by Guy Arnold
At this point Lumumba had only four months to live. He would probably not have been a great leader. He had no experience, and the Congo, at that time and later, required a ruler with a ruthlessness that he did not possess. He had fire and a certain vision that placed him above the tribalism of his rivals and he wanted to create a country that would rise above narrow parochial concerns. But he was never given a chance and the Western powers, led by a resentful Belgium that had not wanted to grant independence in the first place, and the United States whose Cold War concerns and determination to safeguard the Congo’s wealth for the West made it indifferent to democratic forms, between them masterminded the destruction of Lumumba. However he might have performed, had he been left alive to run the Congo, in death Lumumba became a martyr to the African nationalist cause and a constant reminder of the cynical big power politics that would be directed at the continent in the following decades as its newly independent states struggled to find their place on the world stage. The name Lumumba became synonymous with African distrust of the West’s intentions.
In a letter to his wife, written from captivity shortly before his murder on 17 January 1961, Lumumba said:
All through my struggle for the independence of my country, I have never doubted for a single instant the final triumph of the sacred cause to which my companions and I have devoted all our lives. But what we wished for our country, its right to an honourable life, to unstained dignity, to independence without restrictions, was never desired by the Belgian imperialists and their Western allies who found direct and indirect support, both deliberate and unintentional amongst certain high officials of the United Nations, that organization in which we placed all our trust when we called on its assistance.
At the end of the letter, he said:
History will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that is taught in Brussels, Paris, Washington or in the United Nations, but the history which will be taught in the countries freed from imperialism and its puppets. Africa will write its own history, and to the north and south of the Sahara, it will be a glorious and dignified history.3
The true and brutal story of Lumumba’s death was only fully revealed in 2000 – 40 years after his death when all Africa, finally, was independent – and then as the result of a book, based on newly declassified Belgian archives, by Ludo de Witte.4 The Belgian Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt, and the Foreign Minister, Louis Michel, who came from a different political generation to those who had presided over independence in 1960, were so shocked by the revelations in the book that they persuaded the Belgian parliament to set up an official inquiry.
Uncompromisingly, de Witte says: ‘Belgium bears the greatest responsibility in [Lumumba’s] murder. Belgians had the leadership of the whole operation – from [Lumumba’s] transfer to Katanga, to his execution and the disappearance of the body.’ It was only a week after independence that Belgian officials decided to eliminate Lumumba. On 14 July 1960 the Belgian ambassador to NATO told participants in a North Atlantic Council meeting: ‘The situation (in the Congo) would be better if the Congolese President, Prime Minister and Minister of Information all disappeared from the scene.’ The Belgians did not forgive Lumumba for his unscheduled speech at the independence ceremony on 30 June when, in the presence of King Baudouin, he accused Belgium of having brought ‘slavery and oppression to the Congo’. A few days later the Belgians were again outraged when Lumumba dismissed the Belgian officers of the Force Publique and demanded the immediate withdrawal of Belgian troops who, on 11 July, had bombarded Matadi after some Europeans in the town had been killed. The United States, also, was determined to prevent Lumumba from calling in Soviet troops to help him reverse the secession of Katanga (11 July) and Kasai (8 August). At a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) on 18 August President Eisenhower personally gave the go-ahead to the CIA to work out how to eliminate Lumumba.5 Minutes of the NSC sub-committee on covert operations for August 1960 were to the point: ‘It was finally agreed that planning for the Congo would not necessarily rule out “consideration” of any particular kind of activity which might contribute to getting rid of Lumumba.’ According to Madeleine Kalb6, on 26 August 1960 Richard Bissell, the CIA special operations chief, asked his special assistant for scientific matters, Dr Sidney Gottlieb, to prepare biological materials for possible use in the assassination of an unspecified African leader. This plan did not proceed.
There are a number of accounts, more or less sensational, that both the Americans and the Belgians were determined on the elimination of Lumumba and were not concerned as to the method. The Americans wanted him eliminated for Cold War reasons, the Belgians more from a sense of pique and the desire to see the independent Congo ruled by a more pliable figure more favourable to their interests. At that time Cold War considerations were rarely absent from any Western approach to African affairs and Lumumba’s nationalism was seen by the West as a threat to its strategic interests in the region, not least because of the country’s enormous mineral wealth encompassing, as it did, copper, diamonds, rubber, uranium and cobalt. As de Witte claims, the Belgian Foreign Minister Pierre Wigny wrote on 10 September: ‘the authorities have the duty to make Lumumba unharmful.’
On 14 September Colonel Joseph-Desiré Mobutu, supported by the CIA, carried out a coup to neutralize Congolese politicians. He was provided with funds by Belgium. Various plans were considered while Lumumba was under house arrest, guarded by Ghanaian UN troops who, in turn, were surrounded by Mobutu’s soldiers who had orders to arrest him. On 27 November Lumumba escaped from house arrest and headed for Stanleyville (Kisangani), his main support base, but he was seized on 2 December by some of Mobutu’s soldiers at Port Francqui (Ilebo) on the Kasai River. The UN forces made no attempt to rescue Lumumba, instead obeying orders from the UN High Command in New York not to intervene ‘to hinder Lumumba’s pursuers’ or to take him into ‘protective custody’. It was a sordid story with many unsavoury ramifications but at the heart of it was the determination of the United States (through the instrument of the CIA) and Belgium to eradicate Lumumba, whom they regarded as a Communist and a threat to their geopolitical and economic interests. In the end Lumumba was handed over to his arch-enemy Moïse Tshombe in Katanga; he was sent there on 17 January 1961 in company with Maurice Mpolo, one of his ministers, and Joseph Okito, the deputy president of the senate. After being tortured the three men were shot dead that night. Washington had known since 14 January the plan to murder Lumumba and did nothing to prevent it. Tshombe’s government did not announce his death until 13 February. Belgian officers were involved in the murder plan and assisted at the execution. Swedish UN soldiers at Elizabethville airport witnessed the arrival of Lumumba and saw him taken away but did not intervene. Four days after Lumumba’s execution the Belgian police commissioner Gerard Soete and his brother cut up the bodies of Lumumba, Mpolo and Okito and dissolved them in sulphuric acid.
The US interest in the Congo was in its mineral wealth. In 1958 the Congo produced 50 per cent of the world supply of uranium, most of which was purchased by the United States, 75 per cent of the world’s cobalt and 70 per cent of its industrial diamonds.7
Forty years after the events described here Belgium formally apologized for its role in the assassination of Lumumba in 1961. In a symbolic gesture of reconciliation with its former colony, the Belgian Foreign Minister, Louis Michel, read the apology during a parliamentary debate on a report into the killing of Lumumba. The parliamentary report had been released in November 2001 and though it failed to link the Belgian government directly to the killing, it found that ministers bore a ‘moral responsibility’ by failing to act to prevent the assassination. M. Michel said: ‘The government believes that the time has come to present the family of Patrice Lumumba and the Congolese people its profound and sincere regrets and apologies for the sorrow that was inflicted upon them by this apathy.’ He said Belgium would donate £2.3m to create a Patrice Lumumba Foundation to finance ‘conflict prevention’
projects and study grants for Congolese youths. Not exactly a fulsome apology but better than nothing.
NORTH AFRICA: THE IMPACT OF WORLD WAR II
The imperial tradition in North Africa differed substantially from that to the south and much of the region had been fought over during the war. Egypt had been Britain’s Middle East headquarters throughout World War II, and though never a British colony, it had been very much part of Britain’s sphere of influence. Libya had been conquered by Italy, not without difficulty, over the years 1911–1914, and became part of its African empire. The French had proclaimed a protectorate over Tunisia in 1881 while in Algeria, the jewel of their African empire, they had fought a 50-year war from 1830 onwards before they mastered the whole vast territory. France had also established a protectorate over Morocco, in 1912, after a confrontation with Germany. In Sudan, Britain and Egypt had established a Condominium in 1898, following the defeat of the Khalifa’s forces at the battle of Omdurman, although for the ensuing 60 years it was the British who became the effective rulers of the country. Demands for independence swept across this whole vast region in the immediate aftermath of the war and in most cases had been realized before Harold Macmillan delivered his ‘Wind of Change’ speech in South Africa at the beginning of 1960, the annus mirabilis of independence.
LIBYA
Following Montgomery’s victory over Rommel at the battle of El Alamein in November 1942 the German forces were driven out of Egypt and British forces then occupied Italian Libya while Free French forces moved into the Fezzan region. The British administered Libya until 1950. The United Nations, which had undertaken overall responsibility for Italy’s former colonies at the end of the war, finally decreed that Libya should become independent on 24 December 1951 under King Idris, the former Amir Muhammad Idris, a hero of the resistance against Italian rule. The country immediately faced serious political, financial and economic problems – it was then rated one of the poorest territories in the world – while it was necessary to foster a sense of national unity and identity since loyalties were predominantly to the village and tribe rather than to the newly independent state. In March 1953 Libya joined the Arab League and then in July of that year it concluded a 20-year treaty with Britain: in return for bases Britain would grant Libya £1 million annually for economic development and a further £2.75 million annually for budget expenses. In September 1954 Libya concluded similar base agreements with the United States for US$40 million over 20 years. A friendship pact with France was signed in 1955 and a trade and financial agreement with Italy in 1957. During these years, as the parameters of the Cold War were established, all Libya had to offer was its strategic position, hence these arrangements with the Western powers. However, over the years 1955–56 Libya granted concessions to prospect to several US oil companies and by the end of 1959 15 companies had obtained petroleum concessions in Libya. In June 1959 the first major oilfield was discovered at Zelten in Cyrenaica, and by July 1960 there were 35 petroleum wells in production, giving a yield of 93,000b/d. Further discoveries and a huge increase in oil output between 1962 and 1966 transformed the future prospects of the country.
THE ALGERIAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
The Setif uprising of 1945 served as the prelude to the Algerian war of independence, which was to be one of the most savage of Africa’s freedom struggles. In 1946, the Parti du Peuple Algérien (Algerian People’s Party) emerged from underground to transform itself into the Mouvement pour le Triomphe de Libertés Démocratiques (MTLD) (Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties). However, a year later Ahmed Ben Bella and a group of militants broke away to form the Organisation Secrète (OS) (Secret Organization), which advocated armed struggle. Agitation and violence increased over the next few years and then, in March 1954, nine members of the OS led by Ben Bella and Belkacem Krim formed the Comité Révolutionnaire pour l’Unité et l’Action (CRUA) (Revolutionary Council for Unity and Action) to prepare for an armed struggle. CRUA soon changed to become the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) (National Liberation Front). The FLN advocated democracy within an Islamic framework and said that any resident of Algeria would qualify for citizenship in the new state. On 1 November 1954, the FLN and its armed wing, the Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN) (National Liberation Army), launched the revolution in the city of Algiers with attacks on police stations, garages, gas works and post offices. FLN strategy consisted of widespread guerrilla action with raids, ambushes and sabotage that would make the administration of the colony unworkable.
Abroad the FLN carried on a diplomatic offensive directed at the UN and at securing Arab support. The civil war that followed saw the authorities resort to torture to obtain information, and the nationalists to using terrorist tactics. Events in Algeria and the course of the war dominated the policies of every French government for the next eight years. In February 1955 Jacques Soustelle came to Algeria as governor general and attempted some reforms, but these proved too few and too late. Massacres of Europeans were followed by summary executions of Muslims. At the beginning of 1956 Guy Mollet became prime minister in Paris. He appointed the moderate General Georges Catroux as governor general of Algeria but when Mollet himself visited Algiers, angry Europeans bombarded him with tomatoes. Mollet subsequently gave way to European pressures, and Catroux’s term as governor general was ended abruptly. He was replaced as governor-general by the pugnacious Socialist Robert Lacoste, who initiated a policy of pacification or forcible repression. During 1956 the FLN obtained growing support from the Arab world, especially from Nasser’s Egypt. Following the independence of its neighbours, Morocco and Tunisia, the FLN was able to seek sanctuary across the borders in those two countries. France had hoped to gain friends in the Arab world by giving independence to these two Maghreb countries, allowing it to concentrate upon holding Algeria (which by then was known to have oil and natural gas resources) but the strategy did not work. By mid-1956 the active, militant FLN was probably no more than 9,000 strong though it received support from a large part of the Algerian population. France, on the other hand, had built up its armed forces in Algeria to about 500,000 troops.
In 1957 the French government refused to contemplate independence for Algeria, instead sending large numbers of additional troops to crush the rebellion. Apart from the wealth Algeria represented and the presence in it of one million colons (white settlers) the attitude of the French government and of the army had undoubtedly been hardened by the defeat in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu in French Indo-China. The army, in particular, was determined not to suffer another such humiliation. Both sides now increased the ferocity of their fighting and responses while the extensive use of torture by the French ‘paras’ to obtain information helped the army win battles but lost it the struggle for ‘hearts and minds’. The French authorities erected barbed-wire barriers along the borders with Morocco and Tunisia, where, by then, an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 FLN troops were based.
The war was responsible for great brutalities: whole populations were moved so as to cut them off from the FLN guerrillas, and by 1959 an estimated two million Arabs (25 per cent of the population) had been forced to leave their villages. Many of the whites in their territorial units became brutal in their tactics and indiscriminate in their targets, while in certain police stations and military detention centres a new breed of torturer appeared. The members of the FLN could be equally brutal toward the colons. During the last days of April 1958 the Maghreb Unity Congress, consisting of representatives from Morocco, Tunisia and the FLN, met in Tangier, Morocco. The Congress recommended the creation of an Algerian government in exile and this was proclaimed on 18 September 1958 in Tunis with Ferhat Abbas as its leader. In Paris the Algerian war had provoked a full-scale political crisis, which brought Charles de Gaulle to power on 1 June 1958. Though at first de Gaulle gave the impression that he was the strong man who would secure the future of the colons in Algeria, in fact he recognized the inevitable and presided over a French withdrawal. After holding a referendum to
approve the new French constitution, de Gaulle offered to negotiate a ceasefire with the FLN and on 16 September 1959, he promised self-determination for Algeria within four years. A series of secret meetings between the FLN and the French government followed and a ceasefire was finally signed on 18 March 1962 at Èvian-les-Bains. Meanwhile, the colons, who felt they had been betrayed, and sections of the army turned to extreme methods that included an army insurrection in April 1961 led by General Raoul Salan. De Gaulle assumed emergency powers and the revolt was crushed.
In a referendum of 1 July 1962, 91 per cent of the Algerian electorate (6 million) voted for independence and only 16,000 against. President de Gaulle declared Algeria independent on 3 July and the Algerian government in exile came to Algiers in triumph; three days of rejoicing by the nationalists followed.
The European population of Algeria now departed on a massive, very nearly total, scale and the majority, nearly one million, returned to France. These included most of the country’s senior administrators, although about 10,000 teachers courageously decided to remain, often finding themselves in exposed positions. In addition, there were the Algerians (harkis) who had remained loyal to the French and had often fought for them as well; many of these also quit independent Algeria and settled in France. Official French estimates of the casualties of this war were 17,250 French officers and men killed and a further 51,800 wounded between 1954 and the end of 1961, with an additional 1,000 French civilian casualties. This same estimate suggests that 141,000 nationalists were killed, although the FLN was to claim that Muslim casualties were four times that number. Other FLN claims suggested a high of one million killed altogether – fighting, in concentration camps, under torture or during the removal of populations. The war also witnessed massive destruction of property – schools, bridges, government buildings, medical centres, railway depots, social centres and post offices, as well as farms and great damage to crops. The war, which straddled the events of the annus mirabilis of1960, was to have a long-lasting and traumatic impact upon Franco-Algerian relations for decades to come.8
