By Gilbert MUHIKA/Political analyst.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, power has never been seized through parliamentary debates—it’s always been taken in the shadows. Since independence in 1960, every president, every rebellion, every transition has had its shadow ruler: the spy chief. Invisible, feared, and indispensable.

The Congolese intelligence services are not just state apparatuses—they are the state itself. When the National Security Office coughs, the Presidential Palace trembles. When the National Documentation Center listens, ministers fall silent. When the National Intelligence Agency arrests, justice bows.

Why? Because Congo was born in the Cold War, coups, and deep distrust. On 30 June 1960, independence was declared. By 14 September, Mobutu had already staged his first coup. In between: a void. A void the National Security Office filled.

Their true mission was never written into law. Officially, they gather political, economic, and social intelligence. Unofficially, they do three things:

• Protect the leader—from enemies, the army, and his own people.
• Monitor everyone—opposition figures, ministers, bishops, students, and the diaspora.
• Instill fear—so no one dares challenge the system.

From 1960 to 1990, one system, three faces. Three men wrote the grammar of fear in Congo:

1. Victor Nendaka Bika: the ‘Oufkir of Congo’

A former nurse turned spy, Nendaka transformed the colonial-era security office into a political weapon. His golden rule: the security chief answers only to the president, not ministers.

2. Seti Yale: the ‘grey eminence’

The man who professionalized Congo’s intelligence. Trained by Israel and the U.S., he built the National Documentation Center—the so-called ‘Zairean KGB’—installing wiretaps, surveillance, and torture as standard practice.

3. Honoré Ngbanda: the ‘Terminator’

The industrializer. The National Documentation Center became an entity within an entity. Every ministry had its spy. Every embassy, its antenna. Terror was exported even to Europe.

The red thread from 1960 to 1990: ‘Whoever controls intelligence controls power.’ Mobutu understood this early. He multiplied intelligence agencies—National Documentation Center, National Intelligence Service, Military Action Research Service, Presidential Security Division—so they’d spy on each other. But he never allowed one man to control the machine for too long. Nendaka was ousted in 1965. Seti Yale was sidelined. Ngbanda was dismissed in 1990.

In 1997, the system collapsed with Mobutu. But it didn’t die—it mutated. The National Intelligence Service. The National Documentation Agency. Then the National Intelligence Agency. The acronyms changed. The basements remained. The methods evolved.

This series reveals 30 years of history from the underground. It begins with a nurse hastily appointed in October 1960. It ends with a ‘Terminator’ swept away by the winds of democracy in 1990. Between these milestones: wiretaps, disappearances, fatal transfers, and twisted coups.

Welcome to the real story of power in Kinshasa—the story that isn’t broadcast on airwaves but whispered in windowless offices.

October 1960: The nurse who turned the Security Office into a political weapon

Three months after independence, Congo was on the brink. Mobutu had just overthrown Lumumba. Someone had to secure the house. Someone who wouldn’t ask questions. That man was Victor Nendaka Bika.

He reorganized the National Security Office into an efficient intelligence-gathering machine. He created the National Investigations Bureau, shifting its focus from petty crime to surveilling and neutralizing Lumumbists. He joined Mobutu’s ‘Binza Group,’ becoming a key player in the shadow government that ruled Congo.

Why was he called the ‘Oufkir of Congo’? Like Morocco’s feared general, Nendaka imposed three rules that would haunt Congo for 60 years:

• Security above the law: He surrounded his office with troops when a minister tried to fire him.
• Intelligence as political project: As a Binza Group member, he helped make and break prime ministers with CIA backing.
• Plausible deniability: On Lumumba’s fate, he always claimed, ‘It wasn’t me—it was D’Aspremont, Tshombe, Lahaye.’

In 1965, Mobutu sidelined him—for being too powerful. But the machine was already in motion. Seti Yale and Ngbanda’s ‘Terminator’ would only industrialize Nendaka’s methods.

13 December 1961: The day the police staged a coup against its own minister

Interior Minister Christophe Gbenye thought he was in charge. He signed a decree dismissing Victor Nendaka, the Security chief, ‘pending reassignment.’

Nendaka’s response? A single phone call to Mobutu. The president immediately dispatched troops to surround the Security Office. They threatened to arrest Gbenye if he interfered. Days later, the *Moniteur Congolais* published the order: Nendaka stayed. Gbenye was gone.

This was Congo’s first time seeing a police chief threaten a minister with armed force—and win. The ‘Oufkir’ model was born.

16 January 1961: The handwritten note that killed Lumumba

Four decades later, an elderly man still clutched his trump card in a Belgian inquiry: a yellowed sheet of paper.

‘When we learned Tshombe would host Lumumba, the evacuation plans for three prisoners were altered by André Lahaye, a Security agent […] I kept this document,’ Victor Nendaka testified.

That document was the transfer order for Patrice Lumumba, Maurice Mpolo, and Joseph Okito to Élisabethville. As head of the National Security Office, Nendaka organized the convoy. On the night of 17 January, the three men were executed.

His defense?

‘Kasa-Vubu approved the transfer because he, like me, believed Lumumba wouldn’t be killed in Katanga. In our culture, we settle disputes under the baobab, not with bullets.’

Historians note: ‘Victor Nendaka, who had tense relations with Lumumba since the 1960 elections, was suspected of involvement in the incident.’

‘The Congolese Oufkir: How Victor Nendaka invented the power-crushing machine’

Some Congolese writings describe him as a ‘bloodthirsty terminator, Victor Nendaka Bika, the monster of darkness,’ for his role in organizing Lumumba’s fatal transfer. Nendaka maintained his innocence until his death, insisting the Lumumba Commission was ‘trying to frame him.’