# Moïse Tshombe The intermediary between Belgian mining capital and African sovereignty, and the man both sides eventually discarded. Tshombe co-founded CONAKAT in 1958 and declared Katanga independent on 11 July 1960, eleven days after Congolese independence, accusing Kinshasa of communist leanings and dictatorial rule. He had, in the contemporaneous formulation, the full support of both Belgium and [[Union Minière du Haut-Katanga]] — which advanced him **1,250 million Belgian francs** against taxes owed to [[Patrice Lumumba]]'s government. Belgium seconded him over a thousand officials and officers; several hundred European mercenaries stayed on after the formal withdrawal. Lumumba was flown to Élisabethville and killed there on 17 January 1961, in Tshombe's territory and with his knowledge. See [[Assassination of Patrice Lumumba]]. The [[Katanga Secession]] collapsed under UN military pressure in January 1963 and Tshombe fled to Spain. In an inversion that says a great deal about the period, he returned in July 1964 as **prime minister of the whole Congo**, hiring the same mercenaries he had used against Kinshasa to suppress the Simba rebellion on its behalf. [[Mobutu Sese Seko]] removed him in 1965. Sentenced to death in absentia in 1967, he was aboard an aircraft hijacked that June by a French intelligence agent and diverted to Algeria. He died in Algerian detention in June 1969, in circumstances that have never been satisfactorily explained. ## See also [[Katanga Secession]] · [[Union Minière du Haut-Katanga]] · [[Patrice Lumumba]] · [[Congolese History Hub]]