23 Facts About Moise Tshombe

Moise Kapenda Tshombe was a Congolese businessman and politician.

Moise Tshombe served as the president of the secessionist State of Katanga from 1960 to 1963 and as prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1964 to 1965.

Moise Tshombe received his education from an American missionary school and later trained as an accountant.

Moise Tshombe ran a number of businesses, which all failed, requiring his wealthy family to bail him out.

In common with the other members of the Lunda elite, the aristocratic Moise Tshombe looked back nostalgically to the Kingdom of Lunda that once covered much of northern Angola, the southern Belgian Congo and Northern Rhodesia in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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Moise Tshombe declared that this diluting of CONAKAT's influence rendered his agreement to support the government "null and void".

Moise Tshombe had the full support of both Belgium and the Union Miniere in proclaiming Katanga independent.

Moise Tshombe engaged in a successful bluff in the summer of 1960 as he maintained that Katanga had the military forces to repel an invasion while an army was being raised.

Moise Tshombe demanded United Nations recognition for independent Katanga, and he announced that any intervention by UN troops would be met with force.

Moise Tshombe tended to agree with the last person he had talked to and could be counted on to go back on any agreement as soon as he had seen his next visitor.

Moise Tshombe was an accomplished hypochondriac, using feigned ill health to avoid answering awkward questions.

Moise Tshombe was basically a weak person who was always being manipulated by others-the Union Miniere, right-wing politicians in Europe and the United States, mercenaries, arms dealers and other adventurers who were after his money.

Moise Tshombe become an iconic figure for American conservatives in the 1960s who saw him as an acceptable African leader.

The American historian Kyle Burke wrote: "To them [American conservatives], Moise Tshombe represented a comfortable kind of decolonization, in which elite Africans would manage the transition from colony to nation without altering the existing racial, political and economic order, thereby ensuring that communists would not gain a foothold in these countries".

The principle lobbying group for Moise Tshombe was the American Committee for Aid to Katangan Freedom Fighters that portrayed the United Nations as a communist-dominated organization that was seeking to crush Katanga to achieve Soviet foreign policy goals in Africa.

Moise Tshombe took with him into exile 890 suitcases full of one million gold pieces, which he placed into various European banks, allowing him to live in comfort and luxury.

Moise Tshombe had made extensive use of white mercenaries to fight for Katanga, and as the Congolese premier, he hired the same mercenaries to fight for the Congo.

Moise Tshombe formed the federalist Convention Nationale Congolaise, a bloc of forty-nine parties for the 1965 general election.

Moise Tshombe was taken to Algeria, jailed, and placed under house arrest.

Finally, in the context of a series of interviews regarding a conspiracy theory about the assassination of US President John F Kennedy, Belgian mercenary Joseph Smal told author Stephen J Rivele that Tshombe was killed by two injections with two different substances, prepared by the CIA.

Moise Tshombe was buried in a Methodist service at Etterbeek Cemetery, near Brussels, Belgium.

Moise Tshombe has been played twice by the French actor Pascal N'Zonzi, first in the 2000 film Lumumba and again in the 2011 film Mister Bob.

Moise Tshombe was portrayed by Danny Sapani in the 2016 film The Siege of Jadotville.