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3 unusual facts about State of Katanga


M8 Greyhound

During the Congo Crisis, Indian peacekeepers with recoilless rifles destroyed at least one ex-Belgian Greyhound manned by Katangese separatists.

State of Katanga

Lemarchand, René, (1964) Political Awakening in the Belgian Congo, University of California Press.

This was highly relevant as the Republican, business-oriented “Europeanists” of the Eisenhower administration were part of a generation that had seen and internalised post-War Communist expansion, making anti-communism a norm in American governing circles.


Jean Nguza Karl-i-Bond

Born in Musumba, Lualaba District, a member of the Lunda tribe and a nephew of the Katangan leader, Moise Tshombe, Nguza was a pock-marked child who rose rapidly through government posts and gained the favour of President Mobutu Sese Seko.

John Stockwell

Beginning his career in 1964, Stockwell spent six years in Africa, Chief of Base in the Katanga during the Bob Denard invasion in 1968, then Chief of Station in Bujumbura, Burundi in 1970, before being transferred to Vietnam to oversee intelligence operations in the Tay Ninh province and was awarded the CIA Medal of Merit for keeping his post open until the last days of the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Prime Minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland

In foreign policy, his government supported the United Kingdom during the Suez Crisis and got involved in the Congo Crisis, by accepting white refugees and supporting State of Katanga and its leader Moise Tshombe.

Robert Rothschild

After the independence of the Congo from Belgium in 1960, Katanga, the richest of the six provinces of the Belgian Congo seceded on 11 July, and the Belgians decided to move to Elisabethville (now Lubumbashi) in Katanga.


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