By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
……..CONTINUED FROM PART ONE
Congo has been variously called Belgian Congo, Zaire and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which is the name by which Congo is known today. It was brutally ruled by the Belgian colonialists from 1908 to 1960, when it gained political independence from Belgium.
However, as we shall see in this article, it has not been an easy journey to meaningful independence and sovereignty, due mainly to its mineral wealth. The more we advance towards the middle of the 21st Century, the more it appears that the sovereignty and independence of Congo will be eroded by a multiplicity of forces (political and military).
A few days ago one critical thinker, Prof. Paul Wangoola, who spurred me to write this article, told me that Congo has been the graveyard for at least two leaders of Uganda.
He mentioned Dr. Apollo Milton Obote, who, in the 1960s, faced Parliamentary investigation in connection with the Gold of Congo; and General Tibuhaburwa Museveni, whose incursions into the DRC in the late 1990s, ostensibly to flush Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels out of the country, led to accusations by the Government of that country of pillage of its resources, such as Gold and timber, by his soldiers, who were also accused of rape of women, murder and recruitment of child soldiers between 1997 and 2003.
The most famous White Mercenary, Irishman Thomas Michael Hoare (Mad Mike), who was born in Ireland in 1919 and died in South Africa in 2020, wrote a book “Congo Mercenary”, giving us insights into the mind and actions of a mercenary, as well as interconnections to power and the hunt for mineral wealth.
The primary preoccupation of a mercenery is to reign terror in the heart of civilians and national soldiers on behalf of his employer. Like there were mercenary units in the European armies, there was what was called the 5 Commando Mercenary Unit of the Congolese Army formed in response to the Maoist-supported Simba rebellion of 1964-1967.
Apparently, the USA, which regarded Congo as a Cold war battlefield, was at the centre of mercenary activities in the country. It encouraged its stooge, Moise Tshombe, to hire white mercenaries.
Tshombe hired hundreds of these soldiers of Fortune from Belgium, France, Great Britain, Italy, South Africa and Spain. So, the Congolese Crisis, which I have called Congolese Tragedy, started as a proxy conflict in the Cold War, in which USSR and USA supported opposite factions.
100,000 civilians are believed to have been massacred by mercenaries. Some mercenaries were on the side of Joseph Mobutu, who eventually overthrew Joseph Kasavubu’s Government in 1965. The operations of mercenaries greatly undermined and destabilised the Presidency of the first post-independence leader of Congo, Joseph Kasavubu, especially in 1965, leading to Joseph Mobutu’s seizure of the instruments of power in a military coup.
However, much earlier, there was the destabilising factor of the Renegade Rebellion – the Kwilu Rebelion (1963-1964) – of Patrice Lumumba royalists, but this did not involve soldiers of fortune. In conclusion, the transition from White Mercenaries to Black Mercenaries is real.
Whether White or Black, mercenaries are soldiers paid for reigning havoc. Killing is like a hobby. In the end, they earn appreciably from their martial services, but enrich those who employ them far more. They operate best where there is breakdown of law and order, and through their activities, they maintain lawlessness and disorderliness in which maximum robbery of the wealth of a nation is achieved.
Under these conditions, respect for human life and human rights is secondary. With the emergence of proxy wars, where a country hires soldiers of another country to fight its wars, we may never see White mercenaries again, but we shall see Black Mercenaries more and more, in pursuit of resources of others.
For God and My Country.
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