[lwptoc]The Congo Republic (French: République du Congo), often known as the Congo Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, or simply Congo, is a Central African republic. It is bounded on the west by Gabon and the Atlantic Ocean, on the northwest by Cameroon, on the northeast by the Central African Republic, on the east and south by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and on the southwest by the Angolan exclave of Cabinda.
Bantu-speaking tribes controlled the region, establishing trade routes into the Congo River basin. Congo-Brazzaville was once a French colony in Equatorial Africa. The former French Congo became the Republic of the Congo after independence in 1960. From 1970 until 1991, the People’s Republic of the Congo was a Marxist–Leninist one-party state. Although a democratically elected government was deposed during the Republic of the Congo Civil War in 1997, President Denis Sassou Nguesso has reigned for 26 of the previous 36 years.
The Republic of the Congo became the fourth largest oil producer in the Gulf of Guinea as a result of political stability and hydrocarbon development, providing the country with relative prosperity despite the country’s poor infrastructure and public services, as well as an unequal distribution of oil revenues.
Following the country’s independence as the Congo Republic on August 15, 1960, Fulbert Youlou reigned as the country’s first president until a three-day revolt organized by labor forces and opposing political parties removed him. The Congolese military temporarily seized control of the nation and established a civilian temporary administration led by Alphonse Massamba-Débat.
Massamba-Débat was elected President for a five-year term under the 1963 constitution, but his tenure was cut short by an August 1968 coup d’état. On December 31, 1968, Capt. Marien Ngouabi, a participant in the coup, seized the president. One year later, President Ngouabi declared Congo to be Africa’s first “people’s republic,” and announced the National Revolutionary Movement’s intention to rename itself the Congolese Labour Party (PCT). President Ngouabi was murdered on March 16, 1977. An temporary administration was formed, led by an 11-member Military Committee of the Party (CMP), with Col. (later Gen.) Joachim Yhombi-Opango serving as President of the Republic.
Congo completed its transition to multi-party democracy in August 1992, after decades of tumultuous politics fueled by Marxist-Leninist rhetoric and the fall of the Soviet Union. Denis Sassou Nguesso resigned, and Congo’s new president, Prof. Pascal Lissouba, took office on August 31, 1992.
Congo’s democratic development, however, was halted in 1997. As the July 1997 presidential elections neared, tensions between the Lissouba and Sassou camps grew. On June 5, President Lissouba’s government troops approached Sassou’s Brazzaville property, and Sassou ordered members of his private militia, nicknamed as “Cobras,” to fight. Thus started a four-month war that destroyed or damaged most of Brazzaville and resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. Angolan troops invaded Congo on the side of Sassou in early October, and the Lissouba government fell in mid-October. Sassou proclaimed himself President soon after. The Congo Civil War lasted another year and a half until a peace agreement was reached between the different groups in December 1999.
In sham elections in 2002, Sassou received almost 90 percent of the vote. His two major opponents, Lissouba and Bernard Kolelas, were barred from running, and the only remaining viable contender, Andre Milongo, urged his followers to boycott the elections before withdrawing from the campaign. A new constitution, approved by referendum in January 2002, gave the president additional powers, prolonged his tenure to seven years, and established a new bicameral parliament. International observers were critical of the organization of the presidential election and the constitutional referendum, both of which were reminiscent of the Congo’s one-party state period. Congo currently has a rotational seat on the United Nations Security Council.
Opposition parties boycotted the July 2009 elections. Sassou was re-elected, although with a questionably high turnout. Riot police brutally suppressed demonstrations in Brazzaville.
The Republic of the Congo’s limited population is concentrated in the southwest, leaving large expanses of tropical forest in the north almost uninhabited. Thus, the Republic of Congo is one of Africa’s most urbanized nations, with 85 percent of its entire population residing in a few metropolitan centers, notably Brazzaville, Pointe-Noire, or one of the tiny towns or villages along the 332-mile (534-kilometer) railway that links the two cities. Industrial and commercial activity in rural regions has decreased significantly in recent years, leaving rural economies reliant on the government for assistance and sustenance. Prior to the 1997 conflict, there were about 15,000 Europeans and other non-Africans living in Congo, the majority of them were French. Currently, just approximately 9,500 people remain.