Congo

by David Van Reybrouck

  Tshombe realized at last that he had missed the boat and that his party would have to make do with one ministerial post and one deputy minister. His Katanga accounted for the lion’s share of the nation’s income, but was receiving little in return: that stung. Sooner or later, it would have to have repercussions. The parliament, too, was hesitant: the new cabinet was only barely ratified by the elected representatives.76 In the early days of the Lumumba cabinet, therefore, there was nothing like the collective effort of a government team providing unified support for a political project.

  The team that was installed was not only heteroclite and petulant, but also extremely youthful. Seventy-five percent of them were under the age of thirty-five. The youngest was only twenty-six years old. That was Thomas Kanza, the first Congolese to obtain a university diploma. He became the new ambassador to the United Nations, certainly no sinecure in the first months after independence. The oldest cabinet minister was Pascal Nkayi, but he was only fifty-nine. He was made finance minister, after a lifetime as clerk to the post office administration. A new elite also held primacy in the parliament: only 3 of the 137 seats went to traditional chiefs.77

  The first government of Congo inherited from Belgium a country with a well-developed infrastructure: more than fourteen thousand kilometers (nearly 8,700 miles) of rails and more than 140 kilometers (about eighty-seven miles) of highways and streets had been built; there were more than forty airports or airfields and more than a hundred hydroelectric and power plants and there was a modern industrial sector (Congo was world leader in industrial diamonds and the world’s fourth largest copper producer). In addition, a start had been made with general health care (three hundred hospitals for natives, plus medical centers and birth clinics) and the country enjoyed an extremely high degree of literacy (1.7 million primary school pupils in 1959)—achievements that were truly striking in comparison with other African colonies.78 What’s more, the army had had major successes in both world wars. But there is more to life than infrastructures. Thomas Kanza, the fresh-faced cabinet minister who had studied psychology, knew that for many Africans those successes were only relative: “Unlike what most Europeans were willing to admit, they had suffered more under the lack of sincere sympathy, respect, and love from the colonizers than from any lack of schools, roads, and factories.”79 Besides, what were you supposed to do with a fully appointed country if no one knew how to run it? On the day of its independence, the country had sixteen university graduates. And although there were hundreds of well-trained nurses and policy advisers, the Force Publique did not have a single black officer. There was not one native physician, not one engineer, not one lawyer, agronomist, or economist.

  “BELGIUM HAD NO EXPERIENCE WITH COLONIZING,” Mario Cardoso said during our elegant lunch at the Memling, “but it had even less experience with decolonization. Why did it all have to go so quickly? If they had waited five years, the first batch of Congolese officers would have finished their training. Then there would have been no mutinies in the army.” Between 1955 and 1960 the colonial regime had searched feverishly for reforms that could stem the tide of major social unrest, but it was too little and too late. And so the process of decolonization became a runaway locomotive and no one could find the brake. By bowing too late to the understandable demands of a frustrated elite, Brussels released a play of forces that far exceeded its own ability to control. But the same applies to that same young elite, which not only pinpointed and canalized the social dissatisfaction of the lower classes, but also whipped it up and magnified it until it took on proportions that it, too, was unable to handle. The chronology of events brought to light a paradox that could be noted at best, but not resolved: the decolonization had begun much too late, independence came much too early. Disguised as a revel, the breakneck emancipation of Congo was a tragedy that could only end in disaster.

  CHAPTER 7

  A THURSDAY IN JUNE

  JAMAIS KOLONGA CLIMBED OUT OF BED THAT THURSDAY MORNING at four o’clock. He had slept at his tailor’s the night before, just to make sure nothing was left to chance.1 The ceremony was not until eleven, but this was not a day like any other. The city of almost half a million inhabitants was still dark and silent. The houses and huts were covered by a heavy blanket of heat. Nothing moved. The laundry: hanging in deathly stillness on the line. The fire: brittle cinders. Out of sight, the children slept in awkward poses. Out of sight, men and women nestled together—comfort for a single night, or for a lifetime. Along the empty boulevard, the traffic lights sprang from green to yellow to red. In the European neighborhoods, the water in the swimming pools was without a ripple.

  The birds were still silent on their roosts. Further along, past the gardens and the villas, the lawns and the bougainvillea, the black water of the powerful river flowed by in silence. Little islands of vegetation were still being carried along, clods of earth and grass and plants, torn from the jungle hundreds of kilometers upstream, tree trunks that rolled in the darkness and soon, at the first rapids, would rise up and collide in the foaming river. That is how it had gone for thousands of years. Nature paid no heed to this auspicious day.

  Jamais Kolonga turned on the light. He prayed and bathed. His brand-new suit was on its hanger. Carefully, he drew the trousers out from under the coat. His tailor had made a beautiful tuxedo for him, cut to size. The trousers’ smooth material felt cool, the shirt was wonderfully stiff and starched, the coat fit his little form to a tee. He looked at himself in the mirror. Who would ever have thought that he, Jean Lema to the registrar’s office, Kolonga to the rest of the world, would play such an important role on this day? Until just a few years ago he had worked only at a desk job in the interior, in Équateur. As a clerk for the Otraco, he was charged with the administration for the cargo ships plying the big river. But even then there had been change in the air. At his next promotion, he assumed a position formerly held by a white man, Monsieur Eugène, a Belgian from Verviers. In 1958 he came back briefly to Léopoldville and, as he put it, caught a whiff of “the odor, the perfume, of independence.” Joseph Kasavubu was still coming to his father’s home regularly; he heard the exciting conversations and sensed the unbelievable opportunities. He didn’t want to go back to the interior again, despite his employer’s repeated exhortations. On the boulevard, in the center of town, he had run into the great Jean Bolikango. Bolikango had gone to school at Tata Raphaël’s as well, he was one of the few Congolese who—with an eye to impending emancipation—had been given a high administrative position, as deputy commissioner at the Ministry of Information. Bolikango knew, of course, how eloquently Kolonga could speak in public, and remembered his father’s status as “über-évolué.” After all, King Baudouin had even visited his home! Bolikango had rolled down the window of his car and invited him there and then to become an editor/announcer/translator for the government’s information service. Jamais Kolonga agreed on the spot. From desk clerk for river transport he became a radio journalist for the public broadcasting system. From then on he would be able to inhale the perfume of independence each and every day. As a reporter he not only went from fashion show to soccer match, but he also saw his country’s great political turnabout from close up. During the round-table conference in Brussels he reported the goings-on each day from the studio. And on June 26, 1960, when Kasavubu was sworn in as first president of soon-to-be-independent Congo, it was his scoop. With his TEAC, the leaden tape recorder of that day, slung over his shoulder, he was the one who had done the interviews.

  His new black shoes were buffed to a mirrored shine, their soles were still a virginal white. Kasavubu’s inauguration had been held only four days ago. Kolonga had done a good job on that. Two days ago they had asked him to do the live reporting on the solemn independence ceremony as well. He agreed. But it meant that his tailor would have to work around the clock.

  June 30, 1960. Officially, Congo had become independent at midnight, but the ceremony at the Palais National would be the actual confirmatio
n. King Baudouin flew in specially from Belgium; after fifty years of Belgian colonial rule, seventy-five years after his predecessor Leopold II had established the Free State, he would hand over the reins to President Kasavubu. And Jamais Kolonga, the reporter, would be at that historic event.

  The history of the Belgian presence in Central Africa had deeply effected his own family history. By means of study, his father had become one of the colony’s most prominent évolués, while his grandfather had still been a hunter in his native village. Kolonga knew the stories about him. “When the whites arrived in Bas-Congo he carried their baggage on his head. He wasn’t afraid of the white men, but he did what they said. He was polygamous, but when he was baptized he sent away two of his three wives.” No single individual life, not even in the depths of the interior, had been left unaffected by the great course of history. It had all gone very quickly.

  At a quarter past six there was a briefing from the commissioner general of information. The press kits were prepared. A text had just come in from Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and could now be handed out to the journalists. Kolonga was shown to his seat, up at the front of the hall. Everything was to proceed in a dignified and orderly fashion, that was emphasized again. There had already been an embarrassing incident yesterday, while the king and Kasavubu were being driven around the city in an American convertible.

  As he had in 1955, Baudouin had waved to the people, who turned out in great numbers to wave back at him from the side of the road. But then suddenly, from somewhere in the crowd, a man had wormed his way to the front and grabbed the king’s sword. The incident had been filmed and photographed. Baudouin was standing upright in the car, wearing his white ceremonial uniform. Kasavubu was standing to his left, in a black, custom-tailored suit. Baudouin saluted the troops of the Force Publique, who were standing on the left side of the road, holding up a banner with the Belgian tricolor. When he felt something at his right hip, the king did not realize at first what was going on. A man with a high forehead and an oblong face raced away, holding aloft the royal sword, one of the regalia of the Belgian monarchy. More than merely a weapon, it was an object that symbolized the power of the royal household.

  The incident provoked loud commentary. “That man wasn’t in his right mind,” Kolonga said, “he was a feu-follet, a misguided, restless soul with a mild form of psychosis. People had always said he was crazy.” They had little choice in the matter. Many Europeans considered it an idiotic display, a stupid, sophomoric prank that made a mockery of the change of power, but for many Congolese in the working-class neighborhoods this was no joke. For them, it was pure foolhardiness. To touch and then take away a sacral object belonging to a chief? This man would die that very night, they said. If a mask, an ancestor image, a leopard skin, or a monkey tail already had magic powers, what about the sword of a European king? Among the évolués, the rebellious gesture also met with disdain. Victorine Ndjoli, the photo model with a driver’s license, said: “We were so embarrassed when some idiot stole King Baudouin’s sword. We only heard later on that he was out of his mind.”2

  If only things proceeded calmly today, Kolonga thought. The ceremony had to go without a hitch. But people had such strange expectations about independence. There were many who had buried boxes of pebbles in the hope that they would change to gold after independence. There were also many who believed that the dead would rise again.3 Some people had even laid clothes on the graves of their ancestors, as a sort of gesture of welcome. The graves of those less well-loved were sometimes covered in corrugated iron sheeting, to prevent them from crawling up out of the ground. Some villagers in the interior locked themselves up for four days in their huts, out of fear for the risen dead. Pregnant women refused to leave their homes.4

  In the cities, the fever of independence assumed more socialized forms. In Stanleyville, a few native inhabitants built unauthorized huts on land belonging to Europeans. Adherents of the Kitawala religion, who had lived in secrecy for years, moved into the abandoned villas of Belgians, where they performed their rituals and sang their songs by torchlight. In Léopoldville, during the run-up to the great day, a clear rise was seen in the number of thefts and acts of vandalism. Boys laughed in their boss’s face and sat on the hood of his car, stubbornly refusing to get off.5

  Around nine that morning, Kolonga watched as the huge rotunda of the Palais National began to fill with dignitaries. There were members of parliament and senators from Belgium, high-ranking officers and civilians. There were delegations from friendly African nations; Prince Hassan of Morocco was there, beside President Fulbert Youlou of Congo-Brazzaville and King Kigeri of Rwanda. But above all were the newly elected members of the Congolese parliament and senate. The Palais National, built only a few years earlier as residence of the governor general (at the time, people had thought that position would remain intact for decades to come) had now become the new house of parliament. Most of the guests seated beneath the big dome were dressed in dark, Western-style suits, but others wore traditional headdresses decked out with seashells, feathers, and skins, headdresses every bit as impressive as the white pith helmet with vulture feathers worn by the governor general.

  When everyone was seated, Prime Minister Lumumba came in. A few moments later, the audience rose to its feet to greet King Baudouin and President Kasavubu. Baudouin was the first to address the auditorium. The charming king gave a speech that seemed more like something written in 1900 than in 1960. He praised the work of Leopold II as though no investigative committee had ever condemned his predecessor’s regime: “The independence of Congo constitutes the completion of the work that arose from the genius of King Leopold II, that was undertaken by him with undaunted courage and set forth by the determination of Belgium.” Nor did the young king eschew a certain paternalism: “It is now up to you, gentlemen, to show that we were right to have confidence in you . . . . Your task is immense, and you are the first to realize that . . . . Do not hesitate to turn to us, if need be. We are prepared to stay by your side and to assist you with our counsel.”6

  When he was finished, the audience applauded politely. At that moment, thousands of people glued to their transistor radios in the villages and working-class neighborhoods heard the clear voice of Kolonga, announcing in French, Lingala, and Kikongo: “Ladies and gentlemen, you have just heard the speech given by His Majesty the King of Belgium. As from this moment on, Congo is independent.”7 He, that little Kolonga with the twinkle in his eye, was the first Congolese to call his country independent.

  After that came President Kasavubu, the man Kolonga had seen so often in his parents’ living room, in enthusiastic conversation with his father, the man who had leveled blistering accusations at the colonizer during his first mayoral speech. This time, however, his address was restrained and conciliatory. Little wonder, really: the text was written by Jean Cordy, the Belgian who had once been Governor General Cornelis’s private secretary. “I wrote Kasavubu’s text, or at least the initial version of it. I had also written the text for him when he became president.”8 According to the protocol, the part of the day’s ceremonies dedicated to speeches had now come to an end.

  But they had overlooked something.

  Throughout the president’s speech, Lumumba had been busily making corrections. He had a pile of paper balanced on his knees and was scribbling comments here and there. Lumumba had seen Kasavubu’s mild-mannered speech days before the new president gave it, and felt that he couldn’t let things go at this. He was bound and determined to talk back to the colonizer one last time. Doing that would also put him back in the limelight, for it disturbed him greatly to see that it was not he, but Kasavubu, doing the honors. As the big winner of the election, he could only watch powerlessly as his archrival Kasavubu, the regionalist who did not even carry Congo in his heart, stood there showing off beside King Baudouin.9 Lumumba had written his speech the night before: he was still able to get by with only a few hours’ sleep. Rumor had it that his Belgian advise
r and faithful supporter Jean Van Lierde had worked on the text as well. Today it is seen as one of the great speeches of the twentieth century and a key text from the decolonization of Africa:

  For if today Congo’s independence is being announced in agreement with Belgium, a friendly nation with which we operate on an equal basis, then still no Congolese worthy of the name can ever forget that this independence was gained by struggle, a daily struggle, a fiery and idealistic struggle, a struggle in which we spared neither our efforts nor our hardships, neither our suffering nor our blood.

  That struggle, which was one of tears, fire and blood, fills every fiber of our being with pride, for it was a noble and a just struggle, an inevitable struggle to end the humiliating slavery that had been imposed on us by force.

  The fate that befell us during eighty years of colonial rule is not something we can eradicate from our memory, our wounds are still too fresh and too painful. We have known grueling labor, demanded from us in return for wages that did not allow us to eat decently, to clothe ourselves or have housing, nor to raise our children as loved ones.

  We have known mockery and insult, blows that we underwent in the morning, in the afternoon and evening, because we were Negroes. Who can ever forget that a black man was addressed as tu, not out of friendship, but because the honorable vous was reserved only for whites?

  We have seen our raw materials stolen in the name of documents that were called legal, but which recognized only the right of the most powerful.

  We have seen that the law was never equal when it came to black and white: accommodating for the one, cruel and inhuman for the other.

  We have seen the terrible suffering of those exiled for reasons of their political convictions or religious beliefs, banished in their own country; their fate was worse than death itself.