Lubumbashi - Elisabethville Under Belgian Rule

Elisabethville Under Belgian Rule

The Belgians founded the city of Élisabethville (sometimes Elizabethville, both in French, or Elisabethstad in Dutch) in 1910, named in honour of their queen Elisabeth, wife to king Albert I. The location of the city was chosen by Vice-Governor-General Emile Wangermée because of the proximity to the copper mine of Etoile du Congo and the copper ore smelting oven installed by Union Minière du Haut Katanga on the nearby Lubumbashi river. The Comité Spécial du Katanga (CSK), a semi-private concessionary company set up in 1906, had its headquarters in Elisabethville throughout the colonial era. It enjoyed large privileges, mainly in terms of land and mining concessions, in the Katanga province.

The city prospered with the development of a regional copper mining industry. Huge investments in the 1920s, both in the mining industry and in transport infrastructure (railline Elisabethville-Port Francqui and Elisabethville-Dilolo), turned the Katanga province into one of the world's major copper ore producers. The population of the city grew apace from approx. 30,000 in 1930, to 50,000 in 1943 and 180,000 in 1957. It was the second city of the Belgian Congo, after Léopoldville.

The city was the seat of the apostolic vicariat of Katanga. The first apostolic vicar, the formidable and authoritarian Mgr Jean-Felix de Hemptinne, occupied this post from the 1930s until his death in 1958. He is buried in the city's cathedral St Pierre et Paul.

As was customary in sub-saharan colonies, the city centre of Elisabethville was reserved for the white (European) population. This consisted mainly of Belgians, but there were also important British and Italian communities, as well as Jewish Greeks. Congolese were only allowed to be present in the white city during the day, except for the house servants ("boys") who often lived in precarious dwellings ("boyeries") in the backyards of the European city houses. The black population consisted of labour immigrants from neighbouring regions in the Belgian Congo (Northern Katanga, Maniema, Kasaï), from Belgian Rwanda and Burundi and from British Northern Rhodesia (Zambia). The black population lived initially in a so-called cité indigène, called quartier Albert (now: Kamalondo), south of the city centre and separated from the white city by a 700 metres wide neutral zone. With population growth new indigenous quarters were created, that still form the main suburbs of present-day Lubumbashi: Kenia, Katuba, Ruashi.

Miners in Élisabethville conducted a strike in December 1941 to protest the increasingly severe forced-labor regime that the Belgians imposed on the population, because of the "war efforts". A rally in the Union Minière football stadium got out of hand. Police opened fire and numerous protesters were killed. In early 1944 the city was again in the grip of severe tensions and fear of violent protests, following the mutiny of the Force Publique in Luluabourg.

Starting in 1933, the Belgian colonial authorities experimented with a limited form of self-governance by creating the cité indigène of Elisabethville into a so-called "centre extra-coutumier" (a centre not subject to customary law), administered by an indigenous council and presided over by an indigenous chief. However, through constant interference from the Belgian authorities, the experiment soon proved a failure. The first indigenous chief - Albert Kabongo - appointed in 1937, was dismissed in 1943 and not replaced. The system was abandoned in 1957, when Elisabethville was created a fully autonomous city and the first free municipal elections were organised in which the Congolese population participated. The people of Élisabethville gave a vast majority to the Nationalist Alliance de Bakongo, which demanded immediate independence from the Belgians.

Elisabethville functioned as the administrative capital of the Katanga province. It was also an important commercial and industrial centre, and a centre of education and health services. The Benedictine Order and Order of Salesians offered a wide range of educational facilities to Europeans and Congolese alike, including vocational training (Kafubu). The Belgians established the University of Élisabethville in 1954-1955 (now the University of Lubumbashi).