The Belgian Throne during Colonization (1867-1885 - exploration; 5 February 1885 - 30 June 1960 - colonization)

Léopold II (king from 1865 to 1909) organized in 1876 a private holding company disguised as an international scientific and philanthropic association, which he called the International African Society. In 1879, he hired Henry Morton Stanley to establish a colony in the Congo region. Much diplomatic maneuvering resulted in the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, at which representatives of thirteen European countries and the United States recognized Leopold as sovereign of most of the area he and Stanley had laid claim to. On February 5, 1885, the result was the Congo Free State (later the Belgian Congo, then Zaire, and now the Democratic Republic of Congo), an area 76 times larger than Belgium, which Leopold was free to rule as a personal domain. Reports of outrageous exploitation and widespread human rights abuses (including enslavement and mutilation) of the native population, especially in the rubber industry, led to an international protest movement in the early 1900s. Forced labor was extorted from the natives. Estimates of the death toll range from 5 to 15 million and many historians consider the atrocities to have constituted a genocide. Finally, in 1908, the Belgian parliament compelled the King to cede the Congo Free State to Belgium. The book Leopold's Ghost explained in great details the atrocities the people of Congo endure during colonization, especially under Leopold II.

Albert I (king from 1909 to 1934) succeeded his uncle, Leopold II on the throne on December 17, 1909.At the beginning of World War I, Albert resisted the German advance and held them off long enough for Britain and France to prepare for the Battle of the Marne (September 6 - 9, 1914). He led his army through the Battle of the Yser and at the end of the war back into its own territory. He re-entered Brussels to a hero's welcome. King Albert I died in a climbing accident at Marche-les-Dames, in the Ardennes region of Belgium near Namur

Léopold III (king from 1934 to 1951) reigned as King of the Belgians for 17 years, when he abdicated in favour of his Heir Apparent, his son Baudouin. Leopold III was born in Brussels as Prince Leopold of Belgium, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Saxony, and succeeded to the throne of Belgium on February 23, 1934 on the death of his father, King Albert I of Belgium. In retirement, he followed his passion as an amateur social anthropologist and travelled the world. He went for instance in Senegal and strongly criticized the Belgian decolonization process. King Leopold III died in 1983 at Woluwe-Saint-Lambert. He is interred with his wives in the royal vault at the Church of Our Lady in Laeken.

Baudouin I (king from 1951 to 1993) ascended the throne when his father King Leopold III abdicated on July 16, 1951. During Baudouin's reign the colony of Belgian Congo took its independence, and the King personally attended the festivities - giving a speech that was widely seen as insensitive to the atrocities in the Congo which received a blistering response by Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba right after he finished his.

President from July 1st, 1960 November 25th, 1965.

Joseph Kasa Vubu (1917–March 24, 1969) was the first President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for a period of 5 years, (1960–1965). Being the leader of ABAKO (Alliance des Bakongo), he was elected by the Congolese National assembly as President and he took office in July of 1960.

The Congo was immediately disrupted by political and military strife and regional secessionist movements, while the central government was paralyzed by conflict between the conservative Kasa Vubu and the prime minister Patrice Lumumba. On September 5, 1960, Kasa Vubu and Lumumba each announced the other's dismissal, creating a stalemate that was only ended on September 14 with army commander Joseph Mobutu's seizure of power in support of Kasa Vubu. Lumumba was later handed to secessionist forces in the southern province of Katanga and killed. Over the next five years, Kasa Vubu presided over a succession of weak governments, in July 1964 appointing former Katangan secessionist leader Moise Tshombe prime minister to use European mercenaries against leftist rebels. Mobutu seized power a second time on November 25, 1965, this time deposing Kasa Vubu and subsequently declaring himself head of state .

Head of State for Stanleyville only (31 March 1961 to 5 August 1961) during the rebellion

Antoine Gizenga served as Deputy Prime Minister (1960, 1961-1962), Prime Minister (1960-1961), and Head of State (1961) in rebellion. His government at Stanleyville was recognized by 21 African, Asian, and Eastern European countries in February 1961. He was imprisoned from January 1962 to July 1964 and again from October 1964 to November 1965. He was exiled from 1965 to 1992. He is now an presidential candidate for the election scheduled July 31st, 2006.

President from 25 November 1965 to 16 May 1997

Known commonly as Mobutu Sese Seko, born Joseph-Désiré Mobutu (October 14, 1930 – September 7, 1997), was the President of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) for 32 years (1965 – 1997).Mobutu was born in Lisala, Belgian Congo. He joined the Force Publique (FP), the Belgian Congolese army in 1949. He left in 1956 and joined Mouvement National Congolais (MNC). Following the granting of independence on June 30, 1960, he joined the new government as Secretary of the State for Defense. The new government was a coalition between Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and President Joseph Kasavubu, both of whom soon started to struggle for overall power - both attempting to dismiss the other from government with Kasavubu ultimately proving successful. On September 14, 1960 a coup d'état overthrew Lumumba in support of the President. Colonel Mobutu was a key figure in the coup and was significantly rewarded for this work.

In 1965, now Lieutenant-General Mobutu seized power from President Kasavubu, following another power struggle between Kasavubu and his prime minister Moise Tshombe. The CIA and the Belgians were actively working in the country to support Mobutu and get rid of Lumumba because they felt Mobutu would be a better ally in the Cold War. It is also argued that the Western support for Mobutu was also related to his allowing businesses to export the many natural resources of Zaire without worrying about environmental, labor, or other regulations that protect against corruption and abuse.

Mobutu declared himself president for five years. He quickly centralized power, put down an attempted coup in October 1967 and was elected president in 1970. Embarking on a campaign of anti-European, pro-African cultural awareness, Mobutu renamed the country the Republic of Zaire in October 1971. Africans were ordered to drop their Christian names for African ones, and priests were warned that they would face 5 years' imprisonment if they were caught baptizing a Zairean child with a Christian name. Western attire and ties were banned, and men were forced to wear a Mao-style tunic known as an abacost.

In 1972 Mobutu renamed himself Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga ("The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake"), Mobutu Sese Seko for short.

Early in his rule, Mobutu consolidated power by publicly executing political rivals, secessionists, coup plotters, and other threats to his rule. To set an example, many were hanged before large audiences, including former Prime Minister Evariste Kimba, who with three other politicians died on a Kinshasa gallows in June 1966. A rebel leader, Pierre Mulele, was lured back to the country on the assumption that he would be amnestied, but was tortured and killed by Mobutu's forces. While Mulele was still alive, his eyes were gouged out, his genitals were ripped off, and his limbs were amputated one by one. Mobutu later moved away from murder, and switched to a new tactic, that of buying off political rivals rather than killing them. He used his slogan "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer still," to describe his tactic of neutralizing opponents through bribery. This was done to lure exiled opponents back to Zaire, to limit their capacity to damage his and the country's reputation

In May 1990, due to economic problems and domestic unrest, Mobutu agreed to end the ban on other political parties and appointed a transitional government that would lead to promised elections, but he retained substantial powers. However, following riots in Kinshasa by unpaid soldiers, Mobutu brought opposition figures into a coalition government, but he still connived to retain control of the security services and important ministries. Factional divisions led to the creation of two governments in 1993, one pro and one anti-Mobutu. The anti-Mobutu government was headed by Laurent Monsengwo and Étienne Tshisekedi of the UDPS. The economic situation was still dreadful, and in 1994 the two groups joined as the High Council of Republic - Parliament of Transition (HCR-PT). Mobutu appointed Kengo Wa Dondo, an advocate of austerity and free-market reforms, as prime minister. Mobutu was becoming increasingly physically frail and during one of his absences for medical treatment in Europe, Tutsis captured much of eastern Zaire.

Initially he nationalized foreign-owned firms and forced European investors out of the country. In many cases he handed the management of these firms to relatives and close associates who stole the companies's assets. This precipitated such an economic slump that Mobutu was forced by 1977 to try to woo foreign investors back. Also in 1977 he needed foreign aid to help repulse an attack on Katanga by Katangan rebels based in Angola. France airlifted into the country 1,500 elite Moroccan paratroopers, who defeated the rebels. However, a year later, the rebels attacked again, in greater numbers. As Mobutu's army stood on the brink of defeat, Belgium and France deployed troops (provided logistical support by the United States), and again the rebels were defeated. Also rallying to Mobutu's aid were the Chinese, determined above all to thwart Soviet advances on the African continent.

Despite this, he was re-elected in 1977, but no other candidates stood. He worked hard on little but to increase his personal fortune, which in 1984 was estimated to amount to nearly US $5 billion, most of it in Swiss banks. This was almost equivalent to the country's foreign debt at the time, and by 1989 the government was forced to default on international loans from Belgium. He owned a fleet of Mercedes-Benz vehicles that he used to travel between his numerous palaces, while many of his people starved. Infrastructure virtually collapsed, and many public service workers went months without being paid. Most money was siphoned off to Mobutu, his family, and top political and military leaders. Only the Special Presidential Division - on whom his physical safety depended - was paid adequately or regularly. A popular saying that the civil servants pretended to work while the state pretended to pay them expressed this grim reality.

Another feature of Mobutu's economic mismanagement, directly linked to the way he and his friends siphoned off so much of the country's wealth, was rampant inflation. The rapid decline in the real value of salaries strongly encouraged a culture of corruption and dishonesty among public servants of all kinds.

Mobutu's rule earned a reputation as one of the world's foremost examples of kleptocracy and nepotism. He was also the subject of a massive personality cult, devised by his Minister of Information, Dominique Sakombi Inongo. The evening news on television was preceded by an image of him descending through clouds from the heavens, portraits of him adorned many public places, government officials wore lapels bearing his portrait, and he held such titles as "Father of the Nation," "Savior of the People," and "Supreme Combatant."

However, during the Cold War this did not prevent western countries like the United States or international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund from providing economic support for his regime through multiple loans, due to Mobutu's pro-Western, anti-communist stance. It was a widely held belief that it was either "Mobutu or chaos"; that is, that without Mobutu, Zaire would become politically unstable and prone to civil war, ethnic violence, or worse. Zaire's strategic location in the center of the continent and vast mineral wealth were also cited as reasons to support Mobutu.

Mobutu was overthrown in the First Congo War by Ugandan supported Kabila. Tutsis had long opposed Mobutu due to his open support for Rwandan Hutu extremists responsible for the Rwandan genocide in 1994. When his government issued an order in November 1996 forcing Tutsis to leave Zaire on penalty of death, they erupted in rebellion. From eastern Zaire, with the support of presidents, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, they launched an offensive to overthrow Mobutu, joining forces with locals opposed to him as they marched west toward Kinshasa. Ailing with cancer, Mobutu was unable to coordinate the resistance, which crumbled in front of the march, the army being more used to suppressing civilians than defending the large country. On May 16, 1997, following failed peace talks, the Tutsi rebels and other anti-Mobutu groups as the Alliance des Forces Democratiques pour la Liberation du Congo-Zaire (AFDL) captured Kinshasa. Zaire was renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mobutu went into temporary exile in Togo but lived mostly in Morocco. Laurent-Désiré Kabila became the new president in the same day.

Mobutu died on September 7, 1997 in exile in Rabat, Morocco, from prostate cancer which had been developing since 1962. He is buried in Rabat, in the Christian cemetery known as "Pax." The Congolese people have been pushing to get his body back in Congo.

President from 17 May 1997 to 16 January 2001

Laurent-Désiré Kabila (November 27, 1939 – January 18, 2001) was President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from May 1997, when he overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko until his assassination in January 2001. He was succeeded by his son Joseph Kabila.

He was born a member of the Luba tribe in Jadotville (Likasi) in the Belgian Congo, Katanga province. He studied political philosophy in France and attended the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania.

When the Congo gained independence in 1960, Kabila was a youth leader in a party allied to Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba was overthrown by Joseph Mobutu within months. Kabila and other supporters of Lumumba fled into the jungles of eastern Zaire. In 1964, Kabila helped organise a revolt in the Ruzizi region.

Che Guevara assisted Kabila for a short time in 1965. Guevara had appeared in the Congo with approximately 100 men who planned to bring about a Cuban style revolution. In Guevara's opinion, Kabila (then 26) was "not the man of the hour" he had alluded to, with Kabila being one who was more interested in consuming alcohol and bedding women. This, in Guevara's opinion, was the reason that Kabila would show up days late at times to provide supplies, aid, or backup to Guevara's men. The lack of cooperation between Kabila and Guevara led to the revolt being suppressed that same year.

In 1967 Kabila founded the People's Revolutionary Party (PRP). With the support of the People's Republic of China the PRP created a secessionist Marxist state in South Kivu province, west of Lake Tanganyika. The PRP state came to an end in 1988 and Kabila was believed dead.

Kabila returned in October 1996, leading ethnic Tutsis from South Kivu against Hutu forces, marking the beginning of the First Congo War. With support from Burundi, Uganda and the Rwandan Tutsi government, Kabila pushed his forces into a full-scale rebellion against Mobutu as the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL). By mid-1997, the ADFL had made significant gains and following failed peace talks in May 1997, Mobutu fled the country, and Kabila entered Kinshasa on May 20. Kabila made himself head of state, created the Public Salvation Government and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kabila had been a committed Marxist, but his policies at this point were a mix of capitalism and collectivism. While some in the West hailed Kabila as representing a "new breed" of African leadership, critics charged that Kabila's policies differed little from his predecessor's, being characterised by authoritarianism, corruption, and human rights abuses. Kabila was also accused of self-aggrandizing tendencies, including trying to set up a personality cult, with the help of Mobutu's former Minister of Information, Dominique Sakombi Inongo.

By 1998, Kabila's former allies in Uganda and Rwanda had turned against him and backed a new rebellion of the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD). Kabila found new allies in Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola and managed to hold on in the south and west of the country and in July 1999 peace talks led to the withdrawal of most foreign forces.

However, the rebellion continued and Kabila was shot during the afternoon of January 16, 2001 by one of his own staff, Rashidi Kasereka, who was also killed. The assassination was part of a failed coup attempt which was crushed and Kabila, who may have been still alive, was flown to Zimbabwe for medical treatment. His death was confirmed there on 18 January. One week later, his body was returned to Congo and his son, Joseph Kabila Kabange, became president on 26 January.

The investigation into the assassination led to 135 people being tried before a special military tribunal. The alleged ringleader, a cousin of Kabila Colonel Eddy Kapend, and 25 others were sentenced to death in January 2003. Of the other defendants 64 were jailed, with sentences from six months to life, and 45 were exonerated

President from 17 January 2001 to Present

Joseph Kabila Kabange (born June 4, 1971), known commonly as Joseph Kabila, became president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo after the assassination of his father Laurent-Désiré Kabila in January 2001.

Joseph Kabila was born in the rebel stronghold of his father, then rebel leader Laurent Desire Kabila, in Hewa Bora II, South Kivu, in the East of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He's the son of Laurent Desire Kabila and Mahanya Sifa Kabila. However, there other versions about his parents’ identity, his real age and his birthplace.[1].

Kabila started elementary school in the public school system, in Fizi, South Kivu, and finished them in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. He then went on to attend secondary school at a Tanzanian secondary school, in Mbeya, Tanzania.

In order to integrate his stepfather's rebel forces, Joseph Kabila followed a military curriculum in Tanzania, and from the neighbouring governments of Uganda and Rwanda, after graduating from high-school. In 1996, he joined Laurent Kabila's Rwandan backed rebel forces (the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo, (AFDL)), as operations commander, in the campaign that is dubbed the First Congo War. Following the AFDL's victory, and Laurent Kabila's rise to the presidency, Joseph Kabila went on to get further training at the National Defense University, in Beijing, China.

When he returned from China, Kabila was given the rank of Major-General, and appointed Deputy-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Congolese Armed Forces, in 1998. He was later, in 2000, appointed Army Chief of Staff, a position he held until the elder President Kabila's untimely death, in January 2001. As chief of staff, he was one of the main military leaders in charge of Government troops, in the Second Congo War.

When Kabila rose to the Presidency on 26 January 2001, at age 29, he was considered young and inexperienced. Joseph Kabila has since attempted to end the civil war and remove foreign troops from the country, with some success. The 2002 peace agreement signed at the Inter-Congolese Dialogue in Sun City, South Africa, which nominally ended the Second Congo War, maintained Joseph Kabila as President and head of state of the Congo. An interim administration was set up under him, including the leaders of the country's two main rebel groups as vice-presidents (two other vice-presidents are representatives of the civilian opposition and government supporters respectively).

On March 28, 2004, a coup attempt or mutiny around the capital Kinshasa, allegedly organized by supporters of the late president Mobutu Sese Seko, failed. On June 11, 2004, coup plotters led by Major Eric Lenge allegedly attempted to take power, declaring that the country's peace process was not working, but were defeated by loyalist troops.

In December 2005, a referendum approved a new constitution, and presidential elections are currently planned for July 30, 2006 (having been delayed from an earlier date in June). The new constitution lowers the minimum age of presidential candidates from 35 to 30; Kabila has recently turned 35, however, prior to the election. In March 2006, he registered as a candidate.

Although Kabila registered as an independent, he is the "initiator" of the People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), which chose him as their candidate to the election.

When confronted with a report of sex crimes being committed in the Congolese military, Kabila squirmed in his chair and stated that the violent rapes were unforgivable. He pointed out 300 soldiers have been convicted of sex crimes, although he admitted that is not enough.

Joseph Kabila claims to hold a BA (Bachelor of Arts) in International Studies and Diplomacy from Washington International University, a non-traditional, distance learning university, with no classroom attendance required.

1. Kinshasa (Capital: Kinshasa)
2. Kongo central (Capital: Matadi)
3. Kwango (Capital: Kenge)
4. Kwilu (Capital: Kikwit)
5. Mai-Ndombe (Capital: Inongo)
6. Kasaï (Capital: Luebo)
7. Lulua (Capital: Kananga)
8. Kasaï oriental (Capital: Mbuji-Mayi)
9. Lomami (Capital: Kabinda)
10. Sankuru (Capital: Lodja)
11. Maniema (Capital: Kindu)
12. Sud-Kivu (Capital: Bukavu)
13. Nord-Kivu (Capital: Goma)
14. Ituri (Capital: Bunia)
15. Haut-Uele (Capital: Isiro)
16. Tshopo (Capital: Kisangani)
17. Bas-Uele (Capital: Buta)
18. Nord-Ubangi (Capital: Gbadolite)
19. Mongala (Capital: Lisala)
20. Sud-Ubangi (Capital: Gemena)
21. Équateur (Capital: Mbandaka)
22. Tshuapa (Capital: Boende)
23. Tanganyika (Capital: Kalemie)
24. Haut-Lomami (Capital: Kamina)
25. Lualaba (Capital: Kolwezi)
26. Haut-Katanga (Capital: Lubumbashi)