{"id":355,"date":"2010-07-01T07:46:36","date_gmt":"2010-07-01T07:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/2010\/07\/01\/dr-congo-marks-50-years-of-independence\/"},"modified":"2010-07-01T07:46:36","modified_gmt":"2010-07-01T07:46:36","slug":"dr-congo-marks-50-years-of-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/dr-congo-marks-50-years-of-independence\/","title":{"rendered":"DR Congo marks 50 years of independence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Democratic Republic of Congo is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its independence from Belgium today.<br \/> <!--more--> <br \/>Congolese President Joseph Kabila organised a military parade as part of the festivities.<\/p>\n<p>Many heads of state and government joined Kabila in marking the celebrations, including the first Belgian monarch to visit the country for 25 years.<\/p>\n<p>The central African nation has been blighted by war in recent years, including an ongoing inter-ethnic conflict in the east of the country.<\/p>\n<p>Belgian rule began in the late 19th century when the then-king, Leopold II, treated the Congo as his own personal colony and ruthlessly exploited its natural resources.<\/p>\n<p>But since the Belgians left in 1960, hopes of building a better Congo have been dashed by corruption and political instability.<\/p>\n<p>Despite having vast reserves of gold, copper, cobalt and diamonds, it remains one of the world\u2019s poorest nations where two-thirds of its 60 milion population scrape by on just one euro a day. <\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Democratic Republic of Congo is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its independence from Belgium&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}