Congo (42 page)

Democracy is not in place as long as people, in order to contain democratic action, still appoint officials rather than elected representatives of the people. Democracy is not in place when the police includes no Congolese constables. The same goes for the army: we have neither Congolese officers nor Congolese supervisors in the medical service. And what then of the top levels in education and the inspectorates? There is no democracy as long as suffrage is not universal. The first step, in other words, has not yet been taken. We call for general elections and internal autonomy.
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Those words earned Kasavubu a government reprimand, but that hardly fazed him. The office of mayor, in addition to a comfortable salary, also earned him a great deal of respect from the local population. And so he went on campaigning. The elections did not serve as oil on troubled waters, but in fact fueled the fires of unrest.

A
ND THE TIME BOMB WENT ON TICKING
. 1955: the Abako turns to politics. 1956: publication of the manifestoes of
Conscience Africaine
and the Abako. 1957: the municipal elections and the start of the malaise. But the year of the great turnaround was 1958. The immediate cause, however, was cheery and took place in an atmosphere of heartfelt fraternity: the world’s fair in Brussels. There was nothing to indicate the potentially revolutionary effect of an easy-going tour of the pavilions at Expo 58. But that is how it turned out. The world’s fair left Belgium with the protomodern monument of the Atomium, and Congo with an acute hankering for autonomy.

Jamais Kolonga confirmed that. For several years already, small groups of
évolués
had been allowed to take educational trips to Belgium, but now hundreds of Congolese, including a large group of soldiers, were invited for a few months’ stay to visit the Expo. It seemed like a sort of
Wiedergutmachung
(reparation) for the three hundred Congolese who had been put on display at Tervuren in 1897. There was a Congolese village this time too, in the shadow of the Atomium, but most of the guests from the colony were there as visitors. “My father was allowed to go to Belgium in 1958,” Kolonga told me. “He was very impressed by what he saw. Europeans who washed dishes and swept the streets, he didn’t know that existed. There were even white beggars! That was a real eye-opener for him.”
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What a contrast with the image of Belgium he knew only from the missionaries’ stories and his superiors’ attitude! The white man was not an unapproachable demigod. That did not come as a disappointment; on the contrary, it gave him hope. This meant there was room for social development, in Africa too. What’s more, the Congolese saw that they were welcome in the restaurants, cafés, and movie theaters of Brussels—yea, even in its brothels, it was whispered.
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That too was very different from the daily segregation they experienced in the colony.

The visitors to the Expo not only discovered a different Belgium, but they also discovered each other. People from Léopoldville spoke for the first time with citizens from Elisabethville, Stanleyville, Coquilhatville, and Costermansville. Their country’s vastness and the restrictions on travel had meant there was little contact between the various regions. Farmers migrated to the city, but urbanites seldom or never moved to other cities. During those months in Belgium, however, the visitors exchanged anecdotes, talked about the situation at home and dreamed of a different future. During the Expo, a number of
évolués
were also approached by Belgian politicians and trade union leaders, from both the Left and the Right. That too fostered a growing political awareness.

But Longin Ngwadi, nicknamed “The Rubber Band,” the star soccer player for Daring who had become boy to Governor General Pétillon, had less luck. When I interviewed him in Kikwit he told me that he had been allowed to go along to Belgium in 1958, but had never seen the Expo. “We went by plane. I went along as Pétillon’s houseboy. I stayed in Namur and had to cook and do the laundry. Pétillon went to the world’s fair to look at all the
merchandise
. Copper, diamonds, everything from Congo, everything from every country.” But while the governor general was dining in Brussels with the duke of Edinburgh and the Dutch minister of foreign affairs, Longin remained behind in the kitchen in Namur. “I ate well there. I used a knife and fork. I had watched the others to see how that worked.
Madame de gouverneur
used to burst out laughing when I ate the wrong way. Things were very good in Belgium. I got lots of presents. I heard about trains that disappeared under the ground and about the big seaport. Namur was an intelligent village, just like Kikwit.”
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Pétillon found the whole Expo idea ill-advised. Send three hundred Congolese to Brussels and expose them for months to the indoctrination of some of these Belgian types? “In the jumble of the crowds and the exuberance of the Expo, they could do exactly as they pleased. They succeeded in their hideous task of undermining and poisoning, even among the soldiers of the Force Publique. It is horrible to think that this happened under the very eyes of the Belgian government, which did not seem to realize that Congo was more or less descending into a prerevolutionary state.”
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As a man of action, he raised vociferous objections. Which was precisely why, during this same official trip, he was asked to remain in Belgium and become the new minister of colonies. His predecessor, Auguste Buisseret, one of the rare liberals to occupy that post, had followed an all-too-idealistic course—among other things, by introducing secular education in the colony. That had breached the hitherto-closed ranks of white authority, according to all those who stood to profit from a subjugated Congo. A technical supervisor was needed: better a fieldworker than a quibbler. King Baudouin applied his influence, Pétillon accepted the job, but after only four months he threw in the towel. Longin never got to see the Atomium.

One Congolese visitor who
was
able to admire the structures of steel and pre-stressed concrete at the Expo was a twenty-eight-year-old man from Équateur. The son of a cook at the Capuchin fathers’ mission, he had attended primary school with the Scheutists in Léopoldville. After one year of secondary education he joined the Force Publique. He became a secretary—bookkeeper—a typist, and in 1954 he was promoted to the rank of sergeant. The typing appealed to him. Working on his military typewriter, he began writing articles under a pen name for colonial publications like
Actualités Africaines
. In 1956 he left the army to become a full-time journalist. Two years later he was chosen to go to Brussels. At the Expo he cut a rather nondescript figure; a lanky, timid man who peppered his conversations with Europeans with the stopgap “n’est-ce pas?” (isn’t that so?). He was courteous enough, to be sure, but otherwise only rather awkward. His name: Joseph-Désiré Mobutu.

The final months of 1958 were exceptionally turbulent. The Expo visitors returned to Congo, the war of independence in Algeria was coming to a head, and Morocco and Tunisia had already thrown off the colonial yoke. Closer to home, neighboring Sudan was transformed from a British colony into an autonomous state, and in Brazzaville French president Charles de Gaulle spoke the historic words: “Those who want independence must come and get it!” It was intended as a provocation (for anyone responding to the invitation immediately lost all support from France), but the Belgians across the river choked on their coffee when they heard that on the radio.
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In the working-class districts, however, a cheer went up.

On October 10, 1958, the Belga wire service in Léopoldville received a press release announcing a new political party. That in itself was nothing special. Other parties had been set up in Congo that same month: the Cerea (Centre de Regroupement Africain) in Kivu and Conakat (Confédération des Associations Tribales du Katanga) in Katanga. Every region suddenly seemed to want a party of its own: the electoral success of the Abako had escaped no one’s notice. What was new, however, was the communiqué’s radically national approach. That was reflected even in the organization’s name: Mouvement National Congolais (MNC). The new party’s platform included the resolution to “fight vigorously against all forms of regional separatism,” as being “irreconcilable with the greater interests of Congo.” The Abako had bemoaned only the fate of Bas-Congo, but the MNC resolutely struck a national chord. Congo had to be liberated from “the grasp of imperialistic colonialism, with an eye to the country’s independence, within a reasonable period and by means of peaceful negotiations.”
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For the first time, there was a native political movement that viewed Congo as an entity. The list of names at the bottom of the communiqué included people from various tribes and different parts of the country. There were Bakongo, Bangala, and Baluba, people of the Catholic, liberal, and socialist persuasions, trade union members and journalists. The name of the self-appointed party chairman was Patrice Lumumba.

Lumumba was born in 1925 in Onalua, a village in Kasai. In ethnic terms, he belonged to the Batetela, the tribe that had led the great mutiny during the Arab campaigns in the late nineteenth century. Lumumba’s father was a poorly educated Catholic known for his volatile temper and stubborn nature. A man who brewed his own palm wine and drank it himself. Lumumba went to school at Protestant and Catholic mission posts and, after a time spent crisscrossing the interior during the war years, moved to the big city: Stanleyville. There he found work as a minor administrative official, then as a postal clerk. The colonial post office sent him for training to Léopoldville, where he improved his paltry French and acquired an insatiable hunger for knowledge. Back in Stanleyville he became a fervent reader, working at the library as a volunteer and never missing a reading or cultural evening. In 1954 he acquired the much-coveted registration card. His self-confidence grew by leaps and bounds. He became extremely active in the town’s club life, and seemed to have no trouble juggling a whole series of board positions. He was chairman of the association of postal workers, led the regional branch of the APIC trade federation, maintained contacts with Belgian liberal parties and became chairman of Stanleyville’s Association des Évolués.
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He had a reputation for being able to get by on two or three hours sleep each night.
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In addition to his busy schedule of meetings, he wrote political analyses. He began submitting articles to newspapers such as
Le Croix du Congo
and
La Voix du Congolais
, and even set up his own periodical:
L’Écho Postal
. All who met him in those days in Stanleyville were impressed. Lumumba was quick and acute, zealous and energetic. He had the gift of the word and the power of his convictions. With his spectacles, bow tie, and—a rarity among African men—his beard, he made an intelligent and attractive impression on many. The fact that he was fairly bursting with ambition was camouflaged by his charm and glibness, though he had the tendency at times to say what he knew the listener wanted to hear. At some moments, this made him seem a bit like a chameleon.

In 1955, the year that Kasavubu became chairman of the Abako, Lumumba steered Stanleyville’s Association des Évolués in a more political direction. This made him the city’s most influential Congolese. During a reception in the provincial governor’s garden at the time of King Baudouin’s visit, he succeeded in talking to the king for ten whole minutes. Amid the bougainvilleas at the river’s edge he explained to the young king, his compeer, a few of the problems encountered by the native population. Baudouin listened attentively and asked questions. A true conversation took place. The rumor of that meeting spread like lightning through the streets of Stanleyville. Lumumba’s popular status was established for good. Soon afterward he was invited to join a study trip to Belgium by young, promising Congolese, a trip during which he praised the benefactions of Leopold II and Belgian colonialism without a hint of irony.
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But after his return, after eleven years of faithful service at the post office, he was prosecuted for forgery and embezzlement. Later, he would say: “Did I do anything but take back a little of the money that the Belgians had stolen from Congo?”
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After serving a twelve-month prison term he left for Léopoldville. He took a job with Bracongo, the brewers of Polar beer, and became the brewery’s commercial director, a position that provided him with a salary better than that earned by many whites. He led Polar beer into the fray with its competitor, Primus. Lumumba passed out bottles of beer in the working-class neighborhoods. Here too, his
flux de bouche
(eloquence—or glibness) worked wonders. He brought beer and promised freedom. He quenched the thirst of the masses, but left them longing for more. Emancipation began with a free pint. Polar prospered and Patrice became famous. As time went by he became acquainted with a whole slew of young intellectuals. Unlike these acquaintances, however, he was familiar with large parts of the colony; before arriving in the capital he had lived in three of its six provinces. For Lumumba, therefore, the ethnic frame of reference was of lesser relevance. There were, after all, not many Batela living in Léopoldville. He preferred to “struggle on behalf of the Congolese people,” as that notorious press communiqué had said.
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In Kisangani, the former Stanleyville, I had the privilege of speaking with several people who had supported Lumumba from the very beginning. Eighty-year-old Albert Tukeke came from the same area; their mothers were even related. Like Lumumba he had worked for the post office and had received his schooling in Léopoldville. He became a counter clerk in Elisabethville, where he learned a great deal about colonialism, the hard way. “Whenever a European would come into the post office, he would never wait in line. He simply said: ‘Clear the counter!’ They always had that rude way of putting things. We were young and couldn’t talk back. If they needed something they would say: ‘Isn’t anyone here?’ By ‘anyone,’ they meant a white person. That hurt.” Colonialism was not only a huge international system, it also consisted of thousands of little humiliations, of telling turns of phrase and subtle facial expressions. Lumumba denounced that resolutely, Albert Tukeke remembered. “Lumumba was a man like everyone else, who simply demanded rights for black people. But his personality, his insight and vision were very different. He had traveled a hundred kilometers by the time others had covered only one. And I’m not just saying that because I’m a Batela.”
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