Congo (44 page)

The next day, many of the Belgians feel more resigned than outraged. “We completely lost face,” they tell each other on Monday morning.
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Some of them begin stocking up on canned sardines and vegetable oil, others book one-way tickets with Sabena for Brussels. The army takes three or four days to get the city back under control. The final toll is unbearable: forty-seven fatalities and 241 wounded on the Congolese side, according to the official figures at least. Eyewitnesses speak of two hundred, perhaps even three hundred people killed.

It was January 4, 1959, and things would never be right again.

“A
FEW DAYS LATER
I flew to Brussels aboard a DC-6,” Jean Cordy told me in the fall of 2009 at his service flat in Louvain-la-Neuve. In 1959 he had been the principal private secretary to Governor General Cornelis. “My directives were clear: I was to convince the Belgian government to include the word
independence
in their long-awaited policy paper. The governor general had said this was an opportunity we should absolutely not miss. I also visited the king and told him that Belgium had to refer to independence.”
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On January 13, 1959, more than a week after the riots, both the policy paper and a royal statement were publicized. The ministerial text was fuzzy, technical and incoherent, but Baudouin’s speech was both apt and crystal clear. A tape recording of his message was sent to Congo and immediately broadcast on the radio. Fishermen on the beach at Moanda, farmers amid the sugarcane, workers covered in the dust of the cement factory, seminarians immersed in their books, nurses washing their hands, village chieftains in the interior, helmsmen on the riverboats, nuns weeding their gardens, the elderly, and the adolescent listened to their transistor radios and heard their beloved king pronounce the historic words: “Our decision today is lead the people of Congo in prosperity and peace, without harmful procrastination but also without undue haste, toward independence.”
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People could hardly believe it. This was too good to be true! As they drove through the villages of Bas-Congo, the truck drivers honked their horns and sang loudly out the window:

Independence is coming
.

Independence will soon be ours
.

Mwana Kitoko [Baudouin] has said so himself
.

The white chiefs have said so too
.

Independence is coming
.

Independence will soon be ours.
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But this exuberance did not mean that Congo was back to business as usual. Unrest continued and extended far into the countryside. In regions with a long tradition of protest, like Kwilu and Kivu, things were rumbling once again. In Kasai a conflict arose between the Lulua and the Baluba, and there were mass demonstrations in Bas-Congo. After the riots on January 4, the Abako was disbanded by decree, and Kasavubu, along with two other leaders, was sent to prison for a time (they would later be released by Maurits Van Hemelrijck, the new Belgian cabinet minister charged with overseas affairs). This only increased Kasavubu’s fame in the interior, while the attitude toward the colonizer was becoming increasingly grim. Kasavubu had issued a call for civil disobedience and peaceful resistance. Secretary Jean Cordy, one of the only white, card-carrying members of the Abako, traveled through the province in July 1959 with interim governor general André Schöller. “Suddenly, the people’s support for Kasavubu had become absolute. No one talked to the authorities anymore. ‘Kasavubu is our leader, negotiate with him,’ is what they told us. They simply didn’t react, not even when I spoke to them in Kikongo. I had never run into anything like it before, and I had been in Congo since 1946. The bridges had been torn down, despite the statements on independence from the king and the government, despite Van Hemelrijck’s visit. The dialogue was over. Their silence felt very, very strange.”
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The prospect of a political turnaround aroused in many the ambition to govern. New parties arose everywhere. In late 1958 there had been only six; eighteen months later there were a hundred. Each week saw the birth of a new movement, with names like the Union Nationale Congolaise, the Mouvement Unitaire Basonge, and the Alliance Progressiste Paysanne. It rained abbreviations (Puna for the Parti de l’Unité Nationale, Coaka for the Coalition Kasaïenne, Balubakat for the Baluba of Katanga); the acronyms sometimes had more letters than the party did members.

Who were these political leaders? Time and again one saw that they were relatively young men with a secondary school education. They formed the country’s intellectual upper crust and and lived in the cities, to which they had moved as young people. Often they were active in alumni or cultural associations and nurtured their interest in politics by means of readings and debates. Admittedly, their tone was often more acute than their insight, and their knowledge of actual developments came in second to their drive. With a few exceptions, their party platforms were meager.
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One characteristic, however, cannot be overemphasized. Despite their urban surroundings, their tender years, and modern lifestyle, this budding political generation cherished ties with something that seemed to come from long ago and far away: the sense of tribe. That seems contradictory, but it is not. The sense of ethnic identity was an urban feeling par excellence. Only in contrast with others did one start to think about one’s own origins. The young and upcoming politicians hooked up with the existing ethnic organizations and modernized them. Following the tribal tack was, in terms of political strategy, a smart move: it allowed you to reach the masses. There was gain to be found in hammering on the fact that you were a proud Tshokwe, Yaka, or Sakata. Besides a larger constituency, it also guaranteed a greater chance of being heard by the various levels of colonial government. Kasavubu spoke for the Bakongo, Bolikango stood up for the Bangala, Jason Sendwe for the Baluba from Katanga, Justin Bomboko for the Mongo people, et cetera. Tribal rhetoric allowed a young elite to step forward as spokesmen for their communities.
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Understandably enough, this
jeunisme
(leadership by the younger generation) did not please the chiefs in the interior, some of whom still exercised a certain degree of influence over their migrant communities in the cities. And what was happening here was, indeed, quite revolutionary. In large parts of Central Africa, authority was traditionally based on age. Age meant respect. Now, suddenly, there was a generation of twenty- and thirty-year-olds competing for power and, in so doing, also competing for the people’s favor. They had little choice, for the Belgian government had decided to introduce universal suffrage. “With the introduction of universal suffrage,” the chief of the Bayeke in eastern Congo said, “the traditional authority will be completely undermined and is doomed to disappear.” And he was right: after 1960, a relatively young generation assumed the reins in Congo. They had proved to be the only ones capable of understanding the game of democracy and playing it successfully. The great chief of the Lunda, the inhabitants of a former kingdom along the border between Katanga and Angola, called universal suffrage an “unforgivable aberration.”
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But the most famous Lunda of those days, and in fact in the entire history of Congo, was someone else: Moïse Tshombe. In 1959—he had just turned forty, he lived in the city and had studied bookkeeping—he accepted leadership of a new political party, the Conakat (Confédération des Associations du Katanga). A family fortune had left Tshombe well-to-do, but he himself was a not particularly successful businessmen, with a look that was often misinterpreted as brooding. He came from a prestigious Lunda family, his father was a rich trader, he himself married one of the daughters of the great Lunda chieftain. Tribal pride was not foreign to Tshombe (for a time he had led the most important Lunda association in Elisabethville), but he did not oppose universal suffrage. The Conakat was a political party that used democratic means to obtain more rights for the original inhabitants of Katanga, such as the Lunda, the Basonge, the Batabwa, the Tshokwe, and the Baluba (although not the Baluba from Kasai: they were “newcomers”). Due to the decade-long import and immigration of workers, primarily from Kasai, the original population felt threatened; in Elisabethville, the Baluba from Kasai had even won the 1957 elections. Tshombe wanted more power for the “true” Katangan tribes. His Conakat in that way greatly resembled Kasavubu’s Abako; both movements advanced the interests of the city’s original inhabitants (although the Abako was monoethnic), both desired a return to far-reaching regional autonomy and both dreamed—unlike Lumumba—of a federal, highly decentralized Congo. Bas-Congo and Katanga, if need be, might even become independent states. But when it came to the future role of Belgium, they also entertained fundamental differences: the Abako was radical and anticolonial, particularly after the January riots; the Conakat, on the other hand, was not out to burn any bridges. Tshombe, who was surrounded by Belgian advisers, dreamt of a calm and orderly independence, but continued to believe in the idea of a Belgian-Congolese Community. “If we call for independence, that is not to chase away the Europeans: on the contrary. We want to continue working together with them, hand in hand, to build this country’s future.”
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Amid the profusion of political parties there ran only two major fault lines. First of all, was one radical or moderate? Radical meant that you were in favor of rapid decolonization and a total rupture with Belgium. And, second, did one think in federal or unitary terms? The Abako (Kasavubu) was radical and federalist; the MNC (Lumumba) was radical and unitary; the Conakat (Tshombe) was moderate and federalist. All the other parties could also be characterized along these same lines.

L
UMUMBA REALIZED
that political sectarianism was not a good idea. So in April 1959 he called together eight political parties in Luluabourg (Kasai) for the purpose of joining forces. It was Congo’s first political congress, a sort of mini-Accra. Jean Mayani, the man who had been one of Lumumba’s earliest supporters, was present. In his living room in Kisangani he told me: “I went there as party secretary for my borough. All the nationalist parties were there. The Cerea from Kivu, Sendwe’s Balubakat from Katanga, the Parti Solidaire Africain (PSA) from Kwilu, Kasavubu’s Abako. Really, everyone was there. Lumumba had almost three-quarters of the population backing him.”
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The Cerea opposed white supremacy in eastern Kivu province. The Balubakat stood up for the rights of the Baluba in Katanga, in direct opposition to Tshombe’s Conakat. The PSA was active in Kwilu, but would soon gain a national reputation with such major figures as Cléophas Kamitatu and Antoine Gizenga.

Lumumba wanted the parties to jointly propose a date for independence. In his speech, King Baudouin had promised that it would arrive “without harmful procrastination but also without undue haste,” but when did procrastination become harmful and when was haste undue? It would be a huge step forward, Lumumba realized, if the Luluabourg congress could agree on a date. What’s more, it would also be a major triumph for him: the initiator’s kudos would be bestowed on him and he would be recognized as the country’s most important political figure. His own suggestion was: January 1, 1961. Did anyone object to that? “Why such a hurry?” one of the delegates remarked. “Is the world going to come to an end on January 1, 1961?” Whereupon Lumumba snapped back: “You speak like a colonial.”
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Two years seemed like plenty of time to prepare the switch to the new system. That was how it had gone in Ghana too. In a time of weak party platforms and budding political leaders, there was little time for nuance and reflection. Anyone who called, even apologetically, for more gradual change was laughed off the platform as a colonial flunky. The parties became entangled in a symbolic, unparalleled game of ante-up. Rhetorical bravura was valued more highly than pragmatic sense. Rapid and unconditional independence became a goal in itself, even an obsession; people were ready to throw away the baby with the bathwater, if need be. “Better poor and free than rich and colonized.”
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Slogans like that were extremely popular. But what else could one expect? None of those present, with the exception of a few shantytown mayors, had ever been given a political mandate. Administrative experience, realism and an eye for planning were completely lacking. They were all just muddling along. And no one wanted to lag behind. This, however, happened to be about the future of a country the size of Western Europe.

It was not only sucking up when the great chief of the Luanda welcomed the governor general and the Belgian minister to his district with the words: “We do not want you to make decisions under pressure from loud-mouthed minorities. We do not understand the hurry many are in to achieve independence. We solemnly confirm that we, too, desire independence, but not yet. We need a great deal of help and support to arrive at normal development. All needless haste could once again plunge our country into the poverty and misery of the past.”
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What seemed like a reactionary standpoint at the time was a widely heard lament in Congo in the year 2010, a lament prompted by all the recent misery. Many young people blamed their parents for having demanded independence at all costs. On the street in Kinshasa, someone once asked me: “How long is this independence of ours going to last, anyway?” As a Belgian, I had heard it countless times: “When are the Belgians coming back? After all, you’re our uncles, aren’t you?” That was often meant as flattery, but sometimes there was more to it. Even Albert Tukeke, the man from Kisangani who was a distant relative of Lumumba’s, said at the end of our conversation: “We shouldn’t have become independent so quickly. But after the war, you know . . . there was that urge. If it hadn’t all happened in such a hurry, we wouldn’t have been faced with all these shortcomings.”
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