An air view of Shabunda, showing both the city and the river Ulindi - Dec 2016

Shabunda is a town and a

territory A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, particularly belonging or connected to a country, person, or animal. In international politics, a territory is usually either the total area from which a state may extract power resources or a ...

South Kivu South Kivu (''Jimbo la Kivu Kusini'' in Swahili), (french: Sud-Kivu) is one of 26 provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its capital is Bukavu. History South Kivu Province was created from Sud-Kivu District in 1989, when the exis ...

in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

. Shabunda is the largest territory in the province, covering more than 25,000 square kilometres. According to the Humanitarian Exchange Magazine, in 2002 it was "home to over a million people. The administrative centre, Shabunda, is nearly 3,000 km from the capital, Kinshasa. There are no postal services and no radio. Only landing strips keep the territory from being completely cut off".. It is possible to access Shabunda by motorbike from Kindu but it is a two day trip. In June 1997 reports surfaced of a massacre of refugees in February that year at a bridge over the

Ulindi River The Ulindi River is a tributary of the Lualaba River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). There is a proposal to build a hydroelectric power plant on the river to power a gold mining project. Location The river rises in the east of Sout ...

just north of the town of Shabunda. The refugees included unarmed civilians and armed

Hutu The Hutu (), also known as the Abahutu, are a Bantu ethnic or social group which is native to the African Great Lakes region. They mainly live in Rwanda, Burundi and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they form one of the prin ...

fighters who had been involved in the 1994 massacre of

Tutsi The Tutsi (), or Abatutsi (), are an ethnic group of the African Great Lakes region. They are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group and the second largest of three main ethnic groups in Rwanda and Burundi (the other two being the largest Bantu ethnic grou ...

s in Rwanda. They were attacked by Rwandan Tutsi troops who were fighting with the rebel forces of

Laurent Kabila Laurent may refer to: *Laurent (name), a French masculine given name and a surname **Saint Laurence (aka: Saint ''Laurent''), the martyr Laurent **Pierre Alphonse Laurent, mathematician **Joseph Jean Pierre Laurent, amateur astronomer, discoverer ...

to overthrow the dictator

Mobutu Sese Seko Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga (; born Joseph-Désiré Mobutu; 14 October 1930 – 7 September 1997) was a Congolese politician and military officer who was the president of Zaire from 1965 to 1997 (known as the Democratic Republic o ...

. Witnesses said that hundreds of people were killed. In 2022 water supply was established in the centre of Shabunda. There had been no water supply there for 100 years.

Politics

Shabunda Territory is represented in the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repre ...

by two deputies: *Benjamin Mukulungu (PPPD) *Mwenebantu Amuri (NAD)

References

{{coord, 02, 42, S, 27, 21, E, source:frwiki_region:CD_type:adm2nd, display=title Populated places in South Kivu Territories of the Democratic Republic of the Congo