Katanga (province)

Katanga
country	Democratic Republic of Congo
status	Former province
Coordinates	9 ° 20 ′  S , 26 ° 26 ′  E Coordinates: 9 ° 20 ′  S , 26 ° 26 ′  E
main place	Lubumbashi
governor	Moïse Katumbi Chapwe
National language	Swahili
Area :	496,871 km²
Residents :	4,125,000 (1998)
Population density :	8 inhabitants / km²

Katanga (1971–1997 Shaba ) was a province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo with the capital Lubumbashi .

geography

The province was located in the south-east of the country and bordered the provinces Kasaï-Occidental and Kasaï-Oriental in the north-west, the provinces Maniema and Sud-Kivu in the north-east, Lake Tanganyika ( Tanzania ) in the east, Zambia in the south and in the west Angola .

government

Between 2007 and 2015, Moïse Katumbi Chapwe was the first democratically elected governor of Katanga Province. He introduced a statutory minimum wage of $ 100 a month.

population

The main ethnic groups of Katangas are the Baluba in the northwest and in the center, the Hemba in the north, the Tabwa in the northeast, the Lunda in the west, and the Bemba and Lala in the southeast. The pygmies live in sometimes violent ethnic tensions with other peoples and complain about exclusion .

Territorial division

Katanga was divided into the districts of Tanganyika, Upper Lomami, Upper Katanga, Kolwezi and Lualaba, which in turn were divided into separate territories.

history

For the old history see Msidis Reich , for the history of the 1960–63 de facto independent state Katanga (State) .

In 1891 the areas of Katanga were entrusted by the Belgian Free State of the Congo to the Compagnie du Katanga and in 1900 to the Comité Spécial du Katanga and administered completely separately from the rest of the Congo. It was not until 1910 that Katanga became an autonomous region of the Belgian Congo . In 1933 the province lost its autonomy and was renamed Elisabethville (French) or Elisabethstad (Dutch), today: Lubumbashi, after its capital .

In 1960, when the decolonization of the Belgian Congo was in progress, Moïse Tshombé proclaimed Katanga's independence. The UN tried to persuade Katanga to return through negotiations, occupied what was then Elisabethville in 1963 and ended independence by military means. Katanga was first divided into three provinces, but reunited in 1966.

During the decolonization conflict at the time , the plane of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld , who was on a peace mission , crashed on September 18, 1961 for unexplained reasons near Ndola .

The Union Minière du Haut Katanga mining company was nationalized in 1966 under the name Gécamines . In 1971 Katanga was renamed Shaba . During the 1970s, rebellions could only be suppressed by the Zairean central power with foreign military aid, for example in 1978 when 4,000 rebels occupied the most important mining town of the province, Kolwezi , on May 13 during the so-called Shaba invasion . It was only with massive support from the United States of America , Belgium and France that the paratroopers of the French Foreign Legion finally succeeded in retaking the city, killing 700 Africans and 280 Europeans. French Foreign Legionaries ( 2e régiment étranger de parachutistes ) freed more than 2000 European hostages from the hands of rebels in the Battle of Kolwezi on May 19, 1978.

After Mobutu Sese Seko went into exile in 1997, the province reverted to the previous name Katanga.

Natural resources

The Katanga region has extensive ore deposits of copper , cobalt (around Kolwezi ), zinc and uranium (see also: Copperbelt ) . There are also deposits with minable contents of germanium , cadmium and silver . For a long time the copper industry in the Congo was the largest and best organized on the African continent after the mining region on the Witwatersrand . The problem of long-term dependency on energy generation from coal deliveries from the Wankie mining center in southern Rhodesia has been gradually resolved since the 1960s with the construction of hydropower plants in the region.

After the independence of the Congo colony from Belgium, the wealth of natural resources led to considerable political conflicts, which became known as the Congo turmoil or the Congo crisis.

Dissolution in 2015

With the adoption of a new constitution in May 2005, the Democratic Republic of the Congo was to be reorganized. After the date of the administrative change had previously been postponed several times, President Joseph Kabila reversed it completely in January 2011. However, the administrative change was implemented in 2015 and Katanga was divided into four new provinces:

• Haut-Katanga with the capital Lubumbashi , from the district of the same name
• Haut-Lomami with the capital Kamina , from the district of the same name
• Lualaba with the capital Kolwezi , from the districts Lualaba and Kolwezi
• Tanganyika with the capital Kalemie , from the district of the same name

Movie

• Jadotville . Ireland on behalf of the UN in the Congo, production: Netflix 2016, film based on real events, clarification of the disastrous situation of the UN troops in Katanga.
• China in the Congo. Documentation, Germany, 2008, 29 min., Director: Wiltrud Kremer, production: SWR , arte , first broadcast: January 27, 2009, table of contents at Phoenix

literature

• Walter Schicho: The mining areas of Katangas 1900–1980. Colonial administration, colonial economy and mission turn peasants into workers. In: Olaf Bockhorn , Ingeborg Grau, Walter Schicho (eds.): How farmers became workers. Recurring processes of social change in the north and south of a world (= historical social studies , vol. 13). Brandes and Apsel et al., Frankfurt am Main et al. 1998, ISBN 3-86099-173-6 , pp. 127–152.

See also

Provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Web links

• Provincial government website (French)
• Historical and current photos of Katanga Province
• Frank Westenfelder Katanga. At the beginning of the 1960s, the mercenaries reported back in Africa.

proof

1. ↑ 'Caterpillar tax': DR Congo ethnic clash sees 16 killed ( English ) BBC News . October 18, 2016. Retrieved October 18, 2016.
2. ^ RA Pelletier: Mineral Resources of South-Central Africa . Cape Town, London, New York, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1964, pp. 215-225