Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Tragic State Of The Congo From Decolonization To Dictatorship by Jeanne M. Haskin Front national de liberation du Congo. The left-wing Front national de liberation du Congo (FNLC) was a rebel movement in Zaire . It was founded in 1967 by Brigadier Nathaniel Mbumba from members of the gendarmerie of the Katanga province who had fled to Angola and had the armed arm Armée nationale pour la liberation du Congo . The fighters of the FLNC had initially fought on the Portuguese side in the Angolan War of Independence against the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA). It was one of the first rebel groups to fight the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko . She is said to have received support from the party of the later President Laurent-Désiré Kabilas , the Parti de la révolution populaire . It was based in northeast Angola. In March 1977, in the first Shaba invasion from Angola , they attacked the resource- rich Shaba province (now again Katanga ) in the south of the country. The Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko found himself unable to repel the invasion with his own army. That is why he asked foreign powers for help and was able to fend off the FNLC with the help of Moroccan troops and the French Foreign Legion . A second attack in May 1978, encouraged by reprisals by Zairean government troops, which led to the flight of 50,000 to 70,000 residents of Shaba to Angola, was repulsed by soldiers of the Foreign Legion and Belgium. It remained unclear to what extent the FLNC was supported by states of the Eastern Bloc. It was assumed that Cuba, the Soviet Union or the GDR supported the rebel group. The East German government is said to have been concerned about a lease agreement between Zaire and the West German rocket company OTRAG , which made around 100,000 km² available for test purposes. In May 1977 the government of Zaire expelled the GDR diplomats from the country because of the alleged support of the FNLC. As a result, the FNLC stayed in Angola and took part in the army's campaign against the rebel group UNITA in 1983 as part of the civil war . In 1984 the Angolan government moved the FLNC to northwest Angola, from where they no longer posed a threat to Shaba Province as a concession to the Zaire government. Mobutism. Mobutism , also spelled Mobutuism , was an official party ideology of the Popular Movement of the Revolution ( Mouvement Populaire de la Revolution , MPR) as well as the official state ideology in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) during the latter half of the 20th century. Mobutism encompassed and glorified the thoughts, visions, and policies of Zairian president and self-proclaimed "Father of the Nation," Mobutu Sese Seko. The ideology included such major Mobutu initiatives as "Zairianization." Contents. See also References Notes. The Popular Movement of the Revolution (MPR) was entrenched as the single legal political party in a one-party state in Zaire. [1] Originally Mobutu designed the constitution of Zaire to have a figurehead opposition party but later claimed that the constitution only recommended but did not demand this and thus a one-party state was created and all other political parties were banned afterwards in 1966. [2] The ideology laid down in the Manifesto of N'sele, incorporated "nationalism," "revolution," and "authenticity." [3] Revolution was described as a "truly national revolution, essentially pragmatic," which called for "the repudiation of both capitalism and communism," favoured "national revolution." [4] The Manifesto of N'sele also laid out the intentions of the government which included expansion of the national government's authority, a program committed to upgrading labour standards, having the country gain economic independence, and the creation of an "authentic nationalism" in Zaire. [5] Mobutu led the MPR and Zaire as a dictator, and denounced the idea of multiple leaders and political parties in the country saying: "In our African tradition there are never two chiefs….That is why we Congolese, in the desire to conform to the traditions of our continent, have resolved to group all the energies of the citizens of our country under the banner of a single national party." [6] Mobutu and the MPR were presented in propaganda as being attributed to the divine and sought to replace Christianity in Zaire with a religious devotion to Mobutu and the MPR with interior minister Engulu Baanga Mpongo once saying to supporters of the MPR: "God has sent a great prophet, our prestigious Guide Mobutu. This prophet is our liberator, our Messiah. Our Church is the MPR. Its chief is Mobutu. We respect him like one respects a Pope. Our gospel is Mobutuism. That is why the crucifixes must be replaced by the image of our Messiah." [7] Mobutu and the MPR pursued a national cultural revival program in Zaire called Authenticité beginning in 1967 which sought to purge colonial European culture from Zaire and restore local culture, such as by forbidding Christian names and culture while promoting local African names and culture as well as forbidding western suits and creating a state-authorized uniform called the abacost . [8] The ideology survives today in such organizations as Nzanga Mobutu's Union of Mobutuist Democrats. See also. Lumumbism, a competing ideology based on the ideas of former prime minister Patrice Lumumba. Related Research Articles. Zaire , officially the Republic of Zaire , was the name of a sovereign state between 1971 and 1997 in Central Africa that is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was, by area, the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa, the third-largest in all of Africa, and the 11th-largest in the world. With a population of over 23 million inhabitants, Zaire was the most-populous officially Francophone country in Africa, as well as one of the most populous in Africa. Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga was a Congolese politician and military officer who was the President of Zaire from 1965 to 1997. He also served as Chairman of the Organisation of African Unity from 1967 to 1968. During the Congo Crisis, Mobutu, serving as Chief of Staff of the Army and supported by Belgium and the United States, deposed the democratically elected government of Nationalist Patrice Lumumba in 1960. Mobutu installed a government that arranged for Lumumba's execution in 1961, and continued to lead the country's armed forces until he took power directly in a second coup in 1965. Mpinga Kasenda was a political figure in Zaire under Mobutu Sese Seko. Kasenda was the prime minister of Zaire from 1977 to 1979 and the foreign minister from 1993 to 1994. He was killed in a plane crash near the airport in Kinshasa. Holden Álvaro Roberto was an Angolan revolutionary politician and freedom fighter who founded and led the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) from 1962 to 1999. His memoirs are unfinished. The Popular Movement of the Revolution was the ruling political party in Zaire. For most of its existence, it was the only legally permitted party in the country. It was founded by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu on 20 May 1967. Merwin Crawford Young was an American political scientist and professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The Catholic Church in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. Jean Nguza Karl-i-Bond was a prominent Zairian politician. Authenticité , sometimes Zairianisation in English, was an official state ideology of the Mobutu regime that originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s in what was first the Democratic Republic of Congo, later renamed Zaire. The authenticity campaign was an effort to rid the country of the lingering vestiges of colonialism and the continuing influence of Western culture and to create a more centralized and singular national identity. The policy, as implemented, included numerous changes to the state and to private life, including the renaming of the Congo and its cities, as well as an eventual mandate that Zairians were to abandon their Christian names for more "authentic" ones. In addition, Western style attire was banned and replaced with the Mao-style tunic labeled the "abacost" and its female equivalent. The policy began to wane in the late 1970s and had mostly been abandoned by 1990. Sheldon Baird Vance , born in Crookston, Minnesota, was the U.S. Ambassador to Zaire from May 27, 1969 through March 26, 1974. During his tenure, he developed a close relationship with President Mobutu Sese Seko, and became an ardent and vocal supporter of the President; he also supported Mobutu's aspirations for regional leadership and advocated foreign investment in Zaire and "strongly recommended" that the U.S. sell M-16s to Mobutu. According to diplomats stationed in Zaire at the time, Vance "would not permit negative analyses of the Mobutu regime to be transmitted to Washington." Vance's support of Mobutu continued even after he left Zaire; shortly after retiring from the State Department, he joined a law firm representing the Zairian government. He was also briefly sent back to Zaire after his successor, Deane Hinton was declared persona non grata , to patch up the American-Zairian relationship, which had soured considerably during Hinton's tenure. Mobutu Sese Seko's foreign policy emphasized his alliance with the United States and the Western world while ostensibly maintaining a non- aligned position in international affairs. Mobutu ruled Zaire as President for 32 years, from 1965 to 1997. Deane Roesch Hinton was an American diplomat and ambassador.