numerous militias vying for control of land, identity, and resources.
By then, the historical scaffolding of Congo’s tragedy was complete: a century of colonial plunder that destroyed social structures; a stolen independence and the assassination of a visionary leader; a Cold War dictatorship that deliberately weakened state institutions; ethnic tensions manipulated for political gain; and a massive refugee crisis that militarised an already fragile region. The wars that followed were not isolated eruptions but the predictable result of these intertwined forces.
Congo’s long crisis also tells a larger truth about the modern world: that nations endowed with extraordinary natural wealth are often the ones most violently denied the benefits of that wealth. The minerals extracted from Congolese soil continue to power Europe’s industries, America’s technology, and Asia’s manufacturing boom. Yet the people who live above this wealth experience displacement, hunger, insecurity, and the constant threat of violence. This is not accidental. It is the continuation of a global system that rewards extraction while punishing resistance.
If Congo is ever to find peace, the international community must move beyond statements of concern and confront the economic structures that make conflict profitable. Global corporations must be held accountable, regional actors must be forced to de-escalate, and Congolese civil society must be empowered to reclaim the narrative stolen from them for more than a century. Only then can the ghosts of history begin to fade, and only then can the Congolese people live the dignity Lumumba envisioned.
Congo’s modern tragedy did not begin in 1996. It began with colonial greed, was fuelled by Cold War politics, and deepened by regional conflict and global demand for its riches. To understand today’s instability is to confront this long history and acknowledge the political, moral, and economic debts the world owes the Congolese people.
Ranjan Solomon is a political commentator and human rights advocate with a longstanding commitment to cultural pluralism. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.