Moïse Kapenda Tshombe (sometimes written Tshombé) (10 November 1919 – 29 June 1969) was a Congolese businessman and politician. He served as the president of the secessionist State of Katanga from 1960 to 1963 and as prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1964 to 1965.
Early life
A member of the Lunda ethnic group, Tshombe was born near Musumba, Belgian Congo, the son of a successful businessman. The Tshombe family were Lunda royalty and a number of Tshombes had reigned as the Mwaant Yav, the traditional king of the Lunda people. He received his education from an American missionary school and later trained as an accountant. In the 1950s, he took over a chain of stores in Katanga Province, which failed. Tshombe ran a number of businesses, which all failed, requiring his wealthy family to bail him out. Tshombe later became involved in politics.
Katanga was different from the other provinces of the Belgian Congo, being rich in copper, tin and uranium, all of which were mined by the Union Minière company. The wealth generated by its minerals led to 32,000 Belgians settling in Katanga by the 1950s, which had more white settlers than any other province of the Belgian Congo. The mining industry provided, by the standards of Africa, well paying jobs, and as such Katanga province attracted immigrants from the other provinces of the Belgian Congo.
Tshombe, like many members of the Lunda royalty, was close to the settler elite, and felt threatened by the flood of Kasai Baluba moving into Katanga. In the late 1950s, the Belgians allowed a limited degree of democracy in the Belgian Congo and in the first municipal elections in 1957, the majority of the mayors elected were Baluba, which sparked fears that the Lunda would be a marginalized group in their own province. Tshombe's political involvement started in 1957 in response to the perceived threat of Baluba domination.
Political career
Along with Godefroid Munongo, he founded the Confédération des associations tribales du Katanga (CONAKAT) party. CONAKAT promoted a federal Congo independent of the Belgian colonial empire. CONAKAT was founded in October 1958 to address the perceived problems of "immigration" into Katanga from the other provinces of the Belgian Congo, and its platform called for upholding the rights of the "indigenous" peoples of Katanga by ending the "immigration". The majority of the CONAKAT supporters were Lunda, Batabwa, Tshowke and Bayeke, most of whom lived in southern Katanga.
In common with the other members of the Lunda elite, the aristocratic Tshombe looked back nostalgically to the Kingdom of Lunda that once covered much of northern Angola, the southern Belgian Congo and Northern Rhodesia (modern Zambia) in the 17th and 18th centuries. CONAKAT formed an electoral alliance with the Union Katangaise party that represented the white Belgian settlers of Katanga. Both CONAKAT and the Union Katangaise wanted very broad autonomy for Katanga within an independent Congo in order to keep the wealth
generated by the mining industry within Katanga. In contrast to CONAKAT with its calls for autonomy and curbs on "immigration", the "immigrants" in Katanga tended to favor the parties that called for a more centralized state.
President of Katanga
CONAKAT won control of the Katanga provincial legislature in the May 1960 general elections. One month later, the Congo became an independent republic. Tshombe became President of the autonomous province of Katanga. Patrice Lumumba was tasked with forming a national government. Members of his party, the Mouvement National Congolais, were given charge of the portfolios of national defence and interior, despite Tshombe's objections. The portfolio for economic affairs was awarded to a CONAKAT member, but this was undercut by the positioning of nationalists in control of the Ministry and Secretariat for Economic Coordination. Mines and land affairs were placed under separate portfolios. Tshombe declared that this diluting of CONAKAT's influence rendered his agreement to support the government "null and void".