# Battle of Kolwezi May 1978. The archetypal post-colonial Western military intervention to secure a mining town — and the moment industrial mining in Katanga began its terminal decline. ## What happened On **11 May 1978** a force of **3,000–4,000 FLNC fighters** — the "Katangese Tigers," descendants of the gendarmerie that had fought for [[Moïse Tshombe]] in the [[Katanga Secession]], now based in Angola — seized **Kolwezi**, the centre of [[Gécamines]]' copper and cobalt production, taking roughly 3,000 Europeans hostage. It was the second such incursion in two years; Shaba I had come in 1977. Zairian paratroops intervened ineffectually on 15 May and hostage killings began. On **19 May** roughly 450 legionnaires of the French **2e REP** under Col. Philippe Erulin dropped on the old hippodrome. A second French wave and the **Belgian Paracommando Regiment** followed on 20 May, the Belgian operation framed explicitly as humanitarian evacuation and **not** under joint command with the French — a live diplomatic friction at the time. American C-130s provided the lift. ## The casualties, and the asymmetry in how they are remembered - **European civilians killed: commonly given as about 170**, with source ranges from 90 to 280. - **African civilians killed: more than 700** — the far larger toll, and routinely omitted from Western accounts of the operation. - FLNC: roughly 250–400 killed, 160-plus captured. French: five legionnaires killed. Belgian: one. Zairian paratroops: about fourteen. - Around 2,800 Europeans evacuated by 21 May. ## The consequence [[Mobutu Sese Seko]] was secured for another decade and a half. But **the expatriate technical staff who actually ran the mines left, and largely never came back.** Read that alongside the numbers on [[Gécamines]]: the main Kamoto underground mine deteriorated for want of maintenance and collapsed by 1990, and copper output fell from 468,400 tonnes in 1988 to 33,600 tonnes in 1994. Kolwezi 1978 is where that decline starts — not in a policy decision but in the departure of the people who knew how to keep the shafts open. Kolwezi today is the centre of the artisanal cobalt economy, and the town most photographed in coverage of hand-dug mining. The pits are worked over the ground the Legion jumped onto. ## See also [[Gécamines]] · [[Zairianization]] · [[Mobutu Sese Seko]] · [[Katanga Secession]] · [[Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining]] · [[Congolese History Hub]]