History of Kinshasa

Kinshasa is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is situated on the Congo river near Pool Malebo and forms a single urban area with Brazzaville which is the capital of the neighbouring Republic of the Congo. Considered a megacity, it is among the largest urban communities in Africa.

Léopoldville was located on the Congo river in the Bas-Congo (modern Kongo Central) region, facing Brazzaville in the neighbouring French Congo

The origins of Kinshasa date to 1881 when a trading post was established on the site by Henry Morton Stanley on behalf of the International Association of the Congo. He named it Léopoldville (French) or Leopoldstad (Dutch) in honour of King Leopold II who was his patron and subsequently King-Sovereign of the Congo Free State established in 1885. Léopoldville expanded rapidly and its importance as an administrative centre grew. Following the Free State's annexation, it superseded Boma as the capital of the Belgian Congo in 1926 and became the seat of the colonial administration and Governor-General. A residentially segregated city, the street-plan and general layout of the city centre dates to the Belgian colonial period. The population expanded rapidly as a result of rural migration from across the colony, particularly in the aftermath of World War II. By the late 1950s it became central to the spread of African nationalism in the Belgian Congo. The popular music genre of Congolese rumba first emerged in Léopoldville and Brazzaville in this period and Lingala spread as a lingua franca along populations around the Congo river. By 1959, Léopoldville had a population of more than 300,000 and was one of the biggest urban centres in Sub-Saharan Africa.

On independence in 1960, Léopoldville became the capital city of the newly formed Republic of the Congo and continued to expand rapidly during the Congo Crisis and under the regime of Joseph-Désiré Mobutu. As an early example of Mobutu's programme of retour à l'authenticité for the removal of foreign and colonial influences, the city was renamed Kinshasa in 1966 after a pre-existing African residential area. His regime constructed skyscrapers and other modern buildings in the city as a showpiece of his new Zairean regime. However, corruption and lack of investment led to rapid deterioration of the city's urban infrastructure after 1980 as it continued to expand rapidly in size. As of 2017, it had a population of almost 13 million and is the 21st largest city in the world.

16th-17th centuries
An 1885 sketch map by Henry Morton Stanley showing the location of the post at Léopoldville on the western bank of modern-day Ngaliema Bay in Ngaliema Commune. Kinshasa's modern city centre would be off the map to the east.

From the 16th to 17th century, the Pool region became an important hub between the river and coastal areas. Vegetables of the Americas were also introduced to the interior of the continent through trade; slaves (most often the losers in various conflicts) were travelling to Loango, the mouth of the river and south of the Kongo Kingdom. The Bobangis, sometimes called Bangala (people of the river), occupied the major part of trade with the equatorial region in navigating the river and its river to the villages Téké Pool.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of mostly fishermen and traders from the north Teke install markets and villages in the southern Pool Malebo and on the board that will appoint the latest Batéké plateau. The tribes of the region, Humbu and Mfinu, were regarded as owners on this side of the river. Over time, the settlers Téké cause local farther shore, to the interior of the hills. The main Téké villages of the south shore were Nsasa with around 5000 inhabitants, Ntambo with less than 3000 inhabitants. Lemba, among a multitude of small villages, was the capital market and political Humbu, with about 300 residents. The markets saw River caravans slave holders of oil, almonds, palm, peanuts, sesame and ivory come and go.

Colonial era
Population of Léopoldville
YearPop.±%
1925 24,058—    
1930 32,594+35.5%
1935a 21,518−34.0%
1940 34,976+62.5%
1945 70,780+102.4%
1950 126,844+79.2%
1955 174,697+37.7%
a The decline before 1935 was caused by the Great Depression.
Source: [1]

Henry Morton Stanley established a trading post on the shore of Ngaliema Bay in 1881 to the west of the modern city centre in Ngaliema Commune. He named it Léopoldville (French) or Leopoldstad (Dutch) in honor of King Leopold II who was Stanley's patron in the International Association of the Congo and later King-Sovereign of the Congo Free State. Stanley delegated the settlement to Anthony Swinburne.[2] The post flourished as the first navigable port on the Congo River above Livingstone Falls, a series of rapids over 300 km below Leopoldville. At first, all goods arriving by sea or being sent by sea had to be carried by porters between Léopoldville and Matadi, the port below the rapids and 150 km from the coast. The completion of the Matadi-Kinshasa portage railway in 1898 provided a faster and more efficient alternative route around the rapids and sparked the rapid development of Léopoldville.

Local indigenous groups died off in large numbers and the city saw immigration from other parts of Congo. Many immigrants came to join the Force Publique and encouraged the spread of Lingala as a common language in this multicultural city. As time went on, textiles and brewing developed as local industries. However, Kinshasa did not profit greatly from the copper extraction occurring in Katanga Province (later called Shaba Province), the output from which was diverted first through British territories and then through Portuguese Angola.[2]

Some researchers have identified Léopoldville as an origin point of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. A University of Oxford team in 2014 reported a high likelihood that the ancestor of HIV-1, Group M emerged Léopoldville between 1909 and 1930.[3]

View of Léopoldville station and port (1884)

The city began to undergo major expansion around the year 1910, with the creation of a geometric city plan and the construction of new buildings including the Banque du Congo Belge and the Hotel A.B.C. (owned by the Compagnie Commerciale et Agricole d'Alimentation du Bas-Congo.) Schools were constructed and a Chamber of Commerce formed. 1920 saw the beginning of regular airplane service to Elisabethville.[4]

The African population was 20,000 in 1920 and 27,000 in 1924; the European population rose from 245 in 1908 to 2521 in 1914 to 2521 in 1918. 1926, the city was elevated to capital of the Belgian Congo, replacing the town of Boma in the Congo estuary. By 1929 the city population was 48,088 including 2,766 Europeans and after a decline at the beginning of the 1930s began to rise again at the same rate. On the eve of independence in 1959 the city population was 300,000 including 25,000 Europeans.[2][4]

The original layout of the city was segregated between African and European, with a “no man’s land” in between. As the city grew this in-between area became the commercial district. The city was formally redesigned in the 1930s with stricter rules for segregation and a bigger central area. A new central market for both races, as well as a golf club, a park, and a botanical garden for whites, were developed as part of the new cordon sanitaire dividing (not altogether effectively) the neighborhoods by race. Additional segregated master plans, proposed in Brussels and locally in the 1950s, were never implemented.[5]

Independence and Mobutu era
The modernist Grand Marché of Kinshasa (photographed in 1974) was constructed in 1969–1971 at the site of the older public market in the cordon sanitaire.[5]
Tower of Limete and monument to Lumumba

When the Belgian Congo became independent of Belgium in 1960, Dutch was dropped as an official language and so was the alternative name Leopoldstad. The city grew rapidly (11.6% annually from 1960–1967; 6.43% annually from 1967–1973),[6] drawing people from across the country who came in search of their fortunes or to escape ethnic strife elsewhere. This inevitably brought about a change to the city's ethnic and linguistic composition as well; Lingala remained the lingua franca.[7] 367,550 people immigrated to Kinshasa in 1950–1967.[8] Urbanized land area grew from 2,331 hectares in 1950 to 5,512 hectares in 1957 to 12,863 hectares in 1968 to 17,922 hectares in 1975.[9]

In 1965 Mobutu Sese Seko seized power in the Congo in his second coup and initiated a policy of "Africanizing" the names of people and places in the country. In 1966, Léopoldville was renamed Kinshasa for a village named Kinchassa that once stood near the site. The city developed as the bureaucratic and cultural capital of the country, and developed an indigenous intellectual elite.[10]

In 1974, Kinshasa hosted the 'Rumble in the Jungle' boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, in which Ali defeated Foreman to regain the World Heavyweight title.

Kinshasa suffered greatly from the late 1970s through 1990s due to Mobutu's excesses, mass corruption, nepotism and the civil war that led to his downfall. Foreign businesses left, and roads, infrastructure, and transport links with other cities deteriorated. However, population continued to increase, due to endogenous growth and to migration from the countryside—driven by the cultural appeal of music, film, and football as well as by war and necessity.[10][2]

Kinshasa post-Mobutu

On May 20, 1997, after the First Congo War, Laurent-Désiré Kabila triumphantly marched with his rebel forces to take control of the country's capital after Mobutu fled into exile in France. However, the city was later nearly taken over by other rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda during the earlier part of the Second Congo War. It was very recently the scene of fighting between loyalists of Jean-Pierre Bemba and Joseph Kabila following the 2006 general elections; 600 people, including untold numbers of civilian bystanders were killed or wounded. Joseph Kabila, raised in Tanzania, and a poor speaker of French and Lingala, has not endeared himself to the locals.[2]

The announcement in 2016 that a new election would be delayed two years led to large protests in September and in December which involved barricades in the streets and left dozens of people dead. Schools and businesses were closed down.[11][12]

The population of Kinshasa has increased steadily, due to endogenous growth and to migration from the countryside. Migrants come to the city fleeing violence, attracted by the promise of jobs, and lured by its cultural image.[2]

See also

References
  1. Kapagama & Waterhouse 2009, p. 4.
  2. Joe Trapido, "Kinshasa's Theater of Power", New Left Review 98, March/April 2016.
  3. "HIV pandemic's origins located". University of Oxford. 3 October 2014. Retrieved 9 July 2016.
  4. Pain (1984), p. 15–20.
  5. Luce Beeckmans & Liora Bigon, “The making of the central markets of Dakar and Kinshasa: from colonial origins to the post-colonial period”; Urban History 43(3), 2016; doi:10.1017/S0963926815000188.
  6. Pain (1984), p. 21.
  7. Mukenge, Tshilemalema ; Culture and customs of the Congo, Culture and customs of Africa; Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002; ISBN 0-313-31485-3, ISBN 978-0-313-31485-8; pg. 72-75
  8. Pain (1984), p. 22.
  9. Pain (1984), pp. 30– 31.
  10. Bill Freund, “City and Nation in an African Context: National Identity in Kinshasa”; Journal of Urban History 38(5), 2012; doi:10.1177/0096144212449141.
  11. "DR Congo election: 17 dead in anti-Kabila protests", BBC, 19 September 2016.
  12. Merritt Kennedy, "Congo A 'Powder Keg' As Security Forces Crack Down On Whistling Demonstrators", NPR, 21 December 2016.

Bibliography
See also: Timeline of Kinshasa § Bibliography

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