Lumumba

Except for Gilles Pontecorvo's "Burn," Raul Peck's "Lumumba" is the only
film to explore neocolonialism in the depth it deserves. But unlike "Burn,"
"Lumumba" deals with real people and real events--in this case the
conspiracy of US intelligence, the Belgian government and local traitors to
keep an African people in chains despite the formal independence won in 1960.

Cast as Patrice Lumumba, Eriq Ebouaney not only bears a striking physical
resemblance to the martyred leader, more importantly he conveys the
political and personal drama of a politician caught between two worlds.
Believing in little else except social justice and national
sovereignty--two of the cardinal tenets of bourgeois democracy--he was
dogged at every step, and finally assassinated, by their agents.

The film introduces Lumumba in 1960 as an enterprising beer salesman who
hawks the Polar brand at local Leopoldville pubs by day, while attending
meetings for independence from Belgium at night.

Since the film is not a documentary, it cannot really pay much attention to
the kind of degradation Belgium visited on the Congo under King Leopold,
whose eponymously named capital city makes as much sense as calling a city
Hitlerville. Instead it presents a vivid portrait of the kind of
second-class citizenship experienced by the average citizens, who are
depicted as porters, maids and drivers for the pampered colonial in
1960--bad enough in itself.

To fill in the historical detail, one must turn to Adam Hochschild's 1998
book, "King Leopold's Ghost," that points out that in the years between
1885 and 1908, some 10 million people died in the so-called Congo Free
State, which was anything but free. It was, in fact, a giant forced labor
camp, the personal possession of Leopold II, king of Belgium. For nearly 30
years, his armed thugs forced the Congolese to extract ivory, hardwoods and
wild rubber from their homeland. Many were beaten to death for failing to
meet strict quotas, while millions more died from physical exhaustion,
famine and infectious disease. This sort of vampire capitalism bred
underdevelopment in the Congo, while feeding the growth of industry,
museums and universities in the mother country.

When Lumumba was elected Prime Minister, he was forced to share duties with
Joseph Kasavubu, a timid and temporizing bourgeois politician. Played by
Maka Kotto, he is depicted in an independence ceremony kowtowing to Belgian
officials, who have warned the Congolese: "Beware of hasty reforms, and do
not replace Belgian institutions unless you are sure you can do better." 

Despite warnings not to offend their benefactors, Lumumba will have none of
this. With a proud scowl on his face, he begins his speech with the
following words: "Our wounds are too fresh and painful for us to erase them
from our memory." Kasavubu is shown squirming in his seat.

In contrast to Kasavubu, you have two other Congolese politicians who
become open supporters of neocolonialism. One is the young Joseph Mobutu
(Alex Descas), an aspiring journalist and soon to become military
strongman. After slaughtering anti-government civilians in the early stages
of civil unrest in the newly independent Congo, Lumumba dresses down
Mobutu. Anxious not to alienate his supporters in the west, the new prime
minister tells Mobutu that such ruthlessness will work against them. In
short order, however, Lumumba will learn that they are determined to
destroy the infant nation and return it to bondage no matter what they do.

From the very moment of independence, the colonists have made common cause
with Moise Tshombe (Pascal Nzonzi), the virulently anti-Communist leader of
the breakaway province of Katanga, where most of the nation's mineral
wealth is located. As I learned from a Socialist Workers Party pamphlet
being hawked outside the theater, "Most of Katanga's mineral reserves are
owned and mined by a giant U.S.-British-Belgian controlled corporation, the
Union Miniere du Haut Katanga (UMHK). In 1960, with annual sales of $200
million, UMHK produced 60 percent of the uranium in the West, 73 percent of
the cobalt, and 10 percent of the copper, and had in the Congo 24
affiliates including hydroelectric plants, chemical factories and railways."

Essentially, the film dramatizes the shifting power relations between these
four principals, who each in their own way owes their allegiance to one or
another major class in society. Lumumba is closest to the Congolese masses.
After Kasavubu cashiers him from office, he goes to parliament to fight for
reinstatement. At the front gates of the building, hundreds of ordinary
citizens have spontaneously rallied to defend him. 

After the country begins to fray around the edges, largely due to
destabilization efforts mounted by the colonists, Mobutu is shown in a
meeting with Belgian officials and CIA official Frank Carlucci. If the
military can "restore order," they promise to back him. For his part,
Carlucci claims that the United States does not intervene in the internal
affairs of sovereign nations but assures them that it will do nothing to
act against Mobutu. At this point the audience broke out in sardonic laughter.

Towards the end of his short-lived administration (two months in fact),
Lumumba declared that he would turn to the Russians for support. After
discovering continuing efforts by the west to destabilize and overthrow his
government, it appeared that this was his only recourse. Although this
would have helped, it seemed that the biggest obstacle remained internal.
Put in the most succinct terms, Lumumba was a politician who sought to rule
through conventional measures while counter-revolutionary violence was
being organized all around him. In this period, one such attempt after
another was being thwarted in exactly the same manner, from Arbenz in
Guatemala to Mossadegh in Iran.

The film's director and co-writer, who was born in Haiti, saw Lumumba as a
Christ-like figure. "One of the things that struck me about Lumumba was the
dignity he had," Peck says. "As he was being led to his execution, people
were slapping him, abusing him, and the two other prisoners were scared to
death. They know they are going to die, but Lumumba is already somewhere
else. He is above death. And he reminds me of the sentence Christ delivered
about his killers, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'"
(Los Angeles Times  July 15, 2001) 

He continued:

"Lumumba inspired the same feelings in Africa that African Americans had in
America with the new Kennedy era. In the U.S. you had the civil rights
movement going on, and in Africa in 1960 and '61, you had 25 African
countries winning their independence. The whole world had hopes, and you
had great leaders like Nasser in Egypt, Sekou Toure in Guinea and Nkrumah
in Ghana speaking to Lumumba like big brothers. So he represented a moment
of exhilaration. You felt as though you had a future and could aim towards
something. When he was killed, many people became interested in politics
for the first time, and there were demonstrations all over the world. This
film attempts to capture that turning point in history, where everything
was still possible for Africa." 

Filming on location in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Belgium, Peck was
scrupulous about re-creating the time and political milieu. For example, a
band performs a soukous number called "The Independence Cha-Cha-Cha," that
Lumumba (and he) danced to in the '60s.

As the son of a Haitian diplomat in the Congo, Peck has special insights
into the colonial situation. His family, educated, honored and bourgeois,
was at the forefront of both nations' struggles for political and economic
sovereignty. Although he served two months in Aristide's government as
minister of culture, Peck became disillusioned with the president-priest
whom he eventually regarded as corrupt.

Perhaps the film is part of Peck's ongoing struggle to define a path for
the colonized of the world that avoids the sort of bitter disappointments
experienced in Haiti and the Congo. 

In the final scene of the film, we see a bloodied Lumumba about to face the
firing squad. Composing a letter to his wife in his mind, he says, "We have
to write our history ourselves." Essentially this is what Peck's film is
about as well. Now being held over at New York City's Film Forum, this is
one for the ages.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org