The demise of Belgian rule in the Congo came in a climate of suspicion, fear and foreboding. The Belgians never devised any coherent policy for bringing independence to the Congo. When faced suddenly with an outbreak of violence, they reacted with surprise and alarm, uncertain of what course to take. As the demands of Congolese nationalists became ever more insistent, they improvised with reforms, hoping to stem the tide. Finally, fearing the possibility of a colonial war, they simply handed over power as rapidly as they could.
The speed with which Belgium agreed to Congolese demands for independence in 1960 was based on a gamble known as le pari Congolais – the Congo Bet. Because of Belgium’s determination to insulate the Congo from political activity, no Congolese had acquired any experience of government or parliamentary life. No national or even provincial elections had ever been held. Only in 1957 had the Belgians permitted Congolese to take part in municipal elections in principal towns. The lack of skilled personnel was acute. In the top ranks of the civil service no more than three Congolese out of an establishment of 1,400 held posts and two of those were recent appointments. By 1960 the sum total of university graduates was thirty. Indeed, the largest complement of trained manpower was priests: of those there were more than six hundred. At the end of the 1959–60 academic year, only 136 students completed secondary education. There were no Congolese doctors, no secondary school teachers, no army officers.
The Belgians calculated that because of the inexperience of Congolese politicians, they would be satisfied with the trappings of power while leaving the Belgians to run the country much as before. Congolese would head government ministries, but the core of the colonial state – the bureaucracy, the army and the economy – would remain in Belgian hands. To ensure a favourable outcome in elections leading to independence, the Belgians also planned to support the activities of ‘moderate’ pro-Belgium parties and thwart the ambitions of radical nationalists. ‘If we have a little luck,’ said Belgium’s minister for the Congo, August de Schryver, in May 1960, a few weeks before independence, ‘we shall have won the independent Congo bet.’
Only eighteen months before, the Belgians had been supremely confident about their hold over the Congo. The only protests about Belgian rule had come from groups of évolués seeking greater status for themselves. ‘The essential wish of the Congolese elite,’ Patrice Lumumba, a 31-year-old postal clerk, wrote in 1956, ‘is to be “Belgians” and to have the right to the same freedoms and the same rights.’ But in January 1959, with a suddenness that shook Belgium to the core, Leopoldville was torn by vicious rioting. The immediate cause of the violence was a decision by local authorities to refuse permission for a Bakongo cultural group to hold a scheduled Sunday afternoon meeting. But subsequent Belgian investigations showed that unemployment, overcrowding and discrimination had produced a groundswell of frustration and discontent. They also pointed out that French offers of self-government for the French Congo, on the other side of the river, had inflamed Congolese opinion against Belgian rule. To help restore calm, the Belgian government announced a programme of political reform, starting with local elections. It also added a vague promise about independence as being the eventual goal of Belgian policy. But having taken that momentous decision, it then fell into protracted debate about the wisdom of the move.
Across the Congo, political activity, denied to the Congolese for so long, burst out in wild and hectic profusion. By November 1959 as many as fifty-three political groups were officially registered; a few months later the number had increased to 120. Almost every party sprang from ethnic origins. Some were based on major groups such as the Bakongo, the Baluba, the Balunda and the Bamongo; others were of only local importance. The vast distances in the interior of the Congo hampered the formation of nationally-based movements. Katanga, for example, lay a thousand miles south-east of Leopoldville. More important to many aspiring Congolese politicians than the idea of national independence was the hope that, with the departure of the Belgians, they might revive ancient African kingdoms which had existed before the days of Belgian rule.
Nowhere was this ethnic ambition more pronounced than among the Bakongo of the Lower Congo region around Leopoldville where a nascent cultural movement, Abako – the Alliance des Ba-Kongo – grew into a militant political organisation championing the Bakongo cause. Its leader, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, a conservative évolué who had once trained as a priest, set his sights on reuniting the Bakongo people divided by the boundaries of the Belgian Congo, the French Congo and Angola and rebuilding the old Kongo empire which had last flourished in the sixteenth century.
In Katanga, the Congo’s richest province where the giant copper industry was located, similar tribal associations burgeoned into political parties. The most prominent was the Confédération des Associations Tribales du Katanga, otherwise known as Conakat, supported mainly by the Lunda. Its leader, Moïse Tshombe, was the son of a wealthy Katangese merchant, related by marriage to the Lunda royal family. Conakat favoured provincial autonomy for Katanga, worked closely with Belgian groups pursuing the same interest and advocated continued ties with Belgium.
Only one party, the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC), founded in Leopoldville in October 1959 by a group of young évolués, stood out as the champion of Congolese nationalism. Its leader, Patrice Lumumba, was an energetic organiser and powerful orator, well known for his articles in journals and newspapers. A tall, thin, intense man, born a member of the small Batatela tribe in Kasai province, he had made Stanleyville (Kisangani) in north-east Congo his main political base.
By the end of 1959, the Belgian authorities faced growing disorder. Rival factions competed for support with reckless abandon. In the Lower Congo, the Bakongo refused to pay taxes and abide by administrative regulations. In Kasai province, a tribal war erupted between the Lulua and the Baluba. In Stanleyville, rioting broke out after Lumumba delivered a speech there. Alarmed by the possibility of further violence, the Belgian government sought to regain the initiative by inviting the leaders of thirteen political parties to a conference in Brussels to discuss the terms and timetable for independence.
The conference in January 1960 was the first occasion on which the Belgians had consulted Congolese opinion. Belgian negotiators hoped to obtain an agreement which would lead to a phased transfer of power over a period of about four years but found themselves faced with a united front of Congolese delegates, excited by the prospect of power and position, demanding immediate elections and independence on 1 June 1960. The most the Congolese were willing to concede was an extra thirty days of Belgian rule. Fearing the alternative would be an Algerian type of war, Belgium agreed to the independence of the Congo on 30 June.
The Congo Bet soon came unstuck. Despite Belgian support, moderate parties fared poorly in the May elections. The largest single tally of seats went to Lumumba’s MNC which gained 33 out of 137 seats. But nearly half of the MNC vote came from just one province, the Stanleyville hinterland. In two crucial areas, Leopoldville and southern Katanga, the MNC won few votes. In the wheeling and dealing that followed, the Belgian authorities showed themselves unduly reluctant to allow Lumumba to form a government, turning instead to Kasa-Vubu. But when Lumumba managed to obtain majority support in the Chamber of Deputies – 74 out of 137 seats – they were obliged to call on him. The eventual outcome achieved five days before independence was a cumbersome coalition of twelve different parties which included bitter rivals. Kasa-Vubu, still harbouring dreams of Bakongo autonomy, was chosen as a non-executive president. Lumumba, seething with resentment about Belgian intrigues during the election campaign, became the Congo’s first prime minister. In Katanga, secessionist activity was gathering momentum.
The result, perhaps inevitably, was disaster. But the disaster was compounded by one fatal event after another until the Congo, within weeks of its independence, had become a byword for chaos and disorder.
Only a weekend of celebrations intervened before the new government was faced with its first crisis. In the ranks of the Force Publique, the Congo’s 25,000-man army, resentment over low pay and lack of promotion had been simmering for months. Soldiers contrasted their own dismal prospects with the sudden wealth and influence of civilian politicians, former clerks and salesmen, driving around in large cars and spending money freely. While the government was headed by Congolese, the army remained under the control of the same 1,100-strong Belgian officer corps. The Force Publique commander, General Emile Janssens, a tough, right-wing career officer, was adamant that there would be no acceleration in the Africanisation programme. To make the point clear, after dealing with an outbreak of indiscipline, he wrote on a blackboard at army headquarters: ‘Before independence = after independence.’ A protest meeting of soldiers that night ended in a riot.
Lumumba publicly accused Belgian officers of fomenting rebellion, dismissed Janssens and decided to replace the whole of the officer corps with Congolese. The new army commander he appointed was a former sergeant who had last served in the army in the Second World War. As chief of staff, he chose a 29-year-old personal aide, Joseph Mobutu, who had spent seven years in the Force Publique, employed mainly as a clerk, before leaving in 1956 to work as a journalist.
Despite these changes, the mutiny spread. In scores of incidents, whites were beaten, humiliated and raped. Seized by panic, the white population fled in thousands. The Belgian government urged Lumumba to allow Belgian troops stationed in the Congo to restore order, but Lumumba refused. Belgium then unilaterally ordered Belgian forces stationed in the Congo into action and arranged to fly in reinforcements. As Belgian troops took possession of key points including Leopoldville airport, Lumumba became convinced that Belgium was trying to reimpose its rule. He broke off diplomatic relations and declared that, as far as he was concerned, the Congo was now at war with Belgium.
On 11 July, the crisis escalated. With the connivance of Belgium and the support of Belgian mining and commercial firms, the Katanga leader, Moïse Tshombe, grasped the opportunity of the chaos to declare Katanga an independent state. Belgian regular officers previously attached to the Force Publique began training a new Katangese gendarmerie, and a Belgian technical assistance mission was sent to Elisabethville, the Katanga capital, to act, in effect, as a shadow government. Belgium’s plan was to use Katanga as a base from which to establish a pro-Belgium government in Leopoldville.
As the Congo’s administration disintegrated and internal security collapsed, Lumumba appealed to the United Nations for help. Acting with remarkable speed, within days the UN organised a major airlift of foreign troops, mainly from African countries, and set in motion plans for a civilian task force to run public services. But Lumumba demanded more. In an increasingly volatile mood, he insisted that the UN force be used to expel Belgian troops. Then he issued an ultimatum threatening that if the UN did not remove Belgian troops by 19 July, he would ask the Soviet Union to intervene. Lumumba’s frenetic manoeuvres, coming at a time when the Cold War was at one of its peaks, infuriated the United States. To the Congo’s misery and confusion was now added the possibility of a Cold War imbroglio.
By the end of July, UN forces had been deployed in five of the Congo’s six provinces, allowing Belgian troops to be withdrawn. But the problem of Katanga remained unresolved. Lumumba issued new demands insisting that UN troops be used to end the secession of Katanga, by force if necessary. When UN officials made clear to him that their mandate precluded interfering in the Congo’s internal affairs, Lumumba reacted in fury, accusing the UN of collaboration with Belgium and attacking the whole UN operation. Key UN officials came to share the US and Belgian view that Lumumba was too erratic and irrational to be trusted. Congolese politicians in Leopoldville and the Catholic hierarchy were similarly exasperated by Lumumba’s incessant quarrelling, his dictatorial habits and impetuous decisions.
On 15 August, obsessed by the need for military victory in Katanga and facing another secession in south Kasai, the main source of the Congo’s diamond riches, Lumumba took the fateful decision to ask the Soviet Union for immediate military assistance. He planned to send a military force first to regain control in south Kasai and then to march on Elisabethville to oust Tshombe. Lumumba’s military expedition to Kasai, supported by Soviet aircraft, trucks and technicians, resulted in the massacre of hundreds of Baluba tribesmen and the flight of a quarter of a million refugees. Colonel Mobutu, who controlled the Leopoldville troops, fell out with Lumumba over the expedition and joined the ranks of his critics.
Moves to get rid of Lumumba gathered momentum. Urged on by Belgian advisers, US diplomats and his own Congolese supporters, President Kasa-Vubu announced Lumumba’s dismissal as prime minister, accusing him of acting arbitrarily and plunging the Congo into civil war. Lumumba in turn announced he had dismissed Kasa-Vubu as president. Western governments sided with Kasa-Vubu; the Soviet bloc with Lumumba. The outcome was decided on 14 September when Mobutu, with the active encouragement of the US Central Intelligence Agency and the connivance of UN officials, announced he was assuming power himself. He then ordered the expulsion of all Soviet personnel.
While Mobutu assembled an interim government in Leopoldville, retaining Kasa-Vubu as president, Lumumba, after seeking UN protection, continued to live at the prime minister’s residence on the banks of the Congo River, guarded by an inner circle of UN troops. Various assassination schemes were set in motion. The Belgian government was the most determined of all to be rid of Lumumba. In a telegram to Belgian officials in Elisabethville on 6 October, the Minister of African Affairs, Count Harold d’Aspremont Lynden, the chief architect of Katanga’s secession, summed up Belgian intentions: ‘The main aim to pursue in the interests of the Congo, Katanga and Belgium, is clearly Lumumba’s élimination définitive.’
In November, shortly after the UN General Assembly bowed to American pressure and accorded recognition to Kasa-Vubu’s administration, Lumumba decided to escape from Leopoldville and head for Stanleyville, his main political base, to set up a rival regime there. ‘If I die, tant pis,’ he told a friend. ‘The Congo needs martyrs.’ Halfway to Stanleyville, he was caught, severely beaten and taken to an army prison in Thysville, about a hundred miles south-west of Leopoldville. As rebellions erupted in the Stanleyville region, in Kivu province and in north Katanga, a coterie of Belgian officials and Congolese politicians, including Mobutu, decided to dispose of Lumumba once and for all, sending him to Elisabethville, Tshombe’s capital, knowing that it was tantamount to a death sentence. On 17 January 1961 he was executed by a firing squad under the command of a Belgian officer.
The agony of the Congo continued for year after year. It became a battleground for warring factions, marauding soldiers, foreign troops, mercenary forces, revolutionary enthusiasts and legions of diplomats and advisers. Katanga’s secession lasted for two more years until in 1963 the United Nations resolved to finish it off. Rebellions in the eastern Congo in 1964 ended with a death toll of a million Congolese. In Leopoldville, politicians bickered endlessly. When Mobutu, the army commander, stepped forward a second time in 1965 and assumed the presidency for himself, it seemed at the time to offer some sort of respite.
Belgian rule in Rwanda culminated in a similar disaster. Belgium’s policy of favouring the Tutsi minority in all aspects of the administration and in education produced a groundswell of deep resentment among the Hutu majority. In March 1957, a group of nine Hutu intellectuals, all former seminarians, published a BaHutu Manifesto challenging the entire economic and administrative system in Rwanda. The central problem, said the authors, was ‘the political monopoly of one race, the Tutsi race, which, given the present structural framework, becomes a social and economic monopoly’. They demanded measures to achieve ‘the integral and collective promotion of the Hutu’.
Belgian officials reacted lethargically to the protest. In December 1958, a senior administrator finally conceded that ‘the Hutu–Tutsi question posed an undeniable problem’ and proposed that official usage of the terms ‘Hutu’ and ‘Tutsi’ – on identity cards, for example – should be abolished. The Hutu, however, rejected the proposal, wanting to retain their identifiable majority; abolition of identify cards would prevent ‘the statistical law from establishing the reality of facts’. The idea gained ground that majority rule meant Hutu rule. Ethnic obsession took hold among the small stratum of the educated elite. Political parties were formed on an ethnic basis. Hutu parties campaigned for the abolition of the Tutsi monarchy and the establishment of a republic.
The first spasm of violence erupted in November 1959. In what became known as ‘the wind of destruction’, roving bands of Hutu went on the rampage, attacking Tutsi authorities, burning Tutsi homes and looting Tutsi property. Hundreds of Tutsi were killed; thousands fled into exile. The terminology used by Hutu extremists for the killing was ‘work’.
In the midst of this chaos, Belgium decided to launch the idea of self-government. It also switched sides, throwing its support behind the Hutu cause. ‘Because of the force of circumstances, we have to take sides,’ a senior Belgian official told Brussels in January 1960. ‘We cannot remain neutral and passive.’ The colonial authorities thus began dismissing Tutsi chiefs and appointing Hutus in their place. The new chiefs immediately organised the persecution of Tutsis in districts that they controlled, precipitating a mass exodus of 130,000 Tutsis to neighbouring states.
In local government elections, held in June and July amid continuing violence, an all-Hutu party, ParmeHutu, gained a dominant position in almost every commune. The Belgian authorities then colluded with Hutu leaders to abolish the Tutsi monarchy and establish Rwanda as a republic. Legislative elections in September confirmed Hutu supremacy. A United Nations report warned: ‘An oppressive system has been replaced by another one.’
On 1 July 1962, Rwanda became an independent state under a republican government dedicated to the cause of Hutu hegemony and determined to keep the Tutsi in a subordinate role. Burundi gained its independence on the same day. Though there were similar tensions between Hutu and Tutsi there, the Tutsi monarchy survived. But both Burundi and Rwanda were to endure massive upheavals.