The country we now know as the Democratic Republic of Congo has for the past two centuries or so been in one turmoil after another. During the Berlin conference of 1884 – 1885, the Congo Basin was allocated to a private charitable organisation run by King Leopold II of Belgium.
In the subsequent years, Leopold unleashed a reign of terror in the Congo as a result of which an estimated 10 million people died. The atrocities, which have become to be known as the “Congo Horrors” were associated with Leopold’s labour policies used to extract rubber from the Congo.
Fast forward to 1960, Congo gets its independence from Belgium but immediately lands in new political mayhem. The independence was obtained on 30th June with Joseph Kasa Vubu as President and Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister. In the first week of July a mutiny erupted in the army and in its wake Congo was plunged in a monumental political crisis. The provinces of Katanga and South Kasai threatened to, and later actually did, secede. In the conflict that ensued Lumumba sought the assistance of Soviet Union, prompting the Western backed President Kasa Vubu to remove him from office. He was later executed.
The United Nations tried to move in to assist. The second Secretary General of the international body, Dag Hammarskjold, personally flew to Africa and was scheduled to meet the president of secessionist Katanga, Moise Kapenda Tshombe, but was fatally involved in a plane crash in Northern Rhodesia. Later the secessionist territories were annexed back to the Congo and Thsombe was made Prime Minister.
In 1965, amid internal squabbles surrounding President Kasa Vubu’s appointment of Evariste Kimba as Prime Minister, one Joseph Desire Mobutu staged a bloodless coup and took charge of the government. Mobutu Sese Seko, as he came to be known, turned out to be one of the most corrupt dictators that Africa has known. He changed the country’s name to Zaire. Mobutu was unseated in yet another Congolese coup de tat by Laurent Kabila in 1997. The Kabila dynasty has ruled the Congo since 1997 up to the present time, Laurent’s son, Joseph Kabila having, succeeded his father following the former’s assassination in 2001.
Despite the long standing political instability in the Congo, it is one of few African countries to have embarked on space programs, albeit a rather crude one in the case of Congo. During the Mobutu days, a German company called Orbital Transport und Raketn Aktiengesellschaft (OTRAG) set up a facility for testing and launching rockets in Zaire. Between 1977 and 1979, several rockets were launched from the Zaire based facility. Some launches were successful, others were not. The facility was closed down in 1979 mainly due to pressure from the Soviet Union and France who did not want Germany to develop an advanced rocket capability.
In 2005 a Congolese scientist named Jean Patrice Keka, a graduate of the Institut Supérieur des Techniques Appliquées (ISTA) in Kinshasa, embarked on an authentically Congolese space program by designing a series of rockets called Troposphere. These were meant to rise to altitudes of up to 36 kilometres.
Troposphere I was scheduled to be launched in April of 2007 but did not launch due to technical problems. On 10 July, 2007, Troposphere II was successfully launched. It reached an altitude of 1,014 metres in 35 seconds. Troposphere III, scheduled for October 12, 2007 turned out to be another failure. On 10th July, 2008, Troposphere IV was successfully launched. It got to an altitude of 15,480 metres in 47 seconds, reaching a top speed 2.7 times that of sound.
The best known rocket in the Troposphere series was Troposphere V. It was launched on 28th March, 2009 and was expected to reach an altitude of 36,000 metres in 95 seconds. Tragically, the rocket failed to take off vertically and subsequently crashed, killing the lone astronaut on board – a rat.
Malawi has enjoyed relative peace compared to Congo but we have nothing to show for that peace in as far as technological achievement is concerned. We need to conduct an honest search within our national life to check if we have the desire to one day become a space faring nation, which is what the Congolese are inching towards. We should never be deceived that any technological ability will descend on us like manna from above. We need to develop our own Patrice Kekas and let them try things out. There will for sure be failures along the way, but we should never fear failures; rather we should learn from them and move forward.