Famous People with Name Tshombe

Joseph Iléo            Origin/Culture/Country: African

Joseph Iléo: was a Congolese politician. He was the son of a successful Congolese businessman and was born in Musumba, Congo. He received his education from an American missionary school and later trained as an accountant. In the 1950s, he took over a chain of stores in Katanga Province and became involved in politics, founding the CONAKAT party with Godefroid Munongo which ran under a banner of an independent, federal Congo. In the general elections of 1960, CONAKAT won control of the Katanga provincial legislature. That same year, the Congo became an independent republic, and in the resulting strife, Tshombe and CONAKAT declared Katanga's secession from the rest of the Congo. See Congo Crisis. In 1963, UN forces succeeded in capturing Katanga, driving Tshombe into exile in Northern Rhodesia, later to Spain. In 1964 he returned to the Congo to serve as prime minister in a new Coalition government, but was dismissed from his position the following year by President Joseph Kasavubu. In 1965, Prime Minister Joseph Mobutu, who had staged a successful coup against President Kasavubu a year earlier, brought charges of treason against Tshombe, who again fled the country, and settled in Spain.