Katanga Province

High-ranking military of, of a very, very decorated career.

He is also famous for reportedly seeing a giant snake in the Katangan region of the Belgian Congo.

Yep.

So he was born-

But the tale resurfaced when, the image goes viral every once in a while, when this picture starts being, you know, spread around.

The cornerstone basically explains it as this, you know...

Uh, so what happened in 1959, accounts of the Katangan flight described by Remy returning to the air force base where he allegedly saw a colossal snake on the ground, and he estimates it to be right around 15 meters with a very triangular head about two feet wide.

He said the animal raised up its body towards the helicopter, where he felt like it would've stroke- struck if it got close enough.

The Atlanta airport is terrible for all the reasons one can imagine.

Like it's the reason you don't really want to fly out of Katanga or Kinshasa in the Congo either.

That said, the Atlanta airport is like orders of magnitude better than the Dallas airport because in the Dallas airport or the Austin airport, I remember being particularly egregious.

You try and get on the plane and it takes like an hour because there are 60 Indians pretending they can't walk so they'll just be pushed onto the plane by the airport attendants.

The old Rhodes vision of British hegemony in Africa from Suez to the Cape was dissolving fast, with few regrets outside Rhodesia.

At least, though, the British could feel that by comparison with the chaos left by the Belgians in the Congo, which led to the serious crisis over Katanga in 1960 and the years of bloodshed under the French regime in Algeria, Britain's retreat from colonial domination was relatively tranquil and civilised.

You have to ignore Kenya in that formulation.

And this is part of the selective remembering of British decolonisation.

At Boma and Leopoldsville, the two termini of the projected line, cities arising with stations, wharfs, and public buildings.

In the extreme southeast, one would see an expedition under stairs exploring and annexing the great district of Katanga, which abuts upon Northern Rhodesia.

In the furthest northeast and along the whole eastern border, small military expeditions would be disclosed fighting against rebellious blacks or Arab raiders.

Then, along all the lines of the rivers, posts were being formed and stations established, some by the state and some by the various concessionaire companies for the development of their commerce.

Rabink, the Austrian, the victim of similar proceedings, did appeal to the higher court at Boma, and it is interesting to see what advantage he gained by doing so.

Rabink was, as I have said, an Austrian from Olmutz, a man of a gentle and lovable nature, popular with all who knew him, and remarkable, as several have testified, for his just and kindly treatment of the natives.

He had for some years traded with the people of Katanga, which is the southeastern portion of the Congo state, where it abuts upon British Central Africa.

The natives were, at the time, in arms against the Belgians, but Rabink had acquired such influence among them that he was still able to carry on his trade in ivory and rubber, for which he held a permit from the Katanga Company.

Yeah.

And we have the great Katanga annual conference.

That is the conference where I belong to.

And so big statistics of churches.

At Boma and Leopoldsville, the two termini of the projected line, cities arising with stations, wharfs and public buildings.

In the extreme south-east one would see an expedition under stairs exploring and annexing the great district of Katanga which abuts upon northern Rhodesia.

In the furthest north-east and along the whole eastern border small military expeditions would be disclosed fighting against rebellious blacks or Arab raiders.

Then along all the lines of the rivers posts were being formed and stations established, some by the state and some by the various concessionaire companies for the development of their commerce.

Rabink, the Austrian, the victim of similar proceedings, did appeal to the higher court at Boma, and it is interesting to see what advantage he gained by doing so.

Rabink was, as I have said, an Austrian from Olmutz, a man of a gentle and lovable nature, popular with all who knew him, and remarkable, as several have testified, for his just and kindly treatment of the natives.

He had, for some years, traded with the people of Katanga, which is the southeastern portion of the Congo state, where it abuts upon British Central Africa.

The natives were, at the time, in arms against the Belgians, but Rabink had acquired such influence among them that he was still able to carry on his trade in ivory and rubber, for which he held a permit from the Katanga Company.

Thus it came as no surprise when in 1977, in what would become known as the First Shaba War, the Congolese military, renamed Forces Armées Zaïroises, or FAZ, proved utterly incapable of doing their job.

That year, FLNC chiefs assaulted Katanga Province, which had been renamed Shaba, routed Mobutu's army, and captured the mining town of Kolwezi, their strategy being to hold on to the mineral-rich region for as long as possible in order to strangle the economy of Kinshasa.

With the FAZ on the ropes, the regime was only saved by financial and military assistance provided by stalwart anti-communist governments in the USA and Morocco.

The following year, the FLNC defeated the FAZ and seized Kolwezi again in the Second Shaba War, with Mobutu only rescued from disaster with the intervention of the Belgian and French armies.

Three-fourths of the global supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo.

And most of that cobalt comes from a specific region of Congo called Katanga.

At the urging of his colleagues, Siddharth went there in 2018.

I've been, at that point, eighteen years documenting slaves and child labor, so I've seen, uh, already quite a bit of horror.

Which made him a prime target for the Belgian government.

And so when more riots broke out later that year-

They send him to the most notorious jail in the Congo, which was the underground prison at one of the major mining centers in Katanga.

In response to the upheaval, the Belgian government agreed in principle to the idea of Congolese independence, and so they scheduled a month-long roundtable meeting with Belgian and Congolese leaders to work out the details.

On the 31st of December 1966, talks break down, and Mobutu takes it.

From the 1st of January 1967, the Congolese government decides to seize the company's vast copper and cobalt assets in Katanga province, transferring them to a new state-owned firm named Gecomine, later known as Gecamines, to reclaim economic control from foreign colonial interests.

People cheer for this move.

Of course they cheer.