Narrator: In 1992, a remarkable democratic experiment took place in Kinshasa. Over 2,800 delegates of the Congolese Sovereign National Conference voted to strip the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of his powers and reclaim their country's name, changing it from Zaire back to Congo. The international community largely ignored them. Five years later, a rebel leader named Laurent-Désiré Kabila marched into the capital, seized power by force, and declared himself president. This time, the world took notice, quickly recognizing his rule. This stark contrast reveals a brutal truth about the Congo's history: for over a century, the aspirations of its people have been systematically crushed by a combination of internal betrayal and powerful external forces who prefer the certainty of a strongman to the unpredictability of democracy.

This tragic and complex history is the subject of Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja's landmark work, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History. The book provides a lucid and devastating account of the Congolese people's unending struggle for liberation, not just from colonial masters, but from the very leaders who claimed to be their saviors.

Narrator: The tragedy of the modern Congo began not with a nation, but with a personal possession. In the late 19th century, King Leopold II of Belgium masterfully manipulated European powers and disguised his colonial ambitions as a humanitarian mission to end the slave trade. He enlisted the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley to secure treaties from hundreds of local chiefs, often through duplicity and force, creating a private fiefdom 75 times the size of Belgium.

This was not a colony; it was a slave state built on terror. Leopold's agents imposed a brutal system of forced labor to extract rubber and ivory. Villages were given impossible quotas, and failure to meet them was punished by torture, mutilation, and mass murder. The Force Publique, Leopold's private army, was infamous for cutting off the hands of men, women, and children as proof that bullets hadn't been wasted. The human cost was staggering. Historical estimates suggest that during Leopold's 23-year rule, the population of the Congo was slashed by as much as 50 percent, a loss of somewhere between 8 and 10 million lives. This period of unimaginable horror was not an unfortunate byproduct of colonialism; it was the system's entire purpose, establishing a foundation of exploitation that would haunt the Congo for generations.

Narrator: The fight for independence in the 1950s was not driven by a single leader but by a broad and powerful alliance of Congolese society. This alliance united the country's masses—its peasants and workers—with a small but influential class of educated Africans known as the évolués. Initially, the Belgian colonial administration tried to co-opt the évolués by offering them a path to assimilation through a "social merit card." However, the process was designed to be humiliating. An investigative commission would visit a candidate's home to inspect their silverware, ensure they ate at a table with their spouse, and confirm they spoke French with their children. This condescending process, combined with persistent discrimination, alienated the very elite Belgium had hoped to create, pushing them to join the popular struggle.

The power of the masses was the true engine of change. On January 4, 1959, after authorities banned a political rally in Kinshasa, the crowd refused to disperse. The protest exploded into a three-day revolt, with people attacking symbols of white authority and privilege. The Kinshasa revolt sounded the death knell for Belgian colonialism. Shocked by the violence and unwilling to fight a protracted colonial war, Belgium hastily agreed to a negotiated independence, which was granted on June 30, 1960. The anticolonial alliance had won, but its unity would prove tragically short-lived.

Narrator: The First Congo Crisis, which erupted just days after independence, was a crisis of decolonization fueled by an ideological split between radicals and moderates. The radicals, led by the Congo's first democratically elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, sought genuine economic and political sovereignty. The moderates, backed by Belgium and other Western powers, were more willing to accept neocolonial arrangements.

Lumumba’s fierce nationalism and his appeal to the Soviet Union for help in quelling a Belgian-backed secession in the mineral-rich Katanga province sealed his fate. In the Cold War climate, Washington viewed him as a potential communist threat. A Belgian parliamentary inquiry later confirmed that the Belgian government saw Lumumba as an enemy and sought his "final elimination." US President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave the CIA a green light to "get rid of this guy."

The plot involved a vast conspiracy of US, Belgian, and UN officials working in concert with Lumumba's Congolese rivals, including Joseph Mobutu. After being illegally dismissed and captured, Lumumba was flown to Katanga, where he was brutally tortured and murdered on January 17, 1961. His assassination was more than the murder of a man; it was the murder of the Congo's democratic hopes, paving the way for decades of dictatorship and foreign plunder.

Narrator: The man who benefited most from Lumumba's death was Joseph Mobutu Sese Seko. With strong backing from the West, Mobutu seized power in 1965 and established one of history's most enduring and corrupt dictatorships. For over 30 years, he ruled the country—which he renamed Zaire—as his personal piggy bank. The state became an instrument for systematic looting, with Mobutu and his inner circle siphoning off billions of dollars from the nation's vast mineral wealth.

This system of rule, known as kleptocracy, was based on patronage and fear. A telling anecdote from 1996 reveals the depth of the rot: a government minister, fearing he would be fired in an upcoming cabinet reshuffle, flew to Mobutu's palace with a briefcase containing one million US dollars as a "gift" for Mobutu's wife. The minister not only kept his job but was promoted to deputy prime minister. While Mobutu and his elite lived in unimaginable luxury, the country's infrastructure crumbled, its people starved, and its security forces became a praetorian guard dedicated solely to protecting the regime. By the time he was overthrown in 1997, Mobutu had left the Congolese state in a state of total decay.

Narrator: The fall of Mobutu did not bring peace but instead unleashed a new and even more devastating phase of conflict, often called "Africa's World War." The 1997 invasion that brought Laurent Kabila to power was heavily backed by Rwanda and Uganda. However, when Kabila tried to assert his independence and ordered their troops to leave, his former allies turned on him, invading again in 1998 and sponsoring new Congolese rebel groups.

This was not a war of ideology but a war of plunder. A UN report later detailed how military commanders from both nations engaged in systematic looting of the Congo's resources, including diamonds, gold, timber, and coltan—a mineral essential for mobile phones. The competition for spoils became so intense that Ugandan and Rwandan forces, once allies, fought bloody battles against each other on Congolese soil in the city of Kisangani, killing hundreds of civilians. This regional predation, facilitated by a network of Congolese collaborators, transformed the Congo into a battleground where neighboring states and warlords enriched themselves at the expense of millions of Congolese lives.

Narrator: The central tragedy documented in The Congo from Leopold to Kabila is the vicious cycle of betrayal that has defined the nation's history. At every critical juncture, the Congolese people's legitimate quest for democracy and prosperity has been sabotaged, both by a political class that consistently prioritizes personal enrichment over public good, and by powerful external actors who see the Congo not as a sovereign nation but as a repository of resources to be exploited.

The book's most challenging and enduring idea is that despite this relentless history of violence, corruption, and foreign interference, the Congolese people's struggle has never been extinguished. From the early resistance against Leopold, to the mass movement for independence, to the pro-democracy activists who stood up to Mobutu, the desire for a just and sovereign nation persists. The ultimate question Nzongola-Ntalaja leaves us with is a profound one: After more than a century of suffering, what will it finally take for the Congolese people to break the cycle and achieve the "second independence" they so rightfully deserve?