# Katanga Secession Eleven days after Congolese independence, the province containing the copper declared itself a separate country. That timing is the whole story: **Katangese copper generated roughly a third of all Congo revenue**, and [[Union Minière du Haut-Katanga]] supplied 60% of the West's uranium, 73% of world cobalt and 10% of world copper. ## The corporate financing [[Moïse Tshombe]] declared independence on 11 July 1960, accusing the central government of communist leanings. He had, in the standard formulation, "the full support of both Belgium and the Union Minière." The mechanism was not a bribe. UMHK advanced Tshombe **1,250 million Belgian francs** as an advance on taxes it otherwise owed to [[Patrice Lumumba]]'s government in Léopoldville — that is, the company **redirected its tax stream** from the state to the secession. Dollar equivalents in the sources vary between $25 million and $35 million; cite the franc figure. Without it there is no viable Katangese state. Belgium seconded roughly 1,133 technical civil servants, 114 army officers and 117 NCOs; more than 200 stayed on as paid mercenaries after the official September 1960 withdrawal. By early 1961 some 500 British, Rhodesian, French and South African irregulars — *les affreux* — were in the province. ## The UN operation ONUC was created by Security Council Resolution 143 on 14 July 1960 and peaked around 20,000 personnel from more than 24 countries, with India, Ireland and Sweden the largest contributors. Resolution 161 of 21 February 1961 authorised force to prevent civil war and to expel foreign mercenaries. Three operations decided it. **Rum Punch** (28 August 1961) arrested 79 European mercenaries and officers in a single day. **Morthor** (13 September 1961) went badly, and the concurrent Siege of Jadotville left 155 Irish soldiers surrounded and held prisoner for a month. **Grandslam** (December 1962 – January 1963) took Elisabethville in three days; Tshombe conceded on 15 January 1963 and the UN entered his last stronghold at Kolwezi on the 21st. **250 UN personnel died**, most of them in Katanga. An estimated 7,000 Baluba were killed by Katangese forces by mid-1961, though that figure is disputed in the sources themselves. ## Hammarskjöld UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld's DC-6B crashed on approach to Ndola, Northern Rhodesia, on the night of 17–18 September 1961, en route to negotiate with Tshombe. All sixteen aboard died. The Rhodesian inquiries of 1961–62 found pilot error by elimination; the UN commission returned an **open verdict**. The question has since been formally reopened: a 2013 commission of jurists found "persuasive evidence that the aircraft was subjected to some form of attack or threat," and a UN panel and successive Eminent Person reports — most recently transmitted by the Secretary-General in October 2024 — have concluded an external attack or threat "appears plausible" and that it is **"almost certain" that crucial undisclosed information remains in Member State archives**, specifically communications intercepts and records of foreign paramilitary personnel present in 1961. No alternative explanation has been proven. The honest statement is that the original verdict has been destabilised by the UN itself and nothing has replaced it. ## What it established Katanga is the template the rest of this cluster keeps re-running: **a mining company financing an armed political project in order to keep control of an ore body.** In 1996 and 1997 mining companies would pay a rebel movement in advance of its victory for the same Katangan assets. The 2025 agreements in Washington are a state-level version of the same transaction. ## See also [[Congolese History Hub]] · [[Moïse Tshombe]] · [[Union Minière du Haut-Katanga]] · [[Assassination of Patrice Lumumba]] · [[Conflict Minerals Hub]]