Congo (51 page)

If that exodus was frustrating for the whites, for the young country itself it constituted a second heavy blow. To put it simply: after one week Congo was without an army; after two weeks it was without an administration. Or, to put it more accurately: it was without the top layers of an administration. Of the 4,878 higher-ranking positions, only three were occupied by Congolese in 1959.
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Suddenly, people with a simple education now had to assume important roles within the bureaucracy, roles that were often far beyond their ability. The army was crucial for maintaining order, the administration for the operations of the state. In Kisangani, I talked about this with the very colorful Papa Rovinscky, the nickname of Désiré Van-Duel, which was in turn also a Belgian-sounding alternative for his true African name: Bonyololo Lokombe. When one’s country changes names four times in one’s lifetime, why not adapt your own from time to time? Papa Rovinscky welcomed his visitors with music. He played the slit drum and the gong, and was still able to broadcast messages in the language of his tribe, the Lokele, over great distances. “The white man has arrived and is sitting in the easy chair,” he drummed out on his bush telegraph, as soon as I had pulled out my ballpoint and notebook. On his living room wall he had hung the handwritten story of his life and his curriculum vitae. He had noted the names of the thirty-five children he had sired by nine different women, “dont 8 cartouches perdues” (including eight near misses). He described himself as an “independent journalist and deacon, a born national and international historian, an external staff member of the communicational class [I have no idea what he meant by that, but it sounded good], peace artist and multidimensional
griot
.” But today, at the age of seventy-three, he mostly lived from building coffins, primarily for children, which were in great demand. In Congo, one out of every five children dies before the age of five. Before independence he had worked as a stenographer and typist for the colonial administration. He could touch-type (“My fingers had eyes”), but after independence he was suddenly pitchforked into the job of first municipal secretary of Tshopo. “There were only a few whites, the rest of the city managers were black. None of them were ready for it. The mayor put together a team. Because I could take stenography and type, I became the municipal secretary. I had to take the minutes of the city council meetings. That was very difficult for me! I’d had no training at all!”
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The Belgian exodus had major economic consequences too. During the second half of 1960 the export-oriented farming sector suffered a drastic dip. Cotton, coffee, and rubber, ready for harvest, were no longer being exported. The crops stood rotting in the fields. Exports of cacao and palm nuts fell by more than 50 percent.
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Other sectors highly dependent on European know-how suffered as well: forestry, road construction, transport, and the service sector. Mining was the only industry that remained more or less stable. Unemployment rose sharply. Those who had served as boy, cook, or maid to a white family were suddenly out of work. Tens of thousands of employees on the plantations, at the sugar refineries, soap works, and breweries lost their jobs. In the long run, industrialized agriculture made way for more traditional forms. People once again began raising manioc, shucking corn, and collecting locusts, they once again turned to family when they became hungry. The nuclear family, the
évolué
’s ideal and the object of tireless promotion by the missions, would gradually make way for the extended family, the broad network of uncles, nephews, and nieces on whom one could fall back in times of scarcity.

T
HE UPRISINGS OF
1960 affected not only the army, the administration, and the economy; they also led to armed conflict. On July 9 the first casualties fell in Elisabethville: five Europeans, including the Italian consul, were murdered. This was the bloody limit, Belgian Defense Minister Arthur Gilson decided that same evening. Going against the advice of Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Wigny and without informing the Belgian ambassador in Léopoldville beforehand, he gave the green light for military intervention.
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The lives of countrymen were at stake, he reasoned. Early in the morning of July 10 Belgian planes took off from Kamina airbase with troops for Elisabethville. Paratroopers were dropped over Luluabourg that same day to free the Belgian nationals.

It was, in every way, an ill-fated move.

A few weeks before independence, Belgian soldiers had already been stationed at the Kitona and Kamina military bases. According to the “agreement of friendship” signed by both countries, Belgium was to provide military support for an independent Congo, but only at Léopoldville’s express request; that is to say, at the request of Defense Minister Lumumba. That was absolutely not the case here. Brussels hid behind the argument that the intervention was meant only to protect Belgian nationals, yet the liberation of Belgians soon made way for the occupation of large parts of the former colony. Now that the Congolese army was in disarray, Belgium decided to maintain order (and the economy) on its own; what had taken three-quarters of a century to build must not be razed in a month. That was understandable, but foolish. Belgium should have limited itself to protecting its own citizens and then turned to the United Nations to handle the rest. As it was, its self-willed intervention now boiled down to nothing more than the military invasion of a sovereign, independent country. In Katanga, Belgian soldiers forcibly disarmed Congolese troops who had not even been mutinying! Seemingly without much awareness of the fact, the kingdom of Belgium was carrying out an offensive of its own on foreign soil for the first time since 1830.

Kasavubu and Lumumba were inclined, at first, to turn a blind eye to the Belgian actions—there were, after all, Belgians in danger—but one day later reversed their well-disposed stance. Which was entirely justified. On July 11 the real story made itself known—two times, in fact. First, on that day two Belgian naval vessels shelled the port city of Matadi. That had nothing more to do with the protection of Belgian nationals, almost all of whom had been evacuated, but with the taking of a strategic harbor. Second, and vastly more important, on that same day Tshombe declared the independence of Katanga and immediately received Belgian support. At that same time Kasavubu and Lumumba were traveling around the country, dealing in a diplomatic way with uprisings. They were just as concerned about their country’s disintegration as Belgium was. In Bas-Congo, individuals including borough mayor Gaston Diomi and Charles Kisolokele, one of Simon Kimbangu’s sons, carried out brilliant and courageous work in containing the mutiny. Successful domestic initiatives, therefore, were already being taken. When the president and the prime minister heard about the Katangan secession they flew to the province, but the Belgian commander, Weber, refused them permission to land at Elisabethville. That, of course, created a lot of bad blood: the numbers one and two of the democratically elected government were being denied access to their country’s second largest city! By a foreign officer who had entered the city only the day before!
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Kasavubu and Lumumba inferred right away that Belgium was behind the Katangan secession. An understandable assumption, but not entirely correct. The Belgians and Katangans had long maintained excellent contacts, but it would not be right to claim that Brussels had helped plan the province’s secession.
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In fact, the Belgian government had been unpleasantly surprised by Tshombe’s rash deed. On the ground, however, great rapport immediately arose between the Katangan leaders, the Belgian soldiers, and the management of Union Minière. Belgian soldiers disarmed Lumumba’s troops and immediately helped to form a new, Katangan army, the Gendarmerie Katangaise. Brussels never formally recognized the Katangan state, but in actual practice Tshombe could count on massive Belgian support. The Belgian national bank even helped to set up the central bank of Katanga.
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The Belgian court, too, was well disposed toward the rebel province. King Baudouin held Tshombe in much higher esteem than he did Lumumba. He wrote to him: “An eighty-year association, like that which unites our two peoples, is far too fervent and fond a link to allow it to be disbanded by the hateful policies of one single individual.” In the definitive draft, that word “hateful” was scrapped. That he was referring to Lumumba was clear enough already.
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With its military intervention, Belgium meant to restore order, but the move resulted in total escalation. The history of Congo between 1955 and 1965 is nothing but a series of attempts by various governments to contain unrest; attempts that resulted again and again in even more unrest. But this time the Belgian authorities had added an inordinate amount of fuel to the fire.

In July 1960 four Belgian Harvard fighter planes began patrolling the skies above a restless Bas-Congo, picking out specific targets for strafing and missile attacks. Within six days, one had crashed and another had been shot down. The other two had bullet holes in wings and fuselage.
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The badly wounded pilot of the plane that was shot down was murdered by Congolese soldiers; his body was thrown into the Inkisi.

Deputy regional administrator André Ryckmans, son of the former governor general, was shot and killed as well. One of the brightest minds of that day’s administration, he was a man who felt very much at ease in the villages.
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Anyone hearing him speak Kikongo would have sworn he was African. His feeling for the Congolese perspective was unparalleled. Old Nkasi remembered him as one of the few truly amiable whites. But when Ryckmans went to negotiate with the mutineers over the release of a number of white hostages, he was murdered before the eyes of an angry mob. The lynching of one of the most brilliant and empathic minds in the administration by a furious mob can only be seen as an indication of how badly the Belgian military intervention had ruined things.

“Monsieur André, oh yes, I knew him,” Camille Mananga said with a smile when I met him in Boma. “He was a real Congolese. He considered himself Congolese too. But they killed him, at the bridge over the Inkisi.” I asked what he remembered of the Belgian military operation. Without missing a beat, he replied: “I was in Boma. The Belgian soldiers from the Kitona base had come to disarm the army. The airfield was full of tanks. It was early in the morning, I was on my way to work. I was a government clerk back then, a minor civil servant. The town was full of soldiers. A Belgian stopped me. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked. ‘I work for the regional administration,’ I said. ‘Go back home,’ he said, ‘the Belgians have occupied the city.’ But I just kept walking, I was too curious to go home. It was the first time in my life that I had seen a tank. I went to take a look. The Belgians didn’t stay long, but it was an occupation, nothing more and nothing less.”
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Peace, in other words, did not return. All over the country, violence against Belgians increased. Civil servants and plantation owners were beaten with clubs, whips, and belts. Some were forced to drink urine or eat spoiled food. Catholic nuns had to undress in public and were tied up. Soldiers asked them why they weren’t members of Lumumba’s party, and whether they slept with the priests. Others suggested putting a hand grenade in a white woman’s vagina. Humiliation was an end in itself. In the period between July 5 and July 14, approximately one hundred European men were assaulted, an equal number of women were raped, and five whites were killed.
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Belgium had granted Congo independence in order to avoid a colonial war, but got one anyway. And it was its own stupid fault.

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF CONGO REQUESTS UNO ORGANIZATION URGENTLY TO SEND MILITARY ASSISTANCE STOP OUR REQUEST JUSTIFIED BY DETACHMENT OF BELGIAN TROOPS FROM MOTHERLAND TO CONGO IN VIOLATION OF TREATY OF FRIENDSHIP SIGNED BETWEEN BELGIUM AND REPUBLIC OF CONGO THIS JUNE 29 STOP ACCORDING TO TERMS OF TREATY BELGIAN TROOPS ONLY TO INTERVENE AT EXPLICIT REQUEST OF CONGO GOVERNMENT STOP THAT REQUEST NEVER FORMULATED BY GOVERNMENT OF REPUBLIC OF CONGO STOP CONSIDER UNSOLICITED BELGIAN OPERATION AS ACT OF AGGRESSION AGAINST OUR COUNTRY STOP TRUE CAUSE OF MOST UPHEAVALS ARE COLONIAL PROVOCATIONS STOP ACCUSE BELGIAN GOVERNMENT OF DETAILED PREPARATION OF KATANGAN SECESSION TO RETAIN GRIP ON OUR COUNTRY STOP GOVERNMENT SUPPORTED BY CONGOLESE PEOPLE REFUSES TO SUBMIT TO FAIT ACCOMPLI POSED BY CONSPIRACY BY BELGIAN IMPERIALISTS AND SMALL GROUPS OF KATANGAN LEADERS STOP . . . INSIST EMPHATICALLY ON EXTREME URGENCY OF SENDING UNO TROOPS TO CONGO FULLSTOP
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Signed: Joseph Kasavubu and Patrice Lumumba. With this telegram, the president and prime minister of Congo called in the support of the United Nations on July 12, one day after the Katangan secession. At that point the United Nations was a relatively young organization, with only four short-lived observer missions to its name during its fifteen-year existence. Its secretary general was Dag Hammarskjöld, the son of a former Swedish prime minister and a man imbued with a Protestant sense of duty. Kasavubu and Lumumba had all their hope fixed on the United Nations. Their country had been a member for less than a week.

That same evening Hammarskjöld called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. In the austere meeting room in New York, the delegates spent the whole night discussing the recent developments in Congo. The Soviet Union called for total compliance with Kasavubu and Lumumba’s request. The other members agreed to the need for intervention, but were hesitant to reprimand Belgium. The secretary general felt that an international task force should serve primarily to keep the peace and not so much to carry out the Congolese government’s orders. He also refrained from passing judgment on the Belgian invasion of Congo. Poland and Russia felt that the Belgians, as aggressors, should leave the country immediately. A little before 4
A.M.
UN Resolution 143 was approved. The Security Council called on “the Government of Belgium to withdraw its troops from the territory of the Republic of Congo” and decided to send in peacekeeping forces.
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The operation, known under the name ONUC (Opération des Nations Unies au Congo) was at that point in history the biggest UN mission ever.