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Cairo Times, Egypt, 15-06-2000
The murder of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically elected president, was plotted and executed by the Belgian government, reveals Ludo de Witte in his book The Murder of Lumumba. Martin Stolk read the detailed - and often gruesome – dossier.
"If I die, it is because a white man handed a gun to a black man," Patrice lumumba told a friend in the autumn of 1960. Though the first democratically elected prime-minister of newly independent Congo had probably meant it in a more symbolic way, he had assessed his fate with shocking accuracy. On the night of January 17, 1961, it was a white hand that led him to stand against a tree in the middle of the savannah in southern Congo. And it was a white man who told the assembled firing squad to fire. Forty years later sociologist Ludo de Witte has put the names to the faces in this scene: they were all Belgians.
Ludo de Witte’s book The Murder of Lumumba has left political Belgium in turmoil. It is a detailed account that describes the Belgian hand in themurder of the first prime-minister of their old colony. The Murder of Lumumba has all the ingredients of the more graphic spy-novels - complete with bodies dissolving in sulphuric acid and "shot-during-escape" cover ups - except it is non-fiction. Based on recently de-classified documents, the book implicates not only the Belgian government but also the Belgian Royal House, and a former United Nations' Secretary General, the late Dag Hammarskjöld.
"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much," said Marlowe, a character in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness while sailing the Congo River. But even Marlowe distinguished between different sorts of imperialism, and judged Belgium's kind as the bottom of its class.
Conrad himself had visited Congo in 1890 and witnessed the horrors committed in the name of Belgium’s King Leopold II. The King personally owned the colony—approximately the size of Europe—and was proud of his undertaking. His men ruled through terror, forcing the Congolese to fetch ivory for Leopold, and later rubber. Some scholars have recently estimated around 10 million people were massacred during the 23 years Leopold’s "Congo Free State" lasted. Congolese men were pressured into forced labor while their family members were used as hostages, and subjected to rape and mutilation. The European outrage in the beginning of last century following confirmed reports of Leopold’s terror—including graphic depictions of sliced penises—forced the Belgium government to buy the colony from its own king in 1908.
The submission of Congo after that year may have become less openly repressive, but no less degrading. Belgium was aIl too happy to stay in firm control. The country is the proverbial goldmine, with vast reserves of copper, rubber, diamonds, cobalt and uranium. Eighty percent of the uranium used for the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from Congo. No wonder Belgium was not very eager to leave all that wealth to a people they considered "savages."
But after World War Two, colonialism in Africa became unsustainable. By 1960 most former colonies were at least in the process of negotiating their independence. Under pressure of a potential nationalist uprising, Belgium found it could not lag behind the trend. However, Belgium’s vision of future and past relations between the two coun-tries was quite different from the ideas of Congo’s first cahinet. Belgium saw post-independence Congo as a neo-colonial structure where the Congolese ruled only in name and where Belgium would provide the political decisons and claim the profits. That the new prime minister, the charasmatic nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba, thought differently became clear on the very first eve of its independence.
In the first pages of The Murder of Lumumba, De Witte vividly describes the ceremony which surrounded the signing of the independence treaty on the night of 30 June, 1960. The Belgian elite, the fresh Congolese cabinet members and invited guests had all gathered in the Palais de la Nation in Leopoldstad—today’s Kinshasa. Belgium’s King Boudewijn spoke live for nationwide radio, congratulating the Congolese with their independence, basically presenting it as "Belgium’s gift." While this could have been forgiveable he went on to say: "The independence of Congo is the crown on the undertaking developed by King Leopold’s genius." The Congolese cabinet representatives seethed with barely contained anger.
Congos first president Kasa Vubu spoke next, but then Lumumba, who had not been announced as a speaker, took the stage. In front of the Belgian elite—and millions of Congolese glued to their short wave radios—he delivered a fiery speech. Lumumba described Belgium as "a friendly country with whom we deal on an equal footing" and raged against the 75 years of colonial suppression saying "our wounds are still too fresh and painful for us to be able to forget them at will." He concluded: "We shall show the world what the black man can do when he is allowed to work in freedom and we shall make Congo the focal point of Africa." Now it was he turn of King Boudewijn and the present Belgian colonialist functionaries to seethe.
Belgium had already had an inkling that the new prime-minister would not be very malleable to their demands. Over the years of his political activity Lumumba had radicalized, mainly inspired by what was happening in the rest of Africa at that time. He had embraced the anti-colonial pan-African democratic philosophy of the likes of Ghana’s Nkrumah, Egypt’s Nasser and Tanzania’s Nyerere.
While Belgium could not stop Lumumba from becoming more pronounced in his beliefs, they did try to anticipate a strong Congolese opposition by speeding up the countrys independence. They hoped that that way the nationalist movement would not have the time to mature and still-weak politicians could be used as Belgium’s puppets. But they were too late. In fact Jean Paul Sartre later wrote accurately: "Lumumba was radicalized by the masses and the masses were united through Lumumba."
Lumumbas speech had raised indignation in Belgium. And not even a week later he proved his words were not hollow. Belgium had hoped to keep control over Congo through its armed forces by keeping the white officers on post. The local soldiers, however, rioted against the notion. Lumumba took their side and fired most white officers. He Iet the military name their own Congolese officers. Unknowingly, Lumumba so administered part of his own downfall: the army’s second man became Joseph Mobutu.
Africanizing the army went too far for Belgium. Fearing that they would lose all control, they immediately set out to destablize the country. They encouraged Moise Tshombe, provincial representative of the southern copper-producing Katanga, to declare independence on 11 July, before the local garrison got the chance to be Africanized. After that Congo became a mess. Lumumba wanted to retaliate against Katanga, but instead he let the UN send a multinational intervention force, ostensibly for peacekeeping, but essentially for breaking Lumumbas backbone. By accepting the UN force, Lumumba had relinquished the command of his own army. The prime-minister had no choice but to sit and wait for the UN to enforce a solution. That the UN had no such intentions he did not yet know. Meanwhile Katanga got the chance to consolidate and Belgium could create more chaos and set things to their hands. Discord was created within Lumumba’s government, and on 14 September Mobutu executed Africa’s first militairy coupe. Lumumba was placed under house arrest.
De Witte has put together an extremely complex puzzle. The political machinations during Lumumba’s last two days cover over half the 430 page book. De Witte unearthed cables and memos of then Belgian president Gaston Eyskens, of the Minister of African Affairs d’Aspremont Lynden, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Pierre Wigny and countless others in Congo, Brussels and New York. While the wording may sometimes have been different they leave no doubt. All agreed the "problem Lumumba" had to be dealt with: "Patrice Lumumba had to be eliminated."
De Witte also gives evidence that Hammarskjöld favored Belgium’s neo-colonial vision of Congo. The UN knew that Katangese separatism was a fabrication of the Belgians and the American owned mining company Union Miniere. After all this was the age of the Cold War. The United States was genuinly afraid Lumumba with his internationalist approach and socialist sympathies would snuggle up to Kruchev’s Soviet Union, like Nasser and the rest of the non-aligned movement were doing at that time. The West reasoned that by not being in their camp, one was automatically in the other camp.
It was actually rumored for a long time that it was the CIA who had planned Lumumba’s murder. While initially there did exist a CIA plan to eliminate Lumumba, it was eventually put away: "America decided to leave him to the mercy of his enemies," writes De Witte. By that time America had already asserted its power over Mobutu, who, with the blessing of Belgium, America and the West, went on to become Congo’s supreme kleptocrat for 37 years until 1997.
Congo still remembers Lumumba as a kind of national savior. Politicians who want to be popular in Congo today call themselves Lumumbists. Mobutu himself—on and off—portrayed himself that way. Even the current Congolese dictator Laurent Kabila claims to be Lumumbist, though he nevertheless arrested a born Lumumbist—Francois Lumumba, son of Patrice. It is clear Lumumba is still wearing a halo, without any real justification except that he died young. Having been prime-minister for only ten weeks, Lumumba never had much chance to prove himself as either a good or bad ruler.
Lumumba spent two months under house arrest. His residence was surrounded by UN troops, there both to keep Mobutu out and to keep Lumumba in. He clearly did not accept this arrangement. On the night of 27 November, Lumumba, parliament speaker Joseph Okito and Minister of Information Maurice Mpolo, escaped, but four days later he was captured again. It became obvious to Belgium there would be a Lumumba problem as long as there was a Lumumba.
The final order came on 16 January 1961, from none other than Minister of African Affairs Lynden. He "personally insisted" Lumumba should be dealt with by being brought to Katanga. For Lumumba this was a certain death sentence. This "solution" had been discussed earlier but shelved away, as it would clearly implicate the Belgians themselves. However, once the order was given it was quickly carried out.
En route and on arrival in Katanga, Lumumba, Mpolo and Okito were beaten and tortured severly. The prime minister was held in the bathroom of a newly-built residence of a Belgian chicken farmer. In the presence of their Belgian advisers, cabinet ministers of the Katanga govemment came to Lumumba’s place of detention to beat him. A servant of Katanga’s president Tshombe later declared his master’s suit to be completely soiled with blood. After hours of deliberation—and torture— the Katangese decided to execute the three prisoners the same night.
While the decision to kill Lumumba came from high up in the Belgian government echelons, Belgian colonial police officers carried it out. De Witte reveals it was a Belgian police commisioner Frans Verscheure, who led Okito, Mpolo and Lumumba one by one to a tree in the savannah outside Kantanga’s capital Elisabethstad—now Lubumbashi. It was Captain Julien Gat of the Elisabethstad military police who ordered the assembled firing squad of Katangese soldiers to shoot. Several days later head commissioner Gerard Soete and his brother dug up the corpses and sawed them into little pieces. The bodies were dissolved in sulphuric acid provided by the Union Miniere. The skulls, bones and theeth were crushed and scattered along the roads on the way back. Gerard Soete went on to have a lucrative career organizing security for Mobutu.
When the murder—depicted as an instance of "shot-during-escape"—was announced almost a month later, a wave of rage went through all the countries of the non-aligned movement. BeIgium properties were attacked and destroyed. In Cairo, the Belgian ambassador and his family narrowly escaped by jumping from a second floor window, while African students bumed down the embassy. Belgium however claimed innocence, blaming intemal strife in Congo for Lumumba’s death. Then editor in chief of Al Ahram Mohammed Hassanein Heikal demanded the resignation of Hammarskjöld "who had lost the trust of all African countries." Eight months later a plane carrying Hammarskjöld to a meeting with Tshombe crashed in Rhodesia, today known as Zimbabwe.
Ludo de Wittes dossier has Belgiums politicians jumping. At a time when the country is reproaching African countries for human rights abuses, Belgium seems to be deadset on cleaning out the skeletons from its own colonial closets. Belgium’s current premier Guy Verhofstadt only a few months ago acknowledged "serious mistakes" were made in preventing the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Most likely he will soon have to make another apology, this time in front of the people of Belgium’s former colony Congo, for no less a crime as murdering their first prime minister.
In June a parliamentary commission will start researching the murder. While it will not get Congo its Lumumba back, nor will the suffering of the Mobutu years be forgotten, an honest research and evaluation could possibly revitalize the relations between Congo and Belgium.