Moïse Kapenda Tshombe (November 10, 1919 – June 29, 1969) was a Congolese politician.
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He was the son of a successful Congolese businessman and was born in Musumba, Congo. He received his education from an American missionary school and later trained as an accountant. In the 1950s, he took over a chain of stores in Katanga Province and became involved in politics, founding the CONAKAT party with Godefroid Munongo which ran under a banner of an independent, federal Congo.[1]
In the general elections of 1960, CONAKAT won control of the Katanga provincial legislature. That same year, the Congo became an independent republic, and in the resulting strife, Tshombe and CONAKAT declared Katanga's secession from the rest of the Congo. See Congo Crisis.
The Christian, anti-communist, pro-Western Tshombe was elected president of Katanga in August 1960, and declared that "we are seceding from chaos." Favoring continued ties with Belgium, Tshombe asked the Belgian government to send military officers to recruit and train a Katangese army. The Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and his successor Cyrille Adoula requested intervention from United Nations forces, which they never received.
Patrice Lumumba's government was overthrown and after a series of events taken prisoner by Mobutu and detained at camp Hardy in Thysville. Fearing Lumumba's increasing popularity amongst the soldiers who might release him (soldier mutinies and unrest increased by the day at prison camp Hardy in Thysville) Harold d'Aspremont Lynden (Belgian minister for African Affairs) sent a highly confidential telegram on January 16, 1961 to the puppet government in Léopoldville (Kasavubu and Mobutu). The telegram contained the order for handing over Patrice Lumumba to Tshombe's secession state of Katanga to meet his final destination. Just like Albert Kalonji, Tshombe had stated that he would kill Lumumba if he would set foot on his soil. While being flown over with a Sabena DC-4 air plane up and until the time of Lumumba's execution by a fire squad led by Belgian officer Julien Gat, Lumumba was visited, beaten and tortured by Belgian and Katangese notables and officers who were Tshombe, Godefroid Munongo, Kibwe, Kitenge, Grandelet, Son, Gat, Huyghé, Tignée, Verscheure, Segers, Rougefort and others.[2]
In 1963, UN forces succeeded in capturing Katanga, driving Tshombe into exile in Northern Rhodesia, later to Spain. In 1964 he returned to the Congo to serve as prime minister in a new Coalition government, but was dismissed from his position the following year by President Joseph Kasavubu. In 1965, Prime Minister Joseph Mobutu, who had staged a successful coup against President Kasavubu a year earlier, brought charges of treason against Tshombe, who again fled the country, and settled in Spain.
In 1967, he was sentenced to death in absentia.
On June 30, 1967, a Hawker Siddley jet aircraft he was traveling in was hijacked to Algeria, where he was first jailed and then kept under house arrest until his assassination by Western governments which is officially recorded as "death from heart failure" in 1969. The pilots of the plane, two Englishmen, Trevor Coppleston and David Taylor, were released and returned to England. According to the Congolese government Tshombe was going to Africa.[3] He is buried in Belgium.
In 1968, a mysterious planeload of mercenary soldiers had landed at Kariba Airfield in Rhodesia, and was said also to hold "an African President". Rumor spread that Tshombe had been rescued, though no proof ever came to light of any rescue attempt.
These rumors were the basis for Daniel Carney's book that later became the 1978 film The Wild Geese, which starred Richard Burton. In the film, Winston Ntshona plays a pro-western, deposed African president who is imprisoned following the hijacking of his plane.
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