Kasa-Vubu was born in the village of Kuma-Dizi in the Mayombe district of the Belgian Congo in 1917. He was rumoured to be the grandson of a Chinese worker brought to the Congo to work on a railroad line between Matadi and Léopoldville. His mother was a member of the Bakongo tribe. In 1925, he took the Christian name Joseph.
Kasa-Vubu was educated at Catholic mission schools and studied briefly for the priesthood.
Kasa-Vubu went on to work as an agronomist, book keeper and civil servant before he attained the rank of chief clerk, the highest level of employment available to Congolese under Belgian colonial rule. Kasa-Vubu began semi-clandestine political organizing work while he was still employed by colonial authorities. In 1955 Kasa-Vubu was elected president of the Alliance des Bakongo (Abako), a Bakongo cultural and social group in the Lower Congo area, including Léopoldville (now Kinshasa), the capital city. After the 1959 riots in Léopoldville Abako became a political party, which at times sought an independent Bakongo state but eventually agreed to take part in a Congolese government. By the time of the Congo's independence, on June 30, 1960, Kasa-Vubu was one of the two most important nationalist leaders; the other was Patrice Lumumba, head of a more radical party and the only one with nation-wide strength. Under a constitution that divided executive power, Kasa-Vubu became president, and Lumumba, whose party had a plurality in parliament, became premier. A few days later an army mutiny, Belgian military intervention, and the Belgian-backed secession of mineral-rich Katanga (now Shaba) caused governmental authority to collapse. Kasa-Vubu and Lumumba obtained UN aid, but it was ineffective. When Lumumba requested Soviet aid, Kasa-Vubu dismissed him as premier and supported the pro-Western army coup under which Joseph Mobutu took over the government, and parliament was adjourned. After the unexplained murder of Lumumba in February 1961, Kasa-Vubu gained strength. In 1965 he supported Moise Tshombe, rebellious leader of Katanga Province, for premier, in the hope of strengthening national unity. Later that year, Kasa-Vubu was ousted by a military coup led by Mobutu. Kasa-Vubu retired to his farm at Boma in the Lower Congo where he died on March 24, 1969.
Kasa-Vubu had six children. Following his death, his family went into exile, first to Algeria and then Switzerland. One of his daughters eventually returned to the Congo (then called Zaire) in the 1990s. In 1997, she was appointed a cabinet minister by Laurent Kabila and then ambassador to Belgium.
