Antoine Gizenga

Antoine Gizenga

Antoine Gizenga (born October 5, 1925 in Mushiko , † February 24, 2019 in Kinshasa ) was a Congolese politician . From 1960 to 1962 he was Deputy Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from December 30, 2006 to October 10, 2008.

Early years

After attending school in the Kinzambi seminary, he worked for the Catholic mission in Léopoldville . In April 1959 he became president of the newly formed Parti Solidaire Africain (PSA) party. In December 1959 his party formed an alliance with the ABAKO of Joseph Kasavubu . He was the head of his PSA delegation at the Brussels All-Party Conference, which began on January 20, 1960. Instead of taking part in the talks, he traveled to Eastern Europe and stopped in Conakry on the return journey .

independence

In the first elections in May 1960, the PSA won 13 of the 137 national seats. In the provincial parliament of Léopoldville it was the strongest party with 35 of the 90 seats. After independence on June 30, 1960, he became Deputy Prime Minister in the government of Patrice E. Lumumba . When tensions grew between Lumumba and Kasavubu, Gizenga supported Lumumba.

When Mobutu Sese Seko first staged a coup in September 1960 and the now imprisoned Lumumba tried unsuccessfully to flee to Gizenga shortly afterwards, he set up a counter-government in Stanleyville in November . In August 1961 he returned to Léopoldville and became Deputy Prime Minister under Cyrille Adoula . He was released in January 1962 and detained until July 1964, for a time on the island of Bula-Bemba in the Congo estuary .

exile

At the time of Adoula's successor Moise Tschombé , he was under house arrest between October 1964 and the end of 1965 . He was allowed to go into exile and lived for the next 27 years in the Soviet Union , France , Angola and Congo-Brazzaville . After an assassination attempt on him, he had to leave France; it became a burden for Angola when the government of José Eduardo dos Santos was reconciled with Zaire .

During his exile he founded the initially rather insignificant party Parti Lumumbistes Unifiés (PALU). President Mobutu, whose power was consolidated at the time, allowed him to return in 1992. In the last years of Mobutu's reign, Gizenga became politically active again and presented itself as the true heir of Lumumba.

According to Mobutu

In 2002 his party took part in the all-party talks of the Congolese civil war parties in South Africa . Opinion polls in the greater Kinshasa area put Gizenga's support in the population at around ten percent, after the leader Etienne Tshisekedi with 21 percent; in surveys by the Les Points Institute in February 2005, he was fifth on the list of the most popular politicians in the Congo with 4.2 percent , Tshisekedi continues to lead with 34.9 percent. Both were in opposition to President Joseph Kabila .

In the 2006 elections he ran as a candidate for the post of president and achieved third place among over 30 candidates with 13.06 percent. In the runoff election, he supported incumbent President Joseph Kabila against his challenger Jean-Pierre Bemba . At the turn of the year, the winner Kabila appointed him the new Prime Minister of the DR Congo.

As Prime Minister, he campaigned, among other things, for the dubious contracts between powerful warlords and the Congolese mine operators to be examined more closely. He resigned the post of Prime Minister at the end of September 2008 for reasons of age and health, which was then occupied by his nephew Adolphe Muzito until 2012 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Congo names opposition veteran, 81, prime minister - December 30, 2006 ( Memento of January 14, 2008 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved November 29, 2009.
2. ^ DR Congo president names new prime minister: report (AFP) - October 10, 2008 ( Memento of May 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved November 29, 2009.
3. ↑ taz.de: Congo's government resigns