DR Congo

The struggle

The Congo endured Leopold II's private Congo Free State, where rubber quotas were enforced by mutilation and millions died, then Belgian colonial rule that trained almost no Congolese administrators. Riots in Léopoldville in January 1959 forced Belgium into a rushed handover. Patrice Lumumba's independence-day speech refused the polite script; within months he was deposed and, in January 1961, murdered with Belgian and American complicity.

Key people

• Patrice Lumumba

  1925–1961

  First prime minister; assassinated in 1961

• Joseph Kasa-Vubu

  1915–1969

  First president

• Andrée Blouin

  1921–1986

  Pan-African organiser and speechwriter for Lumumba

• Simon Kimbangu

  1887–1951

  Prophet whose movement seeded mass resistance