Apotheosis of a Post Office Clerk
From HARRY FRANKLIN*
ELIZABETHVILLE
A MONTH before Congo Independence Day A I
sat in the great lounge of a house in Leopoldville's most fashionable street. It had been the house of the Burgomaster of that city, but was now occupied by Mr. Patrice Lumumba, holding his daily levee as if he were already Premier of a new Republic, which in the event he very nearly was not.
Opposite the Premier and myself, on another settee, sat an attractive Belgian girl and an African henchman of Lumumba's whom I had observed to be guests at my hotel, together with a bearded man variously rumoured to be the girl's husband (or fiancé), a Turk, a journalist and a Russian spy. The trio's purpose was to request Lumumba's intervention to dissuade the Gover- nor-General, still the nominal master of the Congo, from deporting the girl as an alleged Communist agent. A senior Belgian civil servant, about to go on indefinite leave at the insistence of a displeased Provincial Governor, was hover- ing close, in order to inform 'M. le President' (President of the MNC political party) of this injustice, and to express the hope that Mr. Lumumba would find his services more valuable under the new regime. Off left was a Principal Secretary to the Governor-General who was kept waiting for an hour with an important document requiring Lumumba's signature. A ragged African swept the floor. Dapper black aides kept dashing in with little slips of paper for M. le President to glance at and instruct upon. Two African women with babies slung across their backs lingered near the door to present their request or complaint; other suitors waited outside.
Mr. Lumumba assured me that he had the complete support of all the Congolese people— but that the other political parties, King Baudouin, the Belgian Government, the finan- ciers, the Catholic Church in Belgium, the Congo missionaries and the local civil service were plotting against him...He said that all the political parties in Belgium supported him, including the Communists. He asserted his absolute belief in non-violence—and added that if he were not made head of the new Republic he would smash it within three months. He proclaimed his com- plete honesty—and admitted that his imprison- ment for embezzling post office funds some Years ago was just. The prospect of lawlessness and bloodshed in a new Congo with himself at Its head, he said, did not exist.
Finance, politics and cowardice moved the Belgian Government to kick away the barrier of a bureaucratic dictatorship and let in the rush of unprepared Africans to govern a huge country that never was a nation. For several years Brussels was losing money on the Congo. The Christian Democratic Party was unable to stay to power without the assistance of a Liberal Party which had taken the immediate emancipa- tion of the Congo on to its political platform. The 1959 Leopoldville riots—partly anti- European, although no European was killed— finally panicked the Government.
In deciding to hand over the Congo to the Congolese after allowing a few months for electioneering and organisation, the Belgian Government knew that it would be handing over to a hundred or two little men, mostly unprin- cipled opportunists and failures in their previous occupations whose chief talent was the ability to raise a localised following by mass hysteria. By Brussels reckoning, however, this did not matter because the Africans would love the Europeans for their 'liberation,' and would, on recent precedent, only cut each other up and not the white men. They would also love Belgium, thus enabling the Belgian Government and its financier backers to make highly profitable economic agreements with the new Congo. The great mines and industries and the European towns could be easily protected by the police, gendarmerie and Force Publique and would be well administered by the European civil service. To this end the pensions and two-thirds of the salaries of the officers of all these organisations were guaranteed from Belgium; and the chances of good employment in overcrowded Belgium were so small that their alternatives would appear to be to stay or starve. The Congo Re- public would in fact remain the Belgian preserve that it had always been, with Brussels saving one-third on the pay bill, cutting down on ex- penditure for the development of unprofitable social services—for which the Congolese must look to their new Government—and retaining industrial profits. The Congo would pay Brussels once more.
It has not worked out that way, as any experi- enced colonial official in the Congo could have told the Belgian Government, and as some did. Lawlessness, initially leading to murder of Africans by Africans of different tribes and political groupings, inevitably brought looters and criminals and mutineers to the fore and the glazed eyes of drunken savage mobs could see neither white nor black, but only red. Good civil servants, thoroughly demoralised by such an abrupt reversal of policy, by months of con- flicting orders as the failure of the. Brussels plan became more apparent, and by incessant over- work in an attempt to keep to an impossible schedule of reorganisation, elections, leader- training and the formation of provincial and central governments had to, and did, crack.
European civilians, watching their currency be- coming worthless, their property unsaleable, the future of their jobs or of their businesses un- certain, began to pull out, adding the flight of
* Harry Franklin is a former Minister for Edu- cation and Social Services in Northern Rhodesia: he is one of the two elected Central African Party members on the Northern Rhodesia Legislative
Council. their capital to that of foreign and metropolitan investors who saw what was coming. The con- dition of the Belgian Congo on the eve of Inde- pendence Day was already near chaos. Within a week the state of the new Republic was one of complete anarchy. Months of corrupt intrigues amongst hundreds of political gang leaders, white colons trying to climb on to the most likely- looking bandwagons, even civil servants curry- ing favour with probable—and improbable— winners of the approaching rat-race, created a confusion which Communist agents were de- lighted to exploit, Ministers from Brussels threatened, cajoled, took up favourites and dropped them, and were finally outwitted and bewildered by Patrice Lumumba, who, after im- properly conducted elections and still with noth- ing approaching a majority of Congolese votes, put his competitors into grossly overpaid minis- terial posts, and became head of the new Republic.
The soldiers of the Force Publique, paid at a rate of £2 10s. a month, were on duty for four days and nights of the Independence 'celebra- tions.' They saw, and had seen for some time before, the new little leaders of their country grow big in black Buicks taking them to champagne parties. They saw their tribal chiefs despised and their officers in wavering uncer- tainty. They went to Lumumba and demanded their cut. Lumumba gave them more promises and hastily made some of them generals. The common soldiers promptly went on a jag—a terrible jag of machine guns and grenades, booze and women. Despite the urgings of some brave men amongst them, many of the Euro- pean officers of the army and the police led, in panic, the flight of half the civilian population that they should have stayed to protect. The other half stayed and protected themselves. In Leopoldville, Elizabethville, Jadotville—at every centre of white population, a handful of resolute, properly armed men could have prevented the destruction and looting and murder. A handful of such men, Belgian paratroopers, soon stopped it.
Now tragedy gives way to farce. The Govern- ment of the new Republic, led by a man who will 'call on the Devil himself'—to use his own words—for the maintenance of his regime, is protected by the United Nations and recognised by the world. He will presumably be financed by the West or the East or both. Any impartial in- vestigation would show the regime to be uncon- stitutionally created. The Independent Republic of Katanga, even if equally unconstitutionally created, receives no support; though its leader, if not without faults, is at least a sane, humane man of reason and middle-class solidarity who has the audacity to say that he actually likes white men as well as black.
How unconstitutional is the Katanga Republic? Is it sensible that Mr. Tshombe should be forced to hand over his country, in which law, order and industry are restored, to alien forces? He believes that the UN forces and advisers are going to bring the Congo back to something approaching normal and then leave it all to Mr. Lumumba to keep it so. His belief appears to be correct and his resentment understandable.
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