Writers and Politics

by Conor Cruise O'Brien

  The United Nations efforts to avert war in the Congo cannot be said, as yet, to have achieved more than the gaining of four years of time, at a high price.

  What can other African countries—within or without the United Nations—do to prevent war in the Congo, and to help the emergence of a genuinely independent Congolese state?

  It would be quite wrong to pretend that the Congo, after all that has happened there, can be easily or quickly stabilized or that a general election—for example—is likely to give serious results. It is not likely by now that the troubles of the Congo can be solved without going through further agonies of civil war. All that the African states can perhaps do is to attempt to hold the ring to check the involvement of outside powers, whether the United States or Belgium or China, in the Congolese struggle. An all-African observer force, approved by the United Nations and limiting itself to observing and reporting the degree of foreign military intervention, would serve a purpose. The African countries will also, I believe, be helping the Congolese and protecting their own interests if they make it absolutely plain that they understand and wholeheartedly reject the latest exercise in puppetry which the new government in Leopoldville represents. The African governments rightly understood the threat which Tshombe in Katanga represented; the danger which he represents in Leopoldville is not less but greater.

  The African states cannot and should not look to the United Nations for their salvation. The United Nations’ function is not primarily to help Africa, but to protect the peace from dangers arising in Africa and elsewhere. If African public opinion recognizes that, it will not expect more from the United Nations than it really has to offer and it will not be disappointed. Within the United Nations Africa already wields considerable acknowledged influence. With greater cohesion in policy, greater alertness to common interests and a realistic willingness to use its “nuisance value” constructively, it can wield a great deal more. Until it does so it remains probable, given the nature of the world and of the United Nations, that when sacrifices have to be made to save the peace the interests sacrificed will be those of Africa rather than of the stronger powers.

  Only the younger generation in Africa—the generation which includes the students at your famous University and at the University of Ghana which I can be proud, for the present, to call my own—only this rising generation, the hope of this great continent, can see to it that when peace is being preserved—as it must be for all our sakes—the interests sacrificed will no longer be those of the peoples of Africa.

  * This address was delivered at Makerere University College, Kampala, Uganda, on July 11, 1964. At that time, it seemed possible that Tshombe might attend the Cairo Conference of the Organization of African Unity.

  MERCY AND MERCENARIES*

  What the Voice of America called “the Congo-Belgian-American Mercy Mission to rescue and evacuate hostages held by the rebels in the Stanleyville area” is over. A number of whites have been rescued, the deaths of a number of others were precipitated by the landings themselves; we are not told how many African lives were lost as a result of the humanitarian intervention of the Belgian paratroops.

  In Europe there was jubilation. African ears, listening to European radios—including the B.B.C.—heard that note of jubilation; they also heard the detailed reports about Europeans rescued or dead. They heard—so far as I have learned—nothing, not even a global estimate, of how many Africans died when the paratroops came down, or how many more died when Tshombe’s mercenaries entered to mop up in the city which the humanitarian intervention had left open to them.

  “Meanwhile,” said Radio South Africa on the day the intervention ended, “tales of atrocity, brutality and horror continue to flood out of the Congo. It’s a hideous war out there, so hideous that some of the South African mercenaries have opted out of the armed forces. Here is one of them … who speaks of the war and the part children are playing in the campaign. One of the most horrible things is that so many children have been trained by the rebels. They act as scouts and some are under eighteen years of age…. [inaudible passage]. The question now being asked is: what next in the Congo?” It is doubtful whether the mere fact that children gave information to the rebels so horrified certain South African mercenaries as to make them desert; the horror must have come, I believe, from what was done by the mercenary-led army to children suspected of carrying information to the enemy—that is to say, to their own people. That much is conjecture. That atrocities were committed by the mercenaries who entered Stanleyville in the wake of mercy is fact, attested with photographs by Western correspondents. Belgian spokesmen have been at pains to establish the distinction that the Belgians who committed the atrocities were mercenaries, and had no connection with the mercy-intent Belgian para-commandos, although it seems they wore a virtually identical uniform (United Press International despatches). Unfortunately, as Mr. Colin Legum points out, “There are few African minds sufficiently detached to see such a distinction.”

  In practical terms, though not in legal theory, the Belgo-American Mercy Mission, called in by the Tshombe Government, struck a heavy blow in support of the mercenary-led army created by the Tshombe Government, and the Tshombe Government itself, with its mercenaries and mercy missions, is regarded throughout Africa as the creation of Belgian interests with American backing.

  It is not surprising, therefore, that many Africans regard the “Congo-Belgian-American mercy mission” as the use of a humanitarian pretext for the extension of the rule of Belgians and their associates, through the complaisant government of Leopoldville, over the whole of the resources and the strategic space of the former Belgian Congo. The condemnations of this intervention by African governments and by the OAU Commission in no way exaggerate the bitterness of African opinion on this; if anything, they understate.

  Two objections will be urged: first, that there were genuine humanitarian reasons for the intervention; and second, that the Congo government which invited the Belgian forces in is not a puppet but a properly constituted legal and representative government. I shall try to deal with these two points.

  There is no doubt that the plight of the hostages, their sufferings and their dangers were real, and no doubt either that European and American opinion—almost totally indifferent to the sufferings of Congolese—was moved to compassion for the hostages and anger against their captors. It cannot be pretended that this was just an abstract sentiment of pity and indignation on behalf of any prisoners ill-treated by any guards. The surge of racial solidarity was unmistakable: the paratroops came to rescue the whites from the blacks. The blacks, of course, feel the same way: Africans would like to be able to send paratroops to Dixie and to South Africa to rescue Negroes from their brutal white guards, but they are not yet in a position to do this. The white countries obviously still have the power to do it. The question is whether it is wise for them to use this power. Are white people in Africa to be regarded as covered by a sort of Caucasian-providence insurance policy, with a guarantee that if the natives get rough, the metropolitan forces will once again come to the rescue? And if so, will this doctrine, in the long run, increase or decrease the security of white people in Africa and elsewhere? Similar policies in China contributed eventually to the total exclusion of all white influence, missionary and other, from that country. A similar outcome in the Congo and in the rest of Africa has been made more likely by the intervention at Stanleyville. The only real security for white people in Africa lies in convincing the Africans among whom they live that their presence is genuinely useful to Africa, and that they are not out to trick, rob or murder Africans. Belgians and other whites in the Congo have not succeeded in making this favourable impression, and that is why they have to be bailed out by paratroops from time to time. One does not need to go all the way back to Leopold’s Congo Free State to account for the hostility to whites which is widespread among Congolese. Many of the realities of the Congo Free State continued throughout the period of the Belgian Congo, and t
he attitude of many Belgians towards the Africans continued to be symbolized, up to the very verge of independence, by the practice, widespread among them, of using macaque (monkey) as a term of address for Africans. It is also appropriate to recall at this particular juncture that Leopold’s Congo undertaking—now generally admitted to have been an exercise in unmitigated rapacity—was originally presented to the public as a humanitarian enterprise. The British public, in particular, generally accepted it in that light until much later its sanguinary character was exposed by Roger Casement and E. D. Morell. It is little wonder that the news of a new humanitarian undertaking in the Congo evoked so little enthusiasm in Africa. It is true that some of the hostages were missionaries, and therefore presumably there not to exploit the Congolese, but to help them. Unfortunately, in the Congo these distinctions are not clear-cut. Such missionaries as I met in Katanga were almost all warm and active political supporters of the Tshombe regime against, at that time, the United Nations; several of them worked as scouts, and some were used for psychological warfare directed, in particular, against the Irish contingent. It would be natural, and prudent, for Mr. Gbenye’s forces to regard any Belgian missionaries in their territory as at least a potential fifth column. Nor is it easy to see the logic of rescuing these men of peace by the use of violence, killing the Congolese whom they supposedly came to help.

  Much is made of the legal point that there is no comparison with, say, Suez or the Bay of Pigs, since the paratroops came in at the request of the Government of the Congo. It seems to be forgotten that this is not the first, but the second, time that Mr. Tshombe has invited in Belgian paratroops to “save lives.” The first time was on July 10, 1960, and he was acting in his capacity as provincial Premier of Katanga. On the arrival of the Belgian troops he declared the independence of Katanga, and was able, with powerful European support, to maintain this secession for two and a half years. On that occasion, Tshombe’s invitation, and the Belgian intervention, were totally illegal, but that fact did nothing to inhibit the intervention from taking place. The “legality” argument is convenient, if available, for justifying afterwards the decision to intervene. In the actual making of the decision, the legality concept has proved irrelevant, as far as Belgium is concerned. It is true that for Great Britain and the United States, with their wider interests and greater need for international punctilio, the legal consideration must have had weight.

  Most African opinion will, however, be interested not so much in the exact legal status of the Tshombe Government as in its representative, or non-representative, character. African opinion, though disturbed, seems to have accepted the calling in of British forces to quell the East African mutinies because there the inviters were African leaders with undoubted mass support in their own countries. A Tshombe invitation is quite a different matter. Hardly any African can believe that the forces which, through President Kasavubu, installed Tshombe as Prime Minister of the Congo, had anything to do with any movement of Congolese opinion. Mr. Tshombe’s native support, such as it is, comes (mainly in the form of loyal addresses) from the chiefs and elders of the Lunda people in Western Katanga and some other Belgian-appointed chiefs in other parts of Katanga. Outside this rather somnolent section, and such tribesmen as they can influence, or are enrolled in his gendarmerie, or are otherwise on his payroll, Tshombe has no African support, even in Katanga, and in the rest of the Congo his name is only known as that of a rebel and a traitor. African opinion, therefore, understandably cannot credit the thesis whereby he is now supposed to speak and act for the Congolese people as a whole. Most Africans believe him to represent not the people of the Congo but the people who control the resources of the Congo: a very different matter. Mr. Colin Legum and others have argued that he is not a puppet, but an astute politician with a will of his own. One need not perhaps quibble about whether the term “puppet” is an entirely appropriate one, but Tshombe’s whole record shows that his astuteness as a politician lies in working closely with those who control the resources of the Congo, and with those states in which the controllers of those resources have allies, influence and support. He and the political party which obtained power in Katanga were launched in politics in 1959—just in advance of the Congo’s independence—by the agents of the Union Minière du Haut Katanga; it was the Union Minière which supplied his government with the sinews of war throughout the secession, and financial interests throughout the world, allied with that great company, gave him aid and comfort wherever their influence extended. He sent an economic mission, headed by his brother, to South Africa which reported favourably on conditions there. He himself, whenever in difficulties, sought refuge in Welensky’s Rhodesia. His gendarmes found asylum for a time in Salazar’s Angola, and were repatriated from there by arrangement with the Portuguese authorities when he had acquired control, through Kasavubu—another tried “friend of the West”—of the government in Leopoldville. Throughout this time his rule, first in Katanga, then in the Congo generally, has been maintained by intervention of Belgian regular troops, and by white mercenaries drawn from South Africa, “Free Cuba,” “French Algeria,” Southern Rhodesia, and so on. With this record Tshombe cannot conceivably provide, to African opinion, a moral warrant for another armed intervention in a nominally independent African country.

  It is important, I believe, that the British Government should draw back from any further involvement in the Belgian and American policy for the Congo, which is to restore the realities of the old Belgian Congo behind the rather threadbare screen of Africanization provided by Tshombe. It is now more than three years since Baron Rothschild cabled from Elisabethville on the news of the fall of Lumumba: “Success of Katanga experiment will probably bring about the political reconstruction of the Congo on an Elisabethville line” (à partir d’Élis abethville). That is exactly what is happening today. It is a policy which makes sense from the point of view of the Société Générale and of Wall Street. It surely cannot be a policy which a British Socialist Government could support. The use of Ascension Island as a springboard for the Belgo-American Mercy Mission was no doubt intended solely as a contribution to a humanitarian effort. Unfortunately it also helped the Belgians, and their American backers, to continue their application of the Rothschild Doctrine.

  In most parts of Africa—everywhere except where there were numerous white settlers—British rule, unlike Belgian rule, has not left a legacy of hatred; on the contrary, there is a real fund of good will towards Britain in English-speaking Africa—a fund which was increased by Mr. Wilson’s declaration on Southern Rhodesia, and by other matters such as the appointment of Sir Hugh Foot to the United Nations. Those in Africa who were most pleased by those developments, and looked forward, under a Labour government, to closer and happier relations with Britain, were the most dashed by the news of Ascension Island. They hope that the help given by Britain to the Mercy Mission was an isolated episode, occurring under exceptional humanitarian pressures; they fear it may be a symptom of a tendency to bring Britain’s policy in Africa into line with the policies of her NATO allies, even where these policies are resented throughout Africa and denounced by the genuinely independent African states. If that fear is not justified it is urgent that it be dispelled.

  The real tragedy of the twentieth century may prove to be a deepening of racial antagonisms—on that ominous line of fissure which is also an economic and social gap—to the point where global racial warfare becomes a prospect for the beginning of the next century. With such possibilities in mind, and considering the past history, and much of the present practice, of white peoples in relation to the other branches of mankind, it might be well for Europeans and Americans, having rescued some hundreds of whites from blacks, now to set about rescuing several millions of blacks from whites.

  * The gist of this article appeared under the same title in the Observer, London, for December 6, 1964. The Observer, however, primarily for reasons of space, found it necessary to make some cuts in my text. These cuts
have been restored in the version printed here.

  CORRUPTION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

  The subtitle of this book* reflects a kind of good feeling common enough among British liberals, which never quite conveys to its supposed beneficiaries the desired impression. The writers clearly and properly wish to dissociate themselves from the suggestion: “The people in the poor countries are corrupt because they are inferior to us.” In order to effect this severance they are saying in effect: “We too were once miserable sinners like you. You too can, if you take our advice, become decent people like us today.” This implication, although basically less offensive, is today found more irritating than the first. One African who saw the book on my desk asked what the subtitle meant: “Which did they do in 1880—did they stop being corrupt, or did they stop developing, or both?”

  It is a great pity that this supposedly conciliatory theory—“we too were once like you”—ever suggested itself to the authors, because it has distorted their book and deprived it of much of its possible usefulness. The book is divided into three sections, of which the central section, which takes up more than half of the whole text, is devoted to eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Britain and to the presentation of a series of interesting but generally not unfamiliar theses about the prevalence of graft in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the increase in probity in public and private life with the emergence of the Victorian middle class. In particular, and this is a pivotal area in the book, stress is laid on the character and ethos of Britain’s civil servants overseas. These are assumed—and the assumption is almost universal in English writing on the subject—to have been uniformly or almost uniformly incorruptible; the tableau of independence thus becomes a tragically ironic one, of the alien but upright administrator handing over to the native but crooked successor. So the populations concerned are, it is implied, actually the losers by the freedom on which they have insisted.