Lumumba vermoord: recensie

THE ASSASSINATION OF LUMUMBA By Ludo De Witte;
Translated from the Dutch by Ann Wright and Renee
Fenby; Verso: 224 pp., $27

by RONAN BENNETT, Ronan Bennett is the author of
"The Catastrophist: A Novel."

When the Belgians at last granted their blood-soaked
colony of the Congo independence in 1960,
politicians spoke fondly of their hopes that the
relationship between the old metropolitan power and
the new republic would be harmonious and
"complementary." Taking up this theme in his speech
at the Palais de la Nation in Leopoldville on
independence day, June 30, King Baudouin made a
crass attempt to recast one of the most ruthless
colonial adventures of modern times as an act of
selfless generosity. His ancestor, the murderous
Leopold II, had come to the Congo, he claimed, "not
as a conqueror, but as a civiliser," and Belgium had
sent "her finest sons" to bring to this vast
benighted territory the benefits of European
civilization. Independence was nothing less than the
consummation of the "great work" Leopold had
undertaken, and the king extended a promise of
continuing support. "Don't be afraid to turn to us,"
he said. "We are ready to remain at hand and help
you." Patrice Lumumba, the newly elected prime
minister, was among those assembled in the Palais de
la Nation that day. The most radical of the
independence leaders, Lumumba harbored no doubts
about what the Belgians intended by "help." For
those more generously inclined to the colonizers,
the subtleties were soon clarified by the
reactionary Gen. Emile Janssens, commander-in-chief
of the former colonial army, the Force Publique
(renamed after independence the Armee National
Congolaise). When, a few days later, his men
protested the continuation of the entirely white
officer corps, blocked promotion opportunities and
poor pay, Janssens had them fall in and wrote on a
blackboard for their better instruction: "Before
Independence = After Independence." Sometimes it
takes the particular bluntness of a soldier of the
old school to cut through the pious cant of
statesmen and diplomats.

The Belgians did not find it easy to come to terms
with independence. As the "winds of change" swept
through Africa, they continued to insist, as late as
1959, that the Congo would remain a Belgian
possession for the foreseeable future. But, faced
with growing unrest among the population, a large
and rising bill for the colony's maintenance, and
fast becoming an international pariah, Brussels
suddenly threw its policy into reverse and, on Jan.
27, 1960, capitulated to the independence movement.
Lumumba was in jail at the time on charges of
inciting pro-independence disturbances, but five
months later he was elected prime minister. Little
more than six months after that, he was dead,
murdered with gruesome relish by the Belgians and
their Congolese allies, and the Congo was again
being run in the interests of the rich and white.

In "The Assassination of Lumumba," Ludo De Witte
places Lumumba's assassination squarely in the
context of the West's efforts to frustrate
independence. From the start, it was intended that
the Congolese were to be only nominally in charge of
their country, that the key institutions of
government, security and business would continue to
be controlled either directly by Belgium or by
sympathetic Congolese. Western attention (this was
never simply a Belgian affair; the Americans,
British and French were involved to greater or
lesser degrees) was focused on the southern mineral-
rich province of Katanga. Not so much a company town
as a company country, Katanga was run by and for big
business. Giant corporations such as Union Miniere
and the Societe Generale could look forward to
profits of billions of dollars from the copper
mines, and they were not about to give these up or
share them just because "the monkeys" (the colonial
insult of choice) were now in power.

Neo-colonialism, however, is not without risks. It
depends to a high degree on finding a reliable
stooge. In early 1960 the Belgians' best hope lay in
Joseph Kasavubu, an indolent, prickly, introverted
tribal leader. His vision for the Congo restricted
to the reestablishment of the ancient Bakongo
kingdom in the southwest corner of the new republic,
he was never a serious rival to the charismatic and
popular Lumumba.

Lumumba was Kasavubu's antithesis, personally and
politically, and it wasn't only the Belgians who
hated him. David Doyle, a CIA operative in Katanga,
writes in his just-published memoir, "True Men and
Traitors: From the OSS to the CIA, My Life in the
Shadows," (John Wiley) that Lumumba "was the West's
enemy number one" and that President Eisenhower and
President-elect Kennedy wanted him removed from
power. Pan-Africanist in outlook, an admirer of the
nationalists Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure, the
youthful prime minister-- he was 35 at the time of
his murder in January 1961-- stood for a definitive
break with colonialism, the establishment of a
strong unitary state and an end to tribal politics.
Tall, lithe and infinitely restless, this former
post office worker and beer salesman had sublime
gifts of persuasion; he could move crowds with his
oratory and win over smaller groups at more informal
gatherings.

The Belgians did everything they could to thwart
Lumumba's rise. But in the elections of May 1960,
his Mouvement National Congolais emerged as the
largest single party and, through a series of
skillfully negotiated alliances, Lumumba forged a
majority bloc in the new parliament. He became prime
minister while Kasavubu took the largely ceremonial
presidency. On independence day the two men listened
together to Baudouin's insulting self-deluding
speech. Kasavubu replied first, formally and without
controversy. Then Lumumba got up to speak. "We have
experienced contempt, insults and blows," he said in
a blistering denunciation of 80 years of
"humiliation and slavery." The foreign dignitaries
had never heard anything like it on a ceremonial
occasion, but by the time he had finished the
Congolese were on their feet applauding and Baudouin
and the Belgians were looking around nervously.

Most commentators have attributed the events that
followed--the army mutiny, the hysterical flight of
the Belgian settlers, the secession of Katanga, the
intervention of the United Nations and Joseph
Mobutu's military coup--to Lumumba's "inflammatory"
independence day speech. But here De Witte suggests
it was not the words Lumumba spoke but his
willingness to act on them that so alarmed the West.
Within days, in a clear violation of Congolese
sovereignty, the Belgians sent in paratroops to
"protect" their citizens and property. They also
found a more reliable stooge in the sleek shape of
Moise Tshombe, a corrupt and biddable Katangan
politician whom they encouraged to declare Katanga
independent. At the same time, across the Congo
River in Brazzaville, Belgian agents set up
Operation Barracuda, whose aim was Lumumba's murder.

Lumumba, faced with armed Belgian intervention and
the prospect of civil war, appealed to the United
Nations in the belief that the organization would
support the democratically elected government and
the integrity of the republic. It was a tragic
miscalculation. Over the years, the role of the
United Nations in the Congo has been the subject of
much scrutiny, with many of the major players having
written accounts favorable to the mission and to the
secretary-general at the time, Dag Hammarskjold. De
Witte will have none of this and shows convincingly
that the U.N. supported Kasavubu against Lumumba in
September when the president, urged on by the
Belgians and the Americans, finally exerted himself
to announce the dismissal of his prime minister in a
radio broadcast, a move of dubious constitutional
legality. Lumumba immediately retaliated by
dismissing the president. The country, already
breaking up with secession in the south, now had two
men who claimed to be the legitimate head of state
in the capital and a third--Mobutu--poised to
displace both of them.

By this time, the Americans were taking an active
part in events. It was the height of the Cold War
and the new American ambassador, Clare Timberlake,
had decided that Lumumba, who had accepted a
shipment of trucks from the Soviet Union, was either
(in the ambassador's words) a "commie" or "playing
the commie game" and had to go. As early as July or
August, a CIA scientist named Sidney Gottleib was
instructed to concoct a poison from native plants
with a view to assassinating an unidentified African
leader. Kasavubu's coup put this operation on hold
but, when Timberlake and the local CIA station
chief, Lawrence Devlin, realized that the prime
minister's removal from office had not dented his
popular support, they looked again at their options.
At a meeting of the National Security Council with
Eisenhower, CIA chief Allen Dulles stressed that
Lumumba "remained a grave danger as long as he was
not disposed of." At the beginning of November, by
which time Lumumba was under house arrest, the CIA
told Devlin that a foreigner with a criminal past,
recruited in Europe, would shortly be arriving. The
hired assassin's code name was QJ/WIN and he was
"capable 'of doing anything."' Although CIA agent
Doyle claims that Devlin blocked the assassination
attempts out of ethical considerations, Lumumba by
this stage could have been in little doubt as to
what lay in store for him. In December, he escaped
and attempted to make his way to Stanleyville, a
nationalist stronghold in the east. He was captured
by troops loyal to Mobutu, now firmly established as
the West's man in Leopoldville and, with two
associates, Okito and Mpolo, was imprisoned,
hideously tortured, before finally being sent to
Katanga to be killed (it is clear from the testimony
of U.N. soldiers themselves that they had several
opportunities to intervene and save the men but did
not do so).

For his account of American involvement, De Witte
relies mainly on the 1975 Senate Select Committee on
alleged assassination plots and if there is little
here that hasn't been heard before it is
nevertheless shocking to be reminded of how
democratically elected politicians could plot the
murder of a foreign head of state as if they were
Mafiosi discussing a hit on a rival crime boss. What
is new is material De Witte has uncovered in the
archives of the Belgian Foreign Ministry on the
details of Lumumba's torture and murder.
Painstakingly reconstructed, De Witte gives dates,
times and places, and names names. And what a lot of
names. On the day of his death, Lumumba, already
beaten so badly he was described by one witness as
"a human wreck," died in an orgy of frenzied
brutality with as many of his tormentors as
possible--including Tshombe, the Belgian-sponsored
"president" of Katanga--wanting personally to get in
on the act and splattering themselves with blood in
the process. So compelling is De Witte's indictment
that the book's first publication, in 1999, prompted
the Belgian parliament to establish a commission of
inquiry into Lumumba's murder.

De Witte writes without stylish frills or narrative
tricks, but this is a vivid and utterly compelling
account of a nation strangled at birth by the West.
It would be satisfying to report, 40 years after
Lumumba's murder, that the Congolese are now at last
being allowed to develop their country in a way that
suited their needs. But the truth is that "after"
still equals "before": Big business, foreign armies
and an array of stooges are still trampling over the
unfortunate population to be first in line to
plunder and enrich themselves. If you want to know
who to thank for this, look no further than De
Witte's "The Assassination of Lumumba."

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)