HISTORY OF THE CONGO REPUBLIC

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The Congo was the first former French colony to go Marxist, in ideology if not in practice. Perhaps France was just being repaid for forcing onto the Congo one of the most infamous projects of the colonial era: the building of the Congo-Ocean Railway, which resulted in the deaths of untold thousands of Africans.

Pygmies were the first to inhabit the area. Bantu groups, including the Teke and the Kongo, followed them and established powerful kingdoms. Some of these kingdoms were in the practice of capturing men from other areas. This played into the hands of the Portuguese, who arrived here in the late 15th century. They offered these kingdoms European goods in exchange for slaves. When the Portuguese ships arrived, five or six times a year, they were merely handed the slaves. It was a simple operation for the Portuguese, but for the Congolese it created internal turmoil.

More slaves were taken from what are now the Congo, Zaire and Angola than just about any other area of Africa - a staggering 13.5 million people over three centuries. When the slave trade ended in the late 19th century, the coastal kingdoms disappeared.

Colonial Period

Brazzaville is named after the famous French explorer, Savorgnan de Brazza. De Brazza made his first expedition here during 1875 to 1878, and crossed almost the entire country on foot. In 1880, during his second expedition, he hastily signed a treaty of friendship with Makoko, king of the Teke, to prevent British explorer H M Stanley from extending his territorial acquisitions beyond the Congo River. This agreement ceded certain land to France, including the site of what was to become Brazzaville. The area became known as the Middle Congo.

Having successfully combined their territories in West Africa in a federation called French West Africa, the French did the same in Central Africa. The Middle Congo, Gabon and the CAR (Central African Republic-Chad) became French Equatorial Africa in 1908. As the capital of this federation and a big new star on the African map, Brazzaville received half of the territory's civil servants and was the beneficiary of schools, a hospital, the Pasteur Institute for sleeping sickness research, and, eventually, a college.

De Brazza was instrumental in turning the entire area over to various private French companies, with the government collecting rent and usually 15% of the profits. The companies forced the Africans to work for them and treated them so brutally that stories of the atrocities surfaced in the French newspapers. The French public was outraged, so the French government countered by sending de Brazza to investigate.

De Brazza died in 1905 during his return voyage to Africa, and consequently little was done to curb the abuses. The companies continued to take Africans from their villages and this eventually resulted in famine because food production was neglected. In some areas, starvation wiped out two-thirds of the population between 1914 and 1924. It is little wonder that the country's population today is so small.

Congo-Ocean Railway

In 1924 the French embarked on their most ambitious undertakeing in French Equatorial Africa - the building of the Congo Ocean Railway from Pointe-Noire to Brazzaville. The French badly needed this railway because the Congo River was unnavigable below Brazzaville. Without an outlet to the sea, the French Congo, as it came to be called, couldn't be exploited.

The French faced the same dilemma in Chad and the CAR. The only outlet to the sea for these two areas was the Oubangui River and its extansion, the Congo River. Brazzaville, however, was as far down as the riverboats could go.

What the colonials considered a 'great' project was a disaster for the Africans. Workers were cheap, so the builders of the railway resorted to using forced labour on a frightening scale rather than use the most elementary technical processes which would have prevented an enormous loss of life.

The French went throughout the Congo, the CAR and southern Chad looking for Africans to work on the project. Thousands were dragged from their villages and many of them died or deserted. Finding and keeping labour was such a big problem that it took 14 years to complete the project.

During WW II Brazzaville assumed even greater importance when de Gaulle selected it as the capital of La France Libre resistance forces. The beautiful house he built there is Brazzaville landmark. During the historical Brazzaville Conference of 1944, held to discuss French colonial problems, de Gaulle declared that the time had come for the French African colonies to enjoy a certain degree of emancipation, including the abolition of forced labour, the election of African representatives to the French Constitutional Assembly and the formation of their own elected parliaments.

Thereafter, African political leadership develpoed and progressive political parties emerged, hand in hand with considerable strides in education.

Independence

Because the French had exploited the Congolese so brutally, particularly during the construction of the railway, it is hardly surprising that these new leaders were attracted to communist ideology. The French saw this as a threat to their continued control, so they set about grooming moderate politicians to assume control at independence, which finally came in 1960. Fulbert Youlou became president and quickly established markedly pro-Western policies.

The student and union leaders, however had other ideas. When the unpopular Youlou drafted a scheme to merge the opposition parties and force the trade unions to toe the line, massive demonstrations took place in Brazzaville. He retaliated by imprisoning some of the labour leaders.

Thus began 'The Three Glorious Days' in mid-August 1963, now the country's major holiday. The trade unionists declared a general strike, freed their arrested members, and forced Youlou to resign. The more radical elements seized power and appointed Alphonse Massemba-Debat as president of the National Assembly during the Youlou period, and Pascal Lissouba, an agricultural technocrat; as prime minister. Thereafter, they formed the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) as the sole party, which declared itself Marxist-Leninist.

For an outsider, the period from 1963 to 1979 can seem a little confusing. It was a period of constant struggle between the army and the political party (MNR), with the militancy of the people and the trade unionists always a factor. Lissouba was replaced after three years by a pro-communist minister, Ambrose Noumazalay, but Massemba-Debat held on to power for five years, during which time the MNR held the centre of power. The youth wing of the MNR developed a paramilitary force with enough power to threaten the army.

By 1968 they reached a stalemate, which was resolved by a political compromise replacing Massemba-Debat with a leftist army officer, Marion Nguouabi and merging the party's civil defence group into the military. Proceeding to turn the country into a sort of African Albania, Nguouabi abolished the National Assembly and the MNR and replaced the latter with the new Congolese Workers' Party (PCT), which continued the Marxist rhetoric. Even the country's flag, red with a crossed hammer and hoe, resembled that of the Soviets.

The French supported Nguouabi until he backed away from supporting the West's attempt to keep oil-rich Cabinda (an exclave of Angola) out of Angolan hands This led to his assassination and replacement by Brigadier Joachim Yhombi-Opango who, they thought, as head of the army would reassert the army's control over the party. He did, but when he went so far as to try destroying the PCT by annulling its congress, the trade unionists took to the streets in protest.

The PCT's central committee then met to make preparations for the party congress. By the time of the congress in 1979, the Congolese radio was accusing Yhombi of having embezzled over US$50 million, including some US$15 million donated by Algeria for a water project in the country's most impoverished area, the Bateke plateau. One of the many rumours at the time was that he had purchased a gold bed from abroad. The congress demanded Yhombi's arrest, expelled him from the party and confiscated his goods. Colonel Denis Sassou-Nguesso, a M'Bochi, took over the presidency.

The 1980s

Starting in 1979, it was the party, not the army, which called the shots. Trade union militants were once again very influential and demanded enactment of radical, anticolonial measures. The French lost out. With Yhombi gone, they no longer had close ties with the govemment.

Previously the French oil companies considered it was in their interest to claim that the oil reserves were lower than forecast. But with the new radicalization accompanying the rise of Sassou-Nguesso, they wanted to be the bearers of good news. The new director of the French oil company ELF Congo changed the company's tune, saying that their forecasts for petroleum production in certain fields were 100% higher than their previous estimates and that they would step up exploration. Production in crude oil thereafter rose significantly, from 1.2 million tonnes in 1979 to 6.3 million tonnes in 1985.

While the party spouted Marxist rhetoric, the country began moving away from a pro-Soviet position to one of political neutrality. On the one hand, the government robed out the red carpet for the French during Brazzaville's 100th anniversary celebrations and gave the Soviets second billing. Then the Congolese turned around and signed a treaty of friendship widh the USSR, somedhing few other African countries had done. This delicate balancing act continued until the end of the decade when the Berlin wall came down; at this time the government's strong ties with the USSR collapsed as well.

Even before then, pragmatism, not socialism, ruled. President Sassou-Nguesso went on a campaign to encourage Westem investment and to return unprofitable state-run firms to the private sector, much to the applause of the West. The government even sent groups of Congolese on state department tours of the USA and invited American marketing professors to give management seminars in Brazzaville.

History of the Congo Basin Exploration