Cléophas Kamitatu

Cléophas Kamitatu (June 1931 – 12 October 2008) (later Masamba Kamitatu) was a Congolese politician and leader of the Parti Solidaire Africain.

Biography

Cléophas Kamitatu was born in June 1931 in Kilamba, Katanga Province, Belgian Congo. He received his education from Jesuits.[1] In 1958 he helped establish the Parti Solidaire Africain (PSA) with Antoine Gizenga.[2] Kamitatu represented the party's rural membership and its Léopoldville constituents. His leadership of the moderates in the PSA led to differences with Gizenga, who was more left-leaning. He frequently allied with the Alliance des Bakongo (ABAKO), a political party with a large following in the capital, where he focused most of his political efforts.[3]

Kamitatu led the PSA's delegation to the Congolese Round Table Conference in early 1960 to discuss the Congo's political future. He was the first delegate to suggest that the colony be granted independence on 30 June, a stance which was quickly assumed by others and eventually carried out.[4] In June he was elected to the National Assembly, and also became the governor of Léopoldville Province, in part due to his support from ABAKO. After Gizenga was arrested in January 1962 for rebellious activity Kamitatu emerged as the sole leader of the PSA.[3] In July 1962 he was appointed minister of the interior and in April 1963 he became minister of planning and development,[5] a position he held until 1964.[1] He briefly served as foreign minister under Évariste Kimba's short-lived government until Joseph Mobutu seized power in November 1965. On 18 June 1966 a special tribunal sentenced Kamitatu to five years in prison for acting complicit in a supposed plot to kill Mobutu.[6] He soon fled the country and formed the Front Socialiste Africain (FSA) as an opposition group to the government. He later wrote a highly critical biography of Mobutu entitled, La grande mystification au Congo-Kinshasa.[2]

In 1983, Mobutu offered general amnesty to exiled opponents and Kamitatu returned to the Congo. He made an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the legislature in 1988, but was soon thereafter appointed minister of agriculture and made a member of the central committee of Mobutu's party, the Popular Movement of the Revolution (PMR). As the country underwent democratization in the early 1990s, Kamitatu became a top member of Joseph Ileo's Parti démocrate et social chrétien (PDSC). Ileo died in 1994 and Kamitatu had a falling out with the party's leadership, leading him to create a splinter wing of the party the following year. He retired from politics in the late 1990s.[1] He died of a disease in South Africa on 12 October 2008.[2]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Kisangani, Emizet Francois (2016). Historical Dictionary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (4 ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 332–333. ISBN 9781442273160.
  2. 1 2 3 "Cléophas Kamitatu Masamba tire sa révérence". Congo Planète (in French). 14 October 2008. Retrieved 16 November 2016.
  3. 1 2 LaFontaine, J.S. (1986). City Politics: A Study of Léopoldville 1962–63. American Studies. Cambridge University Press Archive. p. 198.
  4. ↑ "Cléophas Kamitatu n'est plus!". Radio Okapi. 13 October 2008. Retrieved 30 November 2016.
  5. ↑ Welch, Claude Emerson (1980). Anatomy of Rebellion (illustrated ed.). SUNY Press. p. 232. ISBN 9780873954419.
  6. ↑ Taylor, Sidney (1967). The New Africans: A Guide to the Contemporary History of Emergent Africa and Its Leaders (reprint ed.). Putnam. p. 95.
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