The flag has to represent the motto of Katanga: "Power, Hope and Peace in Prosperity". Red stands for power, green for hope, white for peace, and the Croisettes stand for prosperity. They are an allusion to the region's traditional currency, the copper Katanga Cross.
The coat of arms showed the same motif as the flag and should exactly like it represent the motto of Katanga: "Power, Hope and Peace in Prosperity". Red stands for power, green for hope, white for peace, and the Croisettes stand for prosperity. They are an allusion to the region's traditional currency, the copper Katanga Cross.
1960 · declaration of independence by Moise Kapenda Tschombé, the head of the government of the Province of Katanga
1962 · intervention by UNO troops
1963 · Katanga surrenders and becomes a province of Kongo-Kinshasa again, Tschombé escapes to Spain
1964 · Tschombé becomes Premier of Kongo-Kinshasa
1965 · Tschombé resigns as Premier and goes to Spain in exile
1967 · Tschombé gets abducted from Spain to Algeria and imprisoned
29th of June 1969 · death of Moise Kapenda Tschombé in the imprisonment
1971 · rename of Katanga in Shaba
1993 · Governor Gabriel Kyungu Wa Kumwanza prompts officially the rename of the province in Katanga and declares it for autonomous
2015 · Katanga is dissolved by decision of the President of Congo-Kinshasa and divided into four individual Provinces (Haut-Katanga, Haut-Lomami, Lualaba, Tanganyika)
The name "Katanga" for the region and the country is already very old. It was given to the country by Arab traders. The name does not allow derivations from today's Arabic, so that no meaning of the name can be investigated. It must be assumed that it is a proper name. However, it is identity-creating and deeply rooted in the region, although there is a regional name for it. The Luba called the landscape "Garanganja" or "Garenganze", whose empire here existed and which was lost around 1890 in the fight against the Chokwe. Since the granting of independence, the central government of Congo has done everything possible to weed out the name and the idea of "Katanga". Between 1971 and 1993, the province was officially renamed in "Shaba", and in 2015 it was even split up and dismembered.
