[BRC-NEWS] BOOK: The Assassination of Lumumba (fwd)

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Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 02:59:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: Gloria Emeagwali <emeagwali@mail.ccsu.edu>
Reply-To: letters@latimes.com
To: brc-news@lists.tao.ca
Subject: [BRC-NEWS] BOOK: The Assassination of Lumumba

http://latimes.com/features/printedition/books/la-000057794jul15.story

Los Angeles Times

July 15, 2001

Book Review

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

Africa Betrayed

By Ronan Bennett

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."

--

Ronan Bennett is the author of "The Catastrophist: A Novel."

Copyright (c) 2001 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved.



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