Remembering an
African martyrdom
A
review of Ludo De
Witte's The Assassination of Lumumba (translated from the Dutch by Ann
Wright and Renee Fenby).
By Sreeram Chaulia
"I prefer to die with my head held high,
unshakeable faith and the greatest confidence in the
destiny of my country rather than live in slavery "
- Patrice Lumumba from
his death cell, January 1961
July 2 is the
anniversary of the birth of one of Africa's
greatestsons, Patrice Emery Lumumba. He died
young at the age of 36, when he was felled by a hail of
bullets whose origin dated back to a diabolical six
month long plot of the Belgian and American governments
and their puppet collaborators in newly independent
Congo. When Belgian sociologist Ludo De Witte published
the Dutch version of this book in 1999, Brussels
instituted a parliamentary enquiry into the
long-suspected and just-proven allegations of direct
Belgian responsibility for the assassination of a
legally elected Prime Minister of a sovereign country.
The enquiry concluded against the grain of evidence that
Belgian ministers of Gaston Eysken's cabinet of 1960-61
were "morally responsible", but had not ordered
Lumumba's physical elimination. Public apologies to the
Lumumba family and the Congolese people were added as
sops to sweeten the eyewash that sought to protect the
highest authorities of the land whose hands were
unquestionably soaked in Lumumba's blood.
The
English translation of De Witte's investigative post
mortem will help disseminate to a world-wide audience
the four decade old truth that Brussels is still balking
to admit - its heads of state and government, foreign
minister, minister for African affairs and consuls in
Africa all acted as first rate criminals and
conspirators in a bid to recolonize the Congo and
"liquidate" the hope of the masses, Lumumba. It shatters
to smithereens the publicity smokescreen erected after
1961 that the assassination was a Congolese affair, a
settling of scores "among Bantus", which had nothing to
do with the West. In De Witte's own evaluation, his book
"is a staggering example of what the Western ruling
classes are capable of when their vital interests are
threatened" (p xxv).
Enemy number 1 of the
neo-colonial cabal De Witte's central thesis is
that Lumumba became a man who frightened the Belgians
once they realized that he helmed of a holistic
anti-colonial revolution that would uproot all vestiges
and structures that benefited the former colonial
masters. The pillars of Belgian imperialism - mining
corporations and trusts, white army officers and
bureaucrats, religious missions, etc - expected to hold
on to their exploitative and privileged positions after
independence, albeit with an African faade. Prime
Minister Lumumba and other radical nationalists like
Pierre Mulele took independence seriously and began
Africanizing key paraphernalia of governance and law and
order in the two short months they were allowed to hold
office, July and August of 1960.
Belgian
sovereign Badouin, Prime Minister Eyskens and Foreign
Minister Wigny charted out a strategy of using the
mineral-rich southern province of Katanga as "a lever
against Lumumba's Congo" by aiding its secession.
Besides putting up the reactionary Moise Tshombe as the
"legitimate President of Katanga" and helping him
militarily to secure his "independence" against
Lumumba's center, Wigny wrote in September to his
consulate in Congo-Brazzaville, "the constituted
authorities have the duty to render Lumumba harmless" (p
23). The Belgian minister for African affairs,
D'Aspremont Lynden, authorized a clandestine mercenary
operation called Operation Barracuda in October saying,
"The main aim to pursue is clearly Lumumba's elimination
definitive" (French emphasis original, p 25).
Meanwhile, CIA chief Allen Dulles told the
Eisenhower administration that "Lumumba was a Castro or
worse" and persuaded Ike to declare at a National
Security Council meeting that he favored "Lumumba's
elimination". Chemical scientist Gottlieb was sent to
the Congo with poisonous gases to "mount an operation to
either seriously incapacitate or eliminate Lumumba". A
hired assassin, "capable of doing anything" arrived in
November, but the hit-and-run job failed as Lumumba
escaped from the house imprisonment maintained by
Mobutu's soldiers (who, in turn, were kept on the
anti-Lumumba side by "bulging briefcases" full of
American dollars transferred from New York). On November
24, 1960, the US helped Kasa Vubu's illegitimate coup in
Leopoldville attain international recognition in the UN
General Assembly by anointing him as the legitimate head
of the Congo. The UN special envoy in the Congo,
Rajeshwar Dayal, later described the vote in New York as
"one of the most glaring examples of the massive and
organized application of threats and pressures ... to
member states to change their votes" (p 51).
Lumumba was no communist, but the
suspicion-laden air of the Cold War lent weight to the
alarmist voices of Dulles and Leopoldville CIA station
chief Larry Devlin, and moved America into the
anti-nationalist camp, a conservative shift that was
crystallized with the post-Lumumba strategic alliance
between Washington and the "CIA's tyrant", Congolese
military leader Joseph Mobutu.
'Execution'
mode Such was the adulation and popular appeal of
Lumumba's name and vision all over the Congo that even
though he was ejected from power and incarcerated,
Brussels and its lackeys in Africa suffered sleepless
nights, with fears of nationalist uprisings in the army
and civilian population. Only in the maniacally
suppressed breakaway Katanga province could they expect
their dream of Lumumba's assassination to have the least
political consequence. The transfer of Lumumba to
Elisabethville (Katanga's capital) was a Belgian
government idea executed by Belgian engineers and radio
operators who flew a private plane across the breadth of
the country. Upon arrival, Lumumba and associates were
tortured to senselessness by Katangan soldiers under
express commands of their Belgian superiors. The
merciless execution and interment of Lumumba, carried
out by Belgian intelligence agents on January 17, should
not be seen as the action of "local commanders" who went
wild, but the consummation of Brussels's remote control
over the ghastly Congolese nightmare that began right
from the day of the hand-over of power to Africans. The
"damage control" propaganda of Belgian and Western media
that Lumumba was done in by "Bantu mentality" and tribal
hatreds was, to De Witte, "a campaign of Congolization
and banalization of events" (p145). This banalization
has not ended even 40 years after the tragedy.
Consequences of January 17,
1961 Lumumba's tragic murder set loose a torrent
of military suppression and choking of Congolese
self-determination, throwing one of Africa's richest
resource countries into the depths of poverty and civil
war. A UN cable of 1964 wrote, "Belgian businessmen are
determined to reassert complete control over Congolese
government and economy to the point that there will in
fact be a classic neocolonialist system in existence."
The cycle of "pacification programs" and severe
militarization in social life went into action "as if
the days of Leopold II had returned to the Congo"
(p164). Africa as a whole suffered reverses in its
liberation struggles as a result of Lumumba's
assassination, sliding down a slippery slope of
counterrevolution: Portugal delayed decolonization in
Angola; there was a halt in the anti-apartheid movement
in South Africa; a temporary reprieve for Ian Smith's
settler regime in Rhodesia; and the overthrow of Ben
Bella in Algeria in 1965. Belgian indecency in the Congo
paid rich dividends to the colonial enterprise on the
whole continent.
Conclusions "Patrice
Lumumba's attempt to introduce an authentic
national-democratic revolution to the Congo is enough to
place him in the pantheon of universal defenders of the
emancipation of people" (p181). His life will remain an
inspiration for generations of Congolese, Africans and
supporters of freedoms throughout the world. Even in his
dying moments, as his Belgian-Katangan butchers
recalled, he maintained a stoic dignity and refused to
compromise with evil. His "supreme contempt and
extraordinary courage" in the face of death, when he
could have easily bought personal liberty by kow-towing
to imperialism shine as silver linings for a Congo which
continues to struggle from internal and regional war
that is the legacy of Mobutuism.
As far as
Belgium is concerned, De Witte is point-blank about its
much-hyped judicial system that allows crimes against
humanity to be prosecuted wherever they are committed:
"The Belgian ruling class has no moral authority to
lecture others on democracy or human rights" (p172).
Apart from De Witte's half-convincing attempts
to involve Dag Hammarksjold and the UN as willing
accomplices and co-conspirators of Lumumba's removal
from government and fatal end (the author has
underestimated the original UN mandate in the Congo,
which was non-combatant in nature), this is a
meticulously researched book that deserves to be read by
all lovers of peace and human dignity. Like a Franz
Kafka novel, it is sickening and disturbing (especially
the section in which the Belgians mutilate and burn to
ashes the corpse of the "fallen prophet" to eliminate
proof). But the overall message is one of hope - hope
that the Congo and Africa will resurrect the spirit and
mission of Lumumba and never allow themselves to be
despoiled by former masters again.
The
Assassination of Lumumba. Verso Books, 2001. ISBN:
1-85984-618-1. Price: US$27. 224 pages.
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