COULD BE INDUCED TO REQUEST INTERVENTION BY SOVIET UNION IF WESTERN CAMP DOES NOT TERMINATE ACT OF AGGRESSION AGAINST SOVEREIGNTY REPUBLIC OF CONGO STOP NATIONAL CONGOLESE TERRITORY CURRENTLY OCCUPIED BY BELGIAN TROOPS AND LIVES OF PRESIDENT OF REPUBLIC AND PRIME MINISTER IN DANGER FULLSTOP.29
It would be hard to overstate the importance of this move. At a single swoop, this telegram opened a new front in the Cold War: Africa. Until then, the tension between East and West had been played out largely in Eastern Europe and Asia (Korea and Vietnam). Now, suddenly, Africa was the focal point of attention. The telegram had barely been sent to Russia before it was leaked to the CIA. Its contents caused great nervousness in Washington: was Congo actually asking the archenemy for assistance?
In 1960 seventeen African countries had gained independence. The result was a new scramble for Africa. Unlike in the nineteenth century, this was not about Western European powers in search of overseas colonies, but about the victors of World War II trying to expand their spheres of influence around the globe. Economic interests still played a major role, but ideological, geopolitical, and military factors were much more decisive. Congo was the first African country to become involved in the tug of war between the two new superpowers. Not only was it a huge and strategically located country from which all of Central Africa could be controlled, but it also had crucial stores of raw materials for the production of weapons. The Americans knew all too well that it had won World War II with the help of uranium from Congo, and that cobalt, an ore used in making missiles and other weapons, was found in only two spots in the world: Congo and Russia itself.30 To leave Congo to the Russians would seriously compromise America militarily.
Did Kasavubu and Lumumba realize the impact their telegram had? Most probably not. Inexperienced as they were, they were simply trying to obtain foreign assistance in solving a conflict concerning national decolonization; in doing so, however, they had opened the Pandora’s box of global conflict. A great deal of ink has been spent on Lumumba’s supposed communist sympathies. The contacts with Russia in that regard are often seen as proof of his Bolshevist disposition. But that is not correct. Economically, Lumumba leaned more toward classical liberalism than communism. He held no truck with the collectivization of agriculture or industry; he counted more on private investments from abroad. What’s more, Lumumba was a nationalist and not an internationalist, as would have behooved a good communist. Despite all the Pan-Africanism, his frame of reference was Congolese through and through. The notion of proletarian revolution was foreign to him as well. As an évolué he was part of the newborn Congolese bourgeoisie; he had no desire to overthrow his own social group. What’s more, he had also turned to America to help solve his country’s problems. And it is often forgotten that he wrote his request to Nikita Khrushchev along with Kasavubu, who was anything but a communist. Even Khrushchev realized that: “I could say that Mr. Lumumba is as much a communist as I am a Catholic. But if Lumumba’s words and actions overlap with communist ideas, I can only be pleased.”31
Nor was the request to Moscow prompted by Lumumba’s fickle nature, his suspicious turn of mind, his unreasonable behavior or any other personality trait that people thought they detected in him. Lumumba did indeed have a reputation for being irritable and capricious, but reading the telegrams to the United Nations and Russia today, one feels a very different psychological register: panic. Panic accompanied by total outrage, a great fear of losing control and the fear of being murdered. We should not forget that Kasavubu and Lumumba had occupied no major political positions before being placed at the helm of their country. Kasavubu had been mayor of a borough in Léopoldville; Lumumba’s very first political appointment was that of prime minister. After two weeks of independence, they lost their grip on events. It was as though they had just received their driver’s licenses and suddenly found themselves in the cockpit of a jet fighter that was about to crash. Confronted with Belgium’s unsolicited military intervention, they did what they thought best at that fearful moment: quickly called for assistance from whoever was ready to help. And Russia was more than ready. One day later, in an extremely enthusiastic letter, Khrushchev let them know that, should the “imperialist aggression” of Belgium and its allies continue, the Soviet Union would “not hesitate to take resolute measures to end that aggression.” His country, after all, could only sympathize with “the heroic struggle of the Congolese people for the independence and integrity of the republic of Congo.” To which he added: “The Soviet Union’s demand is clear: hands off of the republic of Congo!” Saying that, he conveniently forgot how the Russian army had ground Hungary beneath its heel four years earlier.32
Hammarskjöld understood the threat of a global conflict and succeeded in getting peacekeeping forces to Congo within the next forty-eight hours: on July 15 the first Moroccan and Ghanian contingents arrived, followed by other African troops from Tunisia, Morocco, Ethiopia, and Mali. Meanwhile, Russia sent ten Ilyushin transport planes to Congo with trucks, food, and weapons. America considered bringing NATO forces into play, but that could have unleashed a second Korean conflict or even a new world war. Washington therefore chose to exercise influence through two more discreet channels: the United Nations and the CIA: the path of diplomatic lobbying in New York and that of clandestine influence in Léopoldville. Larry Devlin, head of the American intelligence service in Congo, had access to huge funds for the purpose of nudging Congolese politicians in a direction favorable to America. Kasavubu and above all Mobutu were to become his minions.33
Through my talks with Jamais Kolonga, I gained a picture of those tumultuous days. One of his anecdotes was very telling. In late July, Lumumba decided to go to America to negotiate with the United States and the United Nations. The usual protocol, under which such an official state visit is carefully arranged by top officials on one side and diplomats on the other, was thrown to the wind. A member of Lumumba’s staff went to the American embassy in Léopoldville and demanded on the spot that twenty-four visas be issued for the prime minister and his retinue. More than one eyebrow was raised at that. There was no program, no protocol, no appointments had been made.34 “I went to Ndijli airport to wave goodbye,” Kolonga said. Since June 30 he had been working for the prime minister’s press department. The people he met there included Mobutu, Lumumba’s secretary.
A brass band played, the door of the plane closed, the stairs were rolled away. But inside the plane, Lumumba realized that he lacked a press attaché. The door opened again and Lumumba pointed to our little group. Who was he pointing at? At me? At the person beside me? None of us could figure it out. “C’est vous!” he shouted, pointing at me. I walked over to the plane. I had to go along. All I had with me was a Parker pen and a notebook. No clothes, except for the green suit I was wearing! No passport, no visa, I went on board without any baggage. But when it was over I came back with two full suitcases and a shoulder bag. And in the meantime I had seen Dag Hammarskjöld at work at the United Nations.35
This nonchalance was characteristic of the spirit of improvisation that reigned within the young Congolese government. It was one of the reasons why Lumumba did not make a good impression during his visit. With no appointment having been made, President Eisenhower refused to receive him. At the United Nations, officials were annoyed by the way Lumumba “made impossible demands and demanded immediate results.”36 C. Douglas Dillon, U.S. deputy secretary of state at the time, complained about his “irrational, almost ‘psychotic’ personality”: “He never looked you straight in the eye, he looked up at the sky. And then came this huge flood of words . . . . His words were never related to what we were trying to talk about. You got the feeling that he, as a person, was possessed by a fervor I can only describe as messianic. He simply wasn’t rational . . . . The impression he made was extremely negative, this was someone you couldn’t work with at all.” His asking a top State Department official to arrange a blonde call girl for him did not make a good impression either.37
AFTER ONE MONTH this was the situation in Congo: the army had been tossed topsy-turvy, the administration decapitated, the economy was on the blink, Katanga had torn itself away, Belgium had swept down on the country, and world peace was being threatened. And all this because, at the outset, a few soldiers in the capital had demanded better pay and a higher rank.
Meanwhile, Lumumba had burned many of his bridges. After his speech against Baudouin and his dismissal of General Janssens, Belgium had had it with him. After the telegram to Khrushchev and his trip to America, the United States was finished with him. The United Nations’ patience was running out as well, while in his own country his high-handed dealings had estranged him from Kasavubu. Western diplomats, advisers, and intelligence personnel drove a wedge between them. Each and every one of them chose Kasavubu’s side and recommended that he drop Lumumba. In August 1960 Lumumba was a lonely man, supported only by the Soviets.
What’s more, his wrath had only grown. On two occasions the UN Security Council had called upon Belgium to withdraw from Congo (on July 22 that was to happen “quickly,” on August 8 even “immediately”), but Belgium refused to budge as long as the blue helmets could not guarantee its subjects’ safety.38 It was not until late August, none too early, that all ten thousand Belgian soldiers had left Congo. In Lumumba’s eyes the United Nations was toothless, at best. Perhaps even pro-Western.
On August 8, to top it all off, the southern part of Kasai province declared independence as well. After Katanga, the diamond province was Congo’s most important mining area. Albert Kalonji had himself crowned king. A former supporter of Lumumba, with whom he’d had a falling-out before the elections, he had missed out on a ministerial post in the new national government. His secession, however, was ethnically motivated as well. Kalonji stood up for the Baluba, the inhabitants of Kasai who had gone to work in the mines of Katanga in great numbers and were hated there as immigrants and fortune hunters. In Kasai itself, the Baluba faced off against the Lulua; violent clashes had become commonplace. By proclaiming a new nation, Kalonji hoped to create a homeland for the Baluba. Tshombe supported the initiative and he and Kalonji even decided to establish a confederation.
Together with Katanga, newly seceded South Kasai accounted for one-quarter of Congo’s territory, and the wealthiest quarter at that. For a unitarian like Lumumba, that was unacceptable. What’s more, Jean Bolikango was also thinking about withdrawing Équateur from the republic. That was no coincidence: Tshombe, Kalonji, and Bolikango considered themselves the ones duped most badly during the government’s formation, because they had not received a ministerial post. Lumumba wanted to act but could not count on the UN emergency forces, seeing as they had done nothing to stop Katangan independence. As defense minister, therefore, he sent the renovated Congolese army to the rebellious diamond province. But the government army was broke and led by officers who had been promoted two months earlier without any preparation.
The results were horrific. Kasai in late August of that year was the scene of senseless confrontations that led not to victories, but to massacres that claimed thousands of civilian lives. During an attack on a Catholic mission where noncombatant Baluba had gone for refuge, more than fifty people were slaughtered, including women and children. In addition to the machine gun, the government soldiers also wielded the machete. UN Secretary General Hammarskjöld expressed his abhorrence and suggested that the Baluba were the victims of genocide. He called it “one of the most flagrant violations of rudimentary human rights, [which has] the earmarks of a crime of genocide.”39 Lumumba had now completely blown his chances with the United Nations as well.
ALL THIS TIME, Kasavubu had remained pretty much in the background. But on September 5, 1960, he seized the opportunity to do what many Western advisers had been prompting him to do: he removed Lumumba from office. Article 22 of the Loi fundamentale, the new country’s provisional constitution, gave him the power to do that: “The head of state appoints and dismisses the prime minister and the cabinet ministers.”40
For those listening to the national radio station, it must have been one of the strangest evenings in the history of the government broadcasting service. Just after eight o’clock that evening, the normal programming—a radio course in English—was interrupted and they heard the high voice of President Kasavubu saying that he had just removed the prime minister from office. All around the cité, in the working-class neighborhoods and in inland villages, the Congolese people were hearing that Lumumba was no longer their prime minister, that he had been replaced temporarily by Joseph Ileo, a political moderate who had written the 1956 manifesto in Conscience Africaine. Then, to their amazement, less than an hour later, the listeners heard Prime Minister Lumumba announce in his staccato French that he, in turn, had just dismissed President Kasavubu! So much confusion—the rules of English grammar were nothing in comparison! As if Congo didn’t have enough on its hands already with a military, administrative, economic, ethnic, and global crisis, it now received a constitutional crisis to boot.
Lumumba appealed to Article 51 of the provisional constitution, which stated that “only the Parliament and the Senate can provide authentic clarification of these laws.”41 It was a wise gamble, for on September 13 the parliament confirmed its faith in Lumumba and refused to recognize Ileo as the new prime minister. President Kasavubu was put to shame so badly that the next day he sent the parliament into recess for a month.
The imbroglio was now complete. Congo was being ruled not by government, but by arguments. National interest was made subordinate to power struggles. And in the midst of this chaos, Colonel Mobutu, the army’s chief of staff, stepped forward to put an end to the squabbling. That very same day, September 14, 1960, he carried out his first coup d’état, with the approval and support of the CIA. He told the press that the army would be taking over the reins until the end of the year. Lumumba and Kasavubu were “neutralized.” But whereas Kasavubu was ultimately allowed to stay on as a sort of figurehead president, Lumumba was placed under house arrest in his capital city residence. The friendship between Mobutu and Lumumba was over for good.
Mobutu placed national policy making in the hands of a team of young university students and graduates, a move intended to counter the lack of expertise in Lumumba’s government team. Mario Cardoso, who had attended the economic round-table meeting and was popular among the Congolese students in Belgium, told me the following: “Colonel Mobutu asked the students and academics to come back from abroad and apply their knowledge in the service of the country. We would not be given the title of minister, but of commissioner general. We were to become apolitical administrators, we would not represent any party, tribe, region, or village. We had a diploma, and that was enough.” Within that council of commissioners general, Cardoso was charged with education. Justin Bomboko, charged with foreign affairs, was the chairman and served as de facto prime minister. This situation was to last only a few months. “We were a transitional government. Mobutu only wanted to restore order, because the fighting between Kasavubu and Lumumba just wouldn’t stop.”42
This government of academics did not please everyone, not by a long shot. Lumumba repeated his claim to be the only democratically elected prime minister of Congo. The Belgian government, on the other hand, was only too glad to see him removed and maintained warm relations with the young commissioners. Many of them had studied in Brussels or Liège. Any return to the political arena by Lumumba was to be blocked at all costs, even physically if need be. Two Belgian military men, operating under the protection of Minister of African Affairs Harold d’Aspremont Lynden, made preparations to kidnap or murder Lumumba.43 In addition, U.S. president Eisenhower personally ordered the CIA to liquidate Lumumba. In true James Bond style, the Congolese prime minister was to be poisoned with a tube of hypertoxic toothpaste.44 There were also many people in Congo who would have been pleased to see him go.
Aware that attempts might be made on his life, Lumumba asked the UN for protection. He
received a contingent of Ghanian blue helmets, who camped in his garden to keep any attackers at bay. That proved necessary; on October 10, Mobutu sent two hundred soldiers to Lumumba’s residence to take him into custody. The United Nations stopped them. The resulting standoff lasted for weeks. Lumumba’s house was under a twofold siege: by a ring of blue helmets, to protect him as long as he stayed inside, and by Congolese ready to arrest him as soon as he came out. His telephone was cut as well. Lumumba was silenced. Deputy prime minister Antoine Gizenga therefore took on the role of representative of the Lumumba government. Gizenga came from Kwilu, and even today he is adored by older people, including Longin Ngwadi, the swordsman from Kikwit. As Mobutu’s coup gathered momentum, however, Gizenga realized that there was no place in Léopoldville for him and other Lumumba supporters. In early November, therefore, he left with the remnants of the first government for Stanleyville, the cradle of Lumumba’s movement, to govern and retake the country from there.
THE SITUATION WAS GROWING MORE COMPLICATED all the time. Congo was now four months old and already had four contiguous governments, each with its own army and foreign allies. In Léopoldville Kasavubu and above all Mobutu enjoyed unconditional American support. Thanks to the massive funding supplied by the United States, Mobutu was able to reorganize the national army. Around him there rose up the “Binza group,” named after the residential neighborhood in the capital where they met. It was an informal group with a great deal of power, generously supported by the CIA. In Stanleyville Gizenga was keeping alive the Lumumbist body of ideals. He was backed by a portion of the armed forces and his government received support from the Soviet Union, although that was never as systematic and substantial as the American support for the capital.45 In Elisabethville Tshombe stood at the helm of a self-proclaimed, independent country. Belgium was very generous with its logistical and military support. The Katangan military police included a great many Belgian officers. Union Minière financed the secession on a large scale. In Bakwanga, Kalonji led Kasai, an independent Baluba state where Belgian diamond delvers were active. The necessary means were provided by Forminière.
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