Congo (54 page)

A number of players share responsibility for Lumumba’s demise. Less than two weeks after independence, Brussels had already indicated that it wanted a different prime minister. After only one month, the United Nations and the United States were eager to get rid of him too. At first the intended ousting was purely a political one, but American and Belgian authorities gradually began thinking about eliminating him physically as well. In fall 1960 the CIA was behind Mobutu’s coup and was charged by sources in the White House with liquidating Lumumba. The Belgian minister of African affairs also provided cover for covert actions aimed at taking him out. All these attempts failed. But when Lumumba was transferred in January 1961 from Thysville to Katanga, it was not merely at the initiative of authorities in Léopoldville and Elisabethville: the logistical and operational planning was carried out by Belgian advisers in Léopoldville (who, among other things, drafted the blueprint of the transfer during a meeting at the offices of Sabena) and received active support from certain government offices in Brussels, particularly the Ministry of African Affairs. That ministry was not unaware of the potentially fatal consequences for Lumumba, yet took no precautions. The same goes for the CIA: when he heard about it, the chief of station in Léopoldville entered no protest against Lumumba’s transfer to Katanga, even though he knew it could have drastic consequences. The actual execution was the work of the Katangan authorities. The role played by their Belgian advisers remains shadowy: we know at least that on the evening of January 17 they were informed that Lumumba had landed at Elisabethville. In any case, they made few attempts to prevent the murders, even though they knew that their influence could have made a difference. A few Belgian military men, who were in charge of the Katangan guardsmen, took part in the killing itself.

The first act in the play of an independent Congo was over. It was characterized by an absolute centripetal force, a nonstop flow of events and complications. And it ended with a few teeth from an inspired African swirling in slow motion to the sandy bottom of a gray, European sea.

I
N
A
PRIL
2008 in a beautiful garden in Lubumbashi, I met Mrs. Anne Mutosh Amuteb. At ninety-one she was the oldest Congolese woman I had the honor to interview during my study. She was still an impressive sight. Anne Mutosh was a princess; her grandfather had been the
Mwata Yamvo
, the traditional king of the Lunda empire. That made her a member of Moïse Tshombe’s clan; in the African sense of the word, she was his “aunt.” To talk with her was to talk with the history of Katanga. She told me that her parents had already learned to read around the year 1900, taught by American Methodists. She herself had been a midwife, but her business talent proved greater than her obstetrical skills. I asked what she considered the best period in her life. She didn’t even have to think about it. “
L’époque Belge
and the Katangan secession,” she said in her deep voice. “During the Belgian period, everything was well-organized. There was no corruption, commerce went the way it should. I imported textiles from the Netherlands, but also flour and grain. I once placed an order for fifty sacks. That was easy to do back then. During the secession, imports were no problem either. Only when Mobutu came along did things become so difficult.”
⁵⁴

Considering her pedigree, it was little wonder that she favored Katangan independence. The Lunda mourned the loss of their empire and had for a long time dreamed of regional autonomy. In that, they were supported by those Europeans who remained behind. Many former colonials were for the secession. That rhymed with the tendency seen throughout southern Africa to perpetuate white rule. There were great differences between the apartheid in South Africa, Rhodesia, Southwest Africa (later Namibia), and the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique, but while the rest of the continent was becoming independent, white, right-wing regimes in the south were tightening their grip on power. Katanga fit that context.
⁵⁵

The Katangan secession constituted the second act of the First Republic. It was proclaimed on July 11, 1960, and came to an end on January 14, 1963. After the murder of Lumumba, on January 17, 1961, it assumed an entirely different complexion. After Tshombe had stood at the edge of that man’s grave, he became the dominant player. Of the four pretenders to the throne of independence, only three were left. Kasavubu and Mobutu had as much blood on their hands as Tshombe, but Lumumba’s death did not drive them closer together. From now on, the power struggle would take place between the three of them.

It is rather amazing that Tshombe became such a central player. After Lumumba’s murder, after all, his Katangan state was the pariah dog of the international community. The Communist bloc expressed its abhorrence; the United Nations decided to act more forcefully. Not a single state ever recognized Katanga, not even Belgium or America. Tshombe’s ability to stay on top for so long, however, had everything to do with the Belgians. Union Minière funded the new state by no longer paying taxes to Léopoldville, but to the local regime. Belgians manned the military, administrative, and economic infrastructure. Behind each Katangan minister stood a Belgian adviser. Professors from Liège and Ghent wrote the Katangan constitution. Key institutions like the Katangan national guard, the state intelligence service, and the central bank were led by Belgians.
⁵⁶
In the lobbies of the Elisabethville hotels one frequently saw white men with a Katangan flag pin attached to their lapels.
⁵⁷

In addition, Tshombe remained in place with the help of a small army of white mercenaries. These “volunteers”—there were never more than five hundred of them—came from South Africa, Rhodesia, and England, but also included Frenchmen who had fought in Indochina and Algeria, veterans of the Foreign Legion. Ragtag types, roughnecks, rabid right-wingers, machos, Rambos, tough guys who drank till they couldn’t remember their own names, let alone the name of the whore they’d ended up in bed with. They came for the money, for the adventure, and for vague ideals of white supremacy. Belgian officers took active part in their recruitment, training, and deployment.
⁵⁸
They formed the creepiest contingent of the Katangan armed forces.

Their adversaries were the UN blue helmets, the Congolese national army, and the Baluba from the north of the province. That sounds more impressive than it was. The United Nations was hesitant about acting on its more forceful mandate. The ANC was still a shambles. And the Baluba waged war with poisoned arrows and machetes.

E
XACTLY ONE YEAR
after Lumumba was murdered, a twenty-two-year-old Fleming arrived in Elisabethville for the first time. He had never been outside Europe before. He came from a farming village in West Flanders and had just graduated from the polytechnic in Ghent with a degree in technical engineering; his specialism was low-voltage electrical engineering. He had been recruited by the Nouvelle Compagnie du Chemin de Fer du Bas-Congo au Katanga, the BCK. Working on the railroad was not really his boyhood dream. He had applied for jobs with Sabena airlines and with Union Minière, the showpieces of the Belgian economy. He wanted to become a pilot, but years of diligent study had ruined his eyesight. His name: Dirk Van Reybrouck. Ten years later he would become my father.

The country in which he arrived was called Katanga, not Congo. To him, the rest of Congo was a foreign country. All he had seen of Léopoldville was the Sabena guesthouse, where he had spent the night during a layover. The Katanga where he landed had its own flag, its own currency, its own postage stamps. His registration card made that clear as a bell. It is here before me as I write. The bilious green card was still printed in two languages, French and Dutch. “Congo Belge/Belgisch Congo” is written at the top. Someone had scratched that out with a ballpoint and struck it with a big rubber stamp:
État du Katanga
.

My father was based in Jadotville, present-day Likasi. He was responsible for the electric locomotives, overhead wiring, and substations along a six-hundred-kilometer (roughly 375-mile) stretch of rails leading to the Angolan border. For independent Katanga, that east-west stretch of tracks was a lifeline.
⁵⁹
Ores and raw materials could no longer be taken north and shipped by way of Léopoldville and Matadi, for that was enemy territory. Everything, therefore, went by rail to the Angolan coast. That Benguela railroad, a single track still served in Angola by steam locomotives, was crucial for Katanga’s imports and exports. My father was often “out on the line,” as they called it. Aboard a
draisine
, a diesel-driven railroad car that served as his mobile workshop, he would go into the interior for two or three weeks at a time, checking transformers and replacing switches. BCK was a hierarchical company, but during those years the old guard placed a great deal of responsibility in the hands of young employees. “They had already sent their families back to Belgium,” Walter Lumbeeck, one of my father’s former colleagues, told me. “They just wanted to sit out their term and let others do the work. Your father was timid. His job was demanding for someone so young, and at first his French wasn’t too great. But after a while he was able to communicate well with the blacks.”
⁶⁰
He also took Swahili lessons. Years later, at home, our dog was called Mbwa (Swahili for
dog)
, and sugar and tobacco were still
sukari
and
tumbaku
.

The warring parties were well aware of the strategic importance of the Benguela line. While still alive, my father—a poor storyteller, unfortunately—would recall how he had been awakened in the middle of many a night “because a bridge had been blown up somewhere.” Then he would head out with his
drezzine
, at daybreak, in the fragile morning light, while the world slowly took on color. A few of his African employees would pilot the wagon over the rails so that he could try to sleep a little longer. At the sabotaged bridge, they had to repair the overhead lines and rebuild the rails.

“In Katanga we still ruled the roost,” Lumbeeck said, “that was the dominant way of thinking. We’ve kept things together here, let the rest go to hell, as long as things go well here, people figured. Copper was commanding a good price. Union Minière was still rolling.” Congo may have been independent, but in Katanga, colonialism was in fact still in force. The Belgian employees had whisky and fruit from South Africa; fresh mussels were even flown in from Belgium. Young Belgians led a sunny existence, far from their parents, village, and church. Those were the days of barbecues and parties, when absolutely everyone smoked: stylish young women with beehive hairdos, men in white shirts and narrow ties. Those were the days of Adamo, Juliette Gréco, and Françoise Hardy. On Sundays people went to the
cercle
, a country club for sports and recreation. People lay there at pool’s edge, drinking white Martini and Rossi vermouth, while the plop and thud of tennis balls came from a little farther away.

In July 2007 I walked the grounds of the Cercle de Panda, the club to which my father had belonged. The swimming pool was empty, the playground equipment rusty. The diving boards were em-dashes with no text between.

“Your father had a Ford Consul convertible,” said Frans and Marja Vleeschouwers, a couple he had befriended at the
cercle
. “That car burned more oil than it did gasoline. Dirk always had to carry liters of motor oil around with him.”
⁶¹
They took trips together to the waterfalls on the Mwadingusha. They visited the mission post at Kapolwe and drank beer brewed by the Flemish priests. Or they went fishing in the
brousse
, at spots where the old natives still paid with currency from the days of the Belgian Congo. Ties of friendship were more important than family. When Frans and Marja had a baby daughter, they asked my father to be her godfather—in Flanders, an honorary job reserved strictly for family.

But it was a closed world. “Everyone was allowed to join the
cercle
,” Frans and Marja recalled, “but the membership fee was so high that no black person could afford it. The whites couldn’t either, actually, but Union Minière automatically transferred the sum back to our accounts in Belgium. Unbelievable, isn’t it?” There were also other things that made one think. “We let our daughter play with black children. ‘Aren’t you worried about her coming down with something?’ some people asked then. It wasn’t really apartheid, but at the butcher shop the blacks were still served by blacks and the whites by whites.”

Walter and Alice Lumbeeck, his other friends, were in complete agreement about that. In the pictures made at their parties, you never saw an African.

Contact with black people was avoided back then. If you took a black person along to a party, you lost your friends. A white man with a black woman, people really looked down on that. That was something for the older generation. At BCK or Union Minière you still had a few older white men with a black wife, but not in our circles. That was beneath one’s station, that wasn’t chic. It would be comparable to a managing director visiting prostitutes these days. White men tended more to have affairs with their colleagues’ wives. Your father was single then, he enjoyed being in the company of people who spoke Dutch. If he had brought a black person to a party, he wouldn’t have been invited anymore.

Em-dashes without a text.

K
ATANGA WAS AN ANACHRONISM
. After Lumumba’s death, the United Nations decided to deal firmly with Tshombe and his neocolonial secession. During the first half of 1961, this took place through diplomatic channels. Conferences were held in Tananarive (Madagascar), Coquilhatville and Léopoldville. The United Nations was pressing for a federal or confederal Congo, a reunited country with major powers for the provinces. Belgium, too, favored that option, but the Belgian advisers to the Katangan ministers systematically boycotted the search for a compromise. This obstinacy led to great friction. In August 1961, things came to a head. The United Nations mediated in a final conference, held at Lovanium University in the capital. Congo was to have a new prime minister. Not Ileo, who was pushed forward by Kasavubu; not Mobutu, who was pushed forward by himself; not Bomboko, who had led the government of academics—but Cyrille Adoula, a moderate and competent trade unionist who was acceptable to all parties. What’s more, national reforms were in the offing: less centralism from the capital, more power for the provinces. A consensus seemed imminent, but at the last moment Tshombe withdrew from the discussions.