by Guy Arnold
A revealing assessment of the impact of these events upon Africa comes from Attwood, the US Ambassador to Kenya at the time. He wrote as follows:
Even more galling to the educated African was the shattering of so many of his illusions – that Africans were now masters of their own continent, that the OAU was a force to be reckoned with, that a black man with a gun was the equal of a white man with a gun. For in a matter of weeks, two hundred swaggering white mercenaries had driven through an area the size of France, scattered the Simbas and captured their capital; and in a matter of hours, 545 Belgians in American planes had defied the OAU, jumped into the heart of Africa and taken out nearly two thousand people – with the loss of one trooper.
The weakness and impotence of newly independent Africa had been harshly and dramatically revealed to the whole world, and the educated African felt deeply humiliated: the white man with a gun, the old plunderer who had enslaved his ancestors, was back again, doing what he pleased, when he pleased, where he pleased. And there wasn’t a damn thing Africa could do about it, except yell rape.11
Attwood, it must be added, clearly enjoyed the scenario he had painted.
THE MERCENARY INVOLVEMENT
The Sunday Telegraph of 26 November 1961, with breathtaking distortion, described mercenaries in the Congo as ‘unlikely unshaven Galahads [who] alone in this tortured continent are ready to shed their blood in the cause of non-racialism’. Such cynical disregard for the truth tells us a good deal about Western attitudes to Africa at that time, and the role of the mercenaries in the Congo needs close scrutiny, not simply for what they did on the ground but for what they revealed of the European and American response to a situation for which they must shoulder most of the blame.
The Congo crisis was the first major upheaval with international dimensions in post-colonial black Africa and it witnessed the first appearance of white mercenaries on the continent where their conduct left a lasting impression of racism and brutality. Secessionist Katanga was to last from July 1960 until January 1963 and throughout this time Tshombe was in the market for arms and mercenaries and was largely financed by Union Minière du Haut Katanga. The number of mercenaries employed during the Katanga secession averaged 400 although later, when mercenaries were employed by the central government to fight the Simba revolt, their numbers rose to 1,500. The mercenaries were drawn from a range of backgrounds that included British soldiers from the old British-Indian Army, combat experienced French from Algeria, World War II RAF pilots from Rhodesia and South Africa and Belgian paratroopers.12 The Congo, in fact, represented the first opportunity since 1945 that mercenaries came to be employed as fighting units, and as whites fighting in a black country they provided a conspicuous and explosive element in an increasingly race-conscious world. At independence there were about 100 Belgian officers with the Force Publique; by December 1960 there were about 500 ‘volunteers’ as well as large-scale military aid in the form of arms and equipment supplied to the Katanga leader, Moïse Tshombe. As the confusion in the Congo escalated with the UN forces trying to maintain order, the Belgians pursuing their own pro-Katanga agenda, and mounting chaos in much of the rest of the huge country, the opening for mercenary activity became steadily more apparent. On 7 February 1961, South African technicians and pilots were being recruited to serve in the Katanga Air Force. On 10 April 1961, UN Ethiopian troops captured and disarmed 32 Katanga white mercenaries in the north Katanga town of Kabalo where the UN forces subsequently seized a charter aircraft bringing in seven tons of arms and ammunition. As the Manchester Guardian pointed out: ‘Politically Tshombe has done immense harm by bolstering up an anti-Congolese State by European army officers and advisers. Whether or not he is a Belgian puppet he has behaved like one, and relations between Black and White in Africa are so delicate that any suspicion of European domination in a new form serves only to prevent true co-operation between the races coming about.’13
According to the British Labour MP, Philip Noel-Baker, Union Minière and Tanganyika Concessions (TANKS) between them had provided the Katanga government with £15 million over 1960–61. He asked:
If Mr Tshombe had not been paid this money, could he have paid his white mercenaries, his Katangese gendarmerie, and the foreign arms firms who have supplied him with aircraft, weapons and ammunition? Could he have started, or continued, the movement which has so greatly increased the cost of the United Nations?14
By mid-1964 the situation in the Congo had changed radically as the Simba revolt threatened to bring about the collapse of the government. In these circumstances President Kasavubu invited Tshombe to return from his exile in Spain to replace Cyrille Adoula as prime minister and take control of the war against the Simba rebels. Tshombe complied with this request and at once raised a new force of European mercenaries: he possessed the necessary contacts and there were plenty of willing mercenaries waiting for work. These mercenaries were to play their most effective role in the two months of October and November 1964 when the Simba rebellion was effectively ended although it continued into 1965. Mercenaries continued to play a leading role in the Congo yet, however effective they might have been, the presence of white mercenaries in the Congo, especially those from South Africa, was universally condemned by the rest of Africa.
One of the most damning revelations about mercenary behaviour was revealed in an Observer story after a senior mercenary had produced a series of photographs showing atrocities committed by his men. The pictures (two were published in the Observer) showed how mercenaries not only shot and hanged their prisoners after torturing them, but used them for target practice and gambled over the number of shots needed to kill one. The officer, who by then had returned to South Africa, said he took the pictures ‘for the men to send home to their families’. Subsequently, he claimed to have become so disgusted at the atrocities that he decided to expose them.15
After he had dismissed Tshombe on 13 October 1965, President Kasavubu announced that he intended to dismiss the mercenary force, which then consisted of 800 white mercenaries attached to the Congolese army. In fact, the mercenary presence was to continue in the Congo for a further two years and it was only in 1967 that a partly rejuvenated army was strong enough to round them up and expel them from the country. The Congo crisis produced high emotions in Africa and Europe. In Africa the activities of the mercenaries were seen as a form of neo-colonialism while their brutality served only to reinforce anti-white and anti-imperialist views. Moreover, direct and indirect evidence of Western government support for the mercenaries ensured that they came to be regarded as an arm of Western policy and not simply as maverick individuals who could not be controlled. The image of les affreux – the horribles – as they came to be called coloured the African response to mercenaries for years to come.
In Europe the Congo crisis was seen by the political right – racists whose starting point was an automatic assumption of white racial superiority and those who opposed African independence – as a struggle to maintain ‘civilized’ values and they regarded the mercenaries as heroes, an attitude that was greatly reinforced when the lives of whites in the Congo were at risk. Many press articles at the time talked of a return to barbarism and the word Congo became synonymous with the belief among this group that Western control was needed in Africa for a long time to come. Such attitudes also greatly reinforced support for white minority rule in the south of the continent and the continuation of apartheid in South Africa. What also clearly emerged was the fact that none of the principal European countries involved – Belgium, France, Britain and Portugal – could escape responsibility for the actions of the mercenaries. In later years, when mercenaries appeared in other parts of Africa, especially in Nigeria, Rhodesia and Angola, Africans, who had not forgotten the events in the Congo, reacted with anger and revulsion at their reappearance.16
1965–70: MOBUTU TAKES CONTROL
On 24 November 1965 Mobutu carried out his second coup, as Nkrumah had predicted. He suspended President Kasavubu
and Prime Minister Evariste Kimba, who had replaced Tshombe, and took full executive power into his own hands. The Mobutu coup marked the beginning of the Second Republic and the re-establishment of a minimum of law and order. It also marked the commencement of 30 years of autocratic rule by Mobutu. Maj.-Gen. Joseph Mobutu (as he then was) brought an end to the power struggle between President Kasavubu and ex-Prime Minister Moïse Tshombe when he deposed the President and appointed Colonel Leonard Mulamba as Prime Minister. He told the press that he intended to remain President for five years. In parliament Mobutu gained overwhelming support with a vote in his favour of 259 to 0 with only two abstentions. He then inaugurated a campaign of national reconstruction. The period 1965–67 was one of transition as Mobutu consolidated his power. He became head of state with Mulamba as his Prime Minister while the 1964 constitution was kept as a framework for the time being. The real source of authority, however, was the Army staff.
On 17 April 1966 Mobutu established the Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution (MPR) with himself as founding president. Those who wished for political or other advancement soon recognized that they had to join the new organization or party. Mobutu set about the task of eliminating all opposition, whether from politicians, students, workers or rebels. Ex-President Kasavubu retired to his farm, Tshombe was exiled to Spain again. Others, including Evariste Kimba, were accused of plotting and executed. In the beginning the students and labour were pro-Mobutu who promised ‘true independence’. In the east of the country the rebels were virtually eliminated during 1966 though only because the army was still assisted by mercenaries at this time. However, when the mercenaries rebelled in mid-1967 the army, which had been reorganized, was strong enough to deal with them and forced them to flee across the border into Rwanda. While engaged in the process of eliminating or nullifying opposition, Mobutu centralized all decision-making in his own hands and created a Secretariat to the Presidency, which concentrated all power close to the Head of State. The Secretariat became an advisory organ for national policy and all decisions or contacts with the President were channelled through it. In October 1967 the Secretariat became the Bureau attached to the Presidency. A new constitution was approved by referendum (by 98 per cent of the voters) in 1967 and this established a presidential regime. The decline of parliament followed as well as an end to all legal opposition. Former political figures who had worked with Mobutu such as Cyrille Adoula, Justin Bomboko, Cleophas Kamitatu and Victor Nendaka were first appointed to overseas embassies, then accused of plotting and dismissed, their political roles finished. By 1970 there was no one in a position to challenge Mobutu’s power and political preeminence. However, over the period 1967–70 substantial clashes occurred with the students who had become disillusioned with Mobutu. Their power was broken, as was that of the trade unions, which became supine supporters of the regime, counselling patience to their workers who wanted to strike for better conditions, and sometimes did so in defiance of their leadership. In 1970 carefully orchestrated elections for President were held; Mobutu was unopposed and the number of ballot papers collected was greater than the registered electorate. A total of 420 candidates who had been carefully vetted and selected by the political bureau of the MPR were presented on the only list to the electorate and these approved candidates received 98.33 per cent of the vote. Thus by 1970 the stage was set for the ensuing years of Mobutu’s presidentialism.
Given its huge resources the Congo should have become one of the richest states in the new Africa. In 1959 the GNP stood at US$1,300 million; by 1975 it had increased to US$3,695 million. The principal agricultural exports were palm oil, coffee, cotton, timber and rubber; and the principal minerals were copper, cobalt, diamonds, tin, gold and uranium with many more besides. This huge range of primary exports had played a major role in the crisis of 1960–65, as had the country’s strategic position in the centre of Africa: the West was determined to prolong its control indefinitely.
CHAPTER THREE
African Unity and The Formation of The OAU
The period immediately preceding and following the independence year of 1960 saw a bewildering series of African conferences taking place as the continent’s new leaders sought to map out joint policies for the future. Groups were formed and positions – both radical and moderate – were adopted as the countries which had achieved independence tried to sort out their relations with each other and with the world beyond Africa. Everyone paid lip service to the ideal of African unity even though the realities of power diminished the possibility of any real union being achieved. The concept of pan-Africanism had developed through the first half of the twentieth century until, in the aftermath of World War II, the focus shifted from Black America and the Caribbean to Africa. The first Pan-African Conference had been sponsored by the Trinidad barrister, H. Sylvester Williams, and was held in London during 1900. A second Pan-African Congress was held in Paris in 1919 and called upon the Allied and Associated Powers to establish a code of law for the international protection of the Natives of Africa. Further conferences were held between the wars. Then came the great flowering of the pan-African movement. Its beginning was marked by the Sixth Pan-African Congress of 1945, held at Manchester in England and attended by such notable future African leaders as Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah. It reached its culmination in the late 1950s and early 1960s as the tide of independence began to sweep away the colonial empires of Africa.
The British colony of the Gold Coast became independent as Ghana on 6 March 1957 under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah who became Africa’s leading exponent of continental independence and unity. Other African leaders, however, resented his powerful personality and his interference in their affairs, and suspected his motives. Even so, he gave real impetus to the continent-wide demand for an immediate end to colonialism and the need for African unity. The series of conferences that were held from 1958 through 1961 covered the necessary groundwork that led to the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963. Two major external considerations dominated African thinking at this time. Could the new states achieve real independence and throw off the neo-colonialism of the former imperial powers? Nkrumah’s answer to that was yes, provided they united. Second, could they confront the Cold War pressures being exerted upon them, especially by the United States, and not be drawn into the East-West confrontation that was then at its height?
Commenting upon pan-Africanism in 1961, D. K. Chisiza, who was then the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Finance in Nyasaland (three years before it became independent), argued as follows:
Pan-Africanism as a strategy for emancipation, is unquestionably effective, but we must build from down upwards, not from up downwards: the fabric of the regions must be knitted together not merely tacked. … The writer suggests the following:
1. Attainment of independence.
2. Vigorous modernization of economies.
3. Encouragement of regional economic co-operation and regional consciousness.
4. Political regrouping of neighbouring countries.1
This pragmatic approach was very different from that of Nkrumah and held greater appeal for the majority of the emerging African leadership, which was conservative rather than radical despite the rhetoric that was employed at the time.
The First Conference of Independent African States was held in Accra, Ghana, during April 1958. Eight countries took part: there were three monarchies – Libya, a newly formed federation, Ethiopia and Morocco with ancient monarchical foundations; there were two parliamentary democracies, based on the British model – Sudan, a republic with a council of six as ‘head of state’, and Ghana; and three states headed by presidents – Liberia, Tunisia and the United Arab Republic. Their differences were political, racial, religious and historical – five were Muslim, two – Egypt and Ethiopia – had long histories, that of Egypt being one of the most ancient in the world, Ghana was the creation of the European Scramble for Africa and Liberia the creation of American philant
hropists. Between them these eight countries represented the range of problems and aspirations that would dominate Africa in the decade of the 1960s. A first consideration was simply that of getting to know one another, an elementary objective that had not been possible during colonial times. Of the main heads of the agenda for this conference, four were concerned with international affairs, two with these states’ relations with each other. Principal subjects for discussion were how to safeguard their sovereignty and independence, foreign subversive activities in Africa, the future of dependent territories in Africa, the war in Algeria and the black-white racial problem. The conference faced a difficulty over its approach to the dependent territories since not all colonial leaders admitted the claim of some politicians in the independent states to provide leadership on their behalves.
Dr Nkrumah opened the conference on 15 April and read messages of good wishes from, among others, the US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, and the Prime Minister of China. The conference worked to five main subject headings that reflected then, and later, the principal concerns of the new African states. These were:
1 Exchange of views on foreign policy especially in relation to the African continent, the future of the dependent territories of Africa, the Algerian problem, the racial problem, and the steps to be taken to safeguard the independence and sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the independent African states.
2 Examination of ways and means of promoting economic co-operation between the States ‘based on the exchange of technical, scientific and educational information, with special regard to industrial planning and agricultural development’.