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Shaba / Katanga (Rep. Dem. Congo)

(separatist movement)

by Zeljko Heimer and António Martins, 25 Nov 2000

History
Description of the flag
Meaning of the Couped Saltires
Variations of the flag
Crosses on stamps
Copper-colored crosses on stamp
Katangese Military Police Flag

Other Katanga pages:

Katanga Roundel

See also:

Democratic Republic of Congo

History

The province, then known as Katanga, attempted secession from in 1960, only a few days after Belgian Congo became independent. The rebel government was put down after a war lasting three years. The state of Katanga had its own flag. More recently, unrest seems to have been aimed at gaining limited autonomy within Zaire. Autonomy was declared in December 1993, but the government in Kinshasa gave no response. The bid for autonomy was led by the Union of Independent Federalists and Republicans (UFERI).
Jan Oskar Engene

This flag is widely used today's by Katanga as "Provincial" flag (Katanga has an unofficial semi-autonomy status under Kabila's regime).
Jean-Luc Sohier, 19 February 2001

Description of the flag

A friend of mine in Belgium actually had a copy of the official regulations concerning the Katangese flag! His letter notes that the flag was designed by an architect called Louis Dressen. This official flag is very similar to the one that I found printed on a map. That is still the only place I have seen a flag looking like this so obviously the letter of the law was not followed too strictly.
Leif Hellström, 30 Apr 1999

All four arms of the crosses are the same length; these crosses are supposed to represent ingots and those were (crudely) symmetrical. I have been researching Congo and Katanga for some time for an upcoming book and during this research I’ve gone through numerous photos and documents showing the flag or arms of Katanga, and I've also seen a couple of preserved flags. Hence my knowledge on this subject.
Leif Hellström, 19 Apr 1999

Meaning of the Couped Saltires

The couped saltires in the flag of Katanga were intended to represent copper bars. Katanga is the copper belt of Southern Africa.
William M. Grimes-Wyatt, 09 May 1996

They are a kind of money. In central Africa, from Congo down to Zambia and Zimbabwe, copper has been cast into cross-shaped bars for trade. Those Katanga (or Baluba) crosses came up in various sizes, from a couple of centimetres to nearly half a metre in diameter.
Harald Müller, 10 May 1996

The green stripe symbolises malachite (copper ore).
Werner Steurbaut, 24 February 2001

The saltires/crosses on the flag were called "croisettes" in Katanga. Their heraldic use is prior to the State of Katanga as they were used in the arms of the Katanga Province of the Belgian Congo and the City of Elisabethville (now Lubumbashi), the capital of Katanga.
The arms of Katanga Province were: "vert with three croisettes copper"; as far as I remember the croisettes were always represented as saltires in this case.
The arms of Elisabethville and, with a slight modification, of Lubumbashi today, were: "Silver with a gules chevron, accompanied by three gules croisettes" (with, on the chevron, a silver crowned E letter for Elisabethville and just L for Lubumbashi). In this case, the croisettes were always crosses. I join an extract of the 1954 patent letter given to Elisabetville. Note that in these letter the croisettes are described as "Katangese monetary croisettes" ("croisettes monetaires katangaises") but not as saltires or crosses; on the included drawing, they are designed as crosses.
Currently, the croisettes were red saltires on most part of the Katangese flags. I remember to have seen sometimes croisettes as crosses on the flag, but never they were copper. They were also in form of saltires for other uses (by instance as rank marks for officers in Army or as marking on military vehicles).
Jean-Luc Sohier, 19 February 2001

The motto of Katanga was "Power, Hope and Peace in Prosperity" ("Force, espoir et Paix dans la Prosperite") and the components of the flag represent it: Red for Power, Green for Hope, White for Peace and the croisettes for Prosperity.
Jean-Luc Sohier, 19 Feb 2001

Variations of the flag

In paractice many variations were used, even in official use (official paper headers, army etc.), including:

very often and almost regularly representation of the copper pieces in red;
use of both saltires (more often) and crosses (less often);
use of different stylization of the copper pieces, varaying from those with unequal arms, over those rough stylization of arms of nearly equal length to very stylized pieces.

The variations are hardly to be wondered at, looking to the state of affairs in which the country was. One can assume that if the state lasted longer and obtained piece and order, the standardization of the design would surely follow.
Zeljko Heimer, 26 Apr 1999

Based on a fresh look through my files I can provide the following info, based on the perhaps 15-20 illustrations of actual flags or representations of flags I found:

All except one had cross’ arms of roughly equal length, and even that exception may have been unintentional.
About two-thirds had saltires and about one-third had crosses (my memory was obviously wrong on that point).
Most had tapering arms to their crosses/saltires; the exceptions mostly being on home-made flags.
A large majority of the crosses/saltires were the same red as the red field in the flag.

Leif Hellström, 21 Apr 1999