CONGO EXPERIENCING CLASSIC COMMUNIST EFFORT TAKEOVER GOVERNMENT… WHETHER OR NOT LUMUMBA ACTUALLY COMMIE OR JUST PLAYING COMMIE GAME… ANTI-WEST FORCES RAPIDLY INCREASING POWER CONGO AND THERE MAY BE LITTLE TIME LEFT IN WHICH TO TAKE ACTION TO AVOID ANOTHER CUBA.

Lawrence Devlin, CIA Station Chief Leopoldville

There is so much talk about two blocs. The question of these two blocs doesn’t interest us… we are Africans and we shall remain Africans.

Patrice Lumumba

The problem with boxing and labelling African States… is that the kinds of boxes and labels devised in either Washington or Moscow tend to disintegrate in the African sun.

Helen Kitchen

Introduction

When Katanga, the wealthiest province of the Republic of the Congo, declared its independence on 11 July 1960, the Congo itself had been independent from Belgium for less than two weeks. The Katanga secession was the catalyst for an eruption of international preoccupation with the Congo, and brought the cold war into Africa for the first time. The story of these events is rich with high drama and high stakes; it is described by one commentator as having ‘all the ingredients of a first-rate adventure novel.’ While the characters, events and setting are compelling, they are overshadowed by the bleak outcome of this period: the Congo’s first Prime Minister assassinated, a pro-Western dictator installed, and political disunity and violence that endures today, half a century later.

The enigmatic, mercurial figure of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba occupies the central space of this story, flanked at east and west by the United States and Soviet Russia. While the paths of these three entities intersect throughout the Congo crisis, this essay contends that their respective ideological positions are too different and deeply entrenched for any paradigmatic overlap or mutual comprehension. Lumumba cut his political teeth in a dynamic, ‘tribally-heterogeneous’ body politic, the antithesis of the encrusted bipolarity of the cold war. US President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s worldview is best characterised by the maxim, ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us.’ On the other side of the iron curtain, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was keen to distinguish himself from his hard-line predecessor Josef Stalin and was exploring the prospect of engaging with ‘neutral’ states. Into this unlikely configuration burst the Katanga secession; what followed could be characterised as a three-way collision buffered by the irreconcilable, impermeable worldviews of the protagonists.

This essay delves into the events in the Congo in the latter half of 1960, between the secession of Katanga and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. The first part of the essay outlines those events and draws on the international reception of Lumumba’s Independence Day speech to demonstrate the international political dynamic at Congolese independence. The second part of the essay investigates the way that the cold war penetrated the Congo, using US Embassy telegrams to unravel Washington’s concerns about Lumumba. The final part of the essay offers a reading of these events based on the words and actions of Patrice Lumumba himself. It argues that the unwavering cold war mentality of the United States rendered that country blind to the political realities of the Congo crisis, and Lumumba’s consequent desperation drove him to seek Soviet aid. The essay concludes that the paranoia and wilful ignorance of American foreign policy at this time played a role in exacerbating the Congo crisis.

Part One

The coming of independence to the Belgian Congo was sudden and somewhat makeshift; as Patrice Lumumba put it, ‘We achieved our sovereignty without any transition. From being one hundred per cent a colony, we were suddenly one hundred per cent independent.’ This situation is the direct result of the paternalistic style of colonial administration practised over the half-century since the Belgian government bowed to international pressure and prised control of the Congo from the rapacious grip of King Leopold II. Unlike the French and British, which in their different ways produced educated and skilled colonial subjects capable of assuming the mantle of government upon independence, the Belgians considered the Congolese people to be ‘like children’ and trained them only for the most menial positions. Upon independence in 1960, the Congo had produced only sixteen native university graduates. Elections were held in May 1960, contested by numerous parties with tribal and regional affiliations. The only party with a truly nationalist program, however, was the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC), led by thirty-five year old Patrice Lumumba. On 30 June the Republic of Congo was recognised by the Belgian government, and King Badouin attended the independence ceremony.

The maiden speech of Prime Minister Lumumba at this ceremony was noted far beyond the borders of the Congo, but not for the reasons Lumumba expected. Despite a gracious beginning, in which he acknowledged Belgium as ‘a friendly country with which we are dealing as one equal to another,’ the Prime Minister proceeded to describe the experience of colonial subjecthood in the Congo in less than glowing terms. Lumumba spoke at length about the ‘cruel and inhuman’ laws and administration of Belgian rule, and one source claims he deviated from the text of his speech to tell the Belgians, ‘we are no longer your Makak [monkeys].’ The Belgian delegation was deeply offended, and the King threatened to leave the Congo immediately. Lumumba made an apology later in the day, which pacified the King – but the story had already hit the international stage. The speech’s reception among the world’s superpowers is revealing of their respective views moving into the period of crisis to come. The Soviet Premier was reportedly ‘delighted’ by the discomfiture of the Belgians; it confirmed his feeling that the emerging leaders of Africa may be open to establishing a positive relationship with the Soviet Union. The United States, on the other hand, felt the speech was ‘ominous’ and Lumumba was displaying ‘unreliability and shiftiness.’ This language suggests a sense of precariousness on the part of the US with regard to Lumumba, but also implies that Washington had not yet given up on the Congolese leader.

Notably, both the Soviets and the Americans ignored the less incendiary elements of Lumumba’s speech. One such moment is that in which he presaged his party’s foreign policy, proclaiming that the ‘collaboration’ of foreign countries ‘we will always accept if it is sincere and does not seek to force any policy of any sort whatsoever on us.’ This was in fact consistent with Lumumba’s approach in the weeks and months to come, and both superpowers would have done well to take note of it.

The events which would force the implementation of this policy did not begin with the secession of Katanga, but in fact took place just five days after the independence ceremony. A mutiny in an army garrison outside of Leopoldville spread quickly throughout the country, resulting in widespread violence and looting. Belgian paratroopers were deployed on the auspices of protecting their citizens: this served only to exacerbate the anti-colonial fervour of the revolt. In the midst of this chaos, Moise Tshombe, leader of the Conakat party which had contested the May elections, declared his home province of Katanga independent from the Congo and immediately requested recognition and assistance from the Belgian government. Katanga was the largest and most mineral-rich of the Congo’s provinces and for some centuries had been a significant source of revenue for Belgium; this gave the former coloniser a stake in its independence, especially given Tshombe’s overtly pro-Belgian stance. For his part, Lumumba hastily called upon the United Nations for assistance, raising the stakes of the international dimension of this crisis for the first time. For UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, the situation was fraught. Influential Security Council members France and Great Britain were sympathetic to the Belgian position and used their influence to delay the UN mission for as long as possible. Meanwhile Lumumba was growing frantic, and his urgency appears to have heightened his anti-Belgian rhetoric; strengthening, in turn, the resolve of the Belgians to support the secession.

United Nations troops finally entered Katanga on 14 August, replacing the Belgian army as negotiated by Katanga and Hammarskjöld. However, Lumumba was by then deeply suspicious of Belgium’s influence with the UN and had begun accepting military assistance from Russia, effectively making good on an ultimatum given to the UN during its lengthy hesitation. Again, the international stakes of the Congo crisis were raised, and the predictable American response was to harden its stance against Lumumba. Subsequently-declassified CIA documents reveal that an intelligence operative arrived in Leopoldville in September 1960 with an order, which came from Eisenhower himself, to assassinate Patrice Lumumba. In the event, this agent’s job was done for him by Congolese political enemies, but the case illustrates the lengths to which the United States was prepared to go to prevent Soviets from infiltrating the Congo. The Katanga secession was eventually brought to an end with UN assistance in 1964.

Part Two

It is already clear that the events in Katanga are inseparable from the international context in which they took place. That context was governed largely by the prevailing cold war paradigm, whose main adherents were, of course, the United States and the Soviet Union. That the two superpowers chose the Congo in 1960 to stage a confrontation transformed the hitherto unengaged African continent into a cold war battlefield. Alan Merriam describes one instance of superpower blustering on the subject of Katanga:

Khrushchev made a blunt statement… in which he said Russia was ready to act “if those states which are carrying on direct aggression against the Congo do not stop their criminal measures.” The US, in an equally blunt reply, labelled Khrushchev’s remarks “intemperate, misleading and irresponsible” and said “This is yet another example of the current Soviet attempt to inflame the international atmosphere.”

This example epitomises the trading of insults and accusations that characterised US-Soviet relations on the Katanga issue.

Of the two superpowers, the Soviet Union maintained the most consistent position throughout 1960. As already noted, Khrushchev was keen to court the political affections of the emerging postcolonial states; however, he deeply underestimated the complexity of the situation and the ease with which the ‘socialist’ Lumumba would accede. At the time of Lumumba’s election Khrushchev had believed, according to Kalb, that ‘all he had to do was establish good relations with the young Prime Minister, offer him whatever help he needed – and sit back and relax.’ As subsequent events showed, this was anything but the case. Nevertheless, the action ultimately taken by the Soviet Premier to help end the Katanga secession was utterly unprecedented, both for the Soviet Union and within the schema of the cold war itself. Never before had the Soviet Union become involved in a conflict so far beyond its borders. When his assistance ultimately proved insufficient, Khrushchev suffered a personal defeat, which permanently dimmed his ‘adventurist’ spirit and forced him to adopt ‘a more cautious, realistic policy’ toward Africa. There is some irony in the fact that ultimately, the threat of Soviet intervention in Katanga was infinitely more powerful in the hands of Patrice Lumumba than the reality of that intervention would turn out to be.

In contrast to Khrushchev’s optimism, Americans in Leopoldville and Washington were decidedly troubled by the secession of Katanga province. Two years before, Fidel Castro had come to power in Cuba and subsequently embraced Communism. This scenario was doubtless playing through the minds of American diplomats and policymakers when they looked at the crisis in the Congo. Indeed, the CIA director described Lumumba at one point as ‘a Castro, or worse.’ In this context, it is not entirely surprising that the US equated Lumumba’s anti-imperialist rhetoric with an endorsement of Soviet Communism. However, it does demonstrate a failure by the US to contextualise the situation of an unstable, recently independent African nation wherein anti-imperialism represents the product of bitter experience.

Cables sent between Washington and Leopoldville during this period focus on the central problem of whether or not the US should recognise independent Katanga. The dilemma rested on whether the US had a chance to swing the MNC government back in its favour (preferably without Patrice Lumumba at the wheel). If the Lumumba government was to fall ‘under Moscow’s domination,’ Katanga could be a good – and lucrative – friendly state to have nearby. On the other hand, the US would have no credibility in trying to convince the existing government to support the West if the United States recognised Katanga. US Ambassador William Burden favoured the latter view, but also understood the complication posed by Belgium. The day after Tshombe declared independence, Burden telegrammed the following advice to the State Department:

ANY TEMPORISING OUR PART AT THIS TIME WOULD PROBABLY LEAD TO ASSUMPTION BY LEOPOLDVILLE GOVT THAT WE HAVE CONNIVED WITH BELGIANS AND OTHERS TO SUPPORT OR AT LEAST ACCEPT INDEPENDENT KATANGA. THIS COULD BE MOST RAPID AND EFFECTIVE WAY TO ALIENATE EVEN OUR FRIENDS IN [THE GOVERNMENT OF CONGO] AND THROW MAJOR PART OF CONGO INTO COMMUNISTS’ ARMS.

This advice was followed in Washington, which publicly declared its support for unity in the Congo the next day. Burden’s suggested course of action was less measured, however. Among a lengthy list of recommendations later sent to his superiors was ‘to persuade the Congolese… that Lumumba was the witting or unwitting instrument of Soviet intervention… which would bring to the continent a “new and worse form of white imperialism.”’ This notion is entirely consistent with US thinking on this issue, assuming as it does that the Congolese people were as preoccupied with the cold war as was the United States itself. As the next section will show, this error of judgment typifies the approach of the US to the Katanga secession and explains the superpower’s incompetence in the Congo crisis generally.

Part Three

The central enigma around the international dimension of Katanga is what Patrice Lumumba’s true agenda was. Lumumba was known for his skills in ‘tailoring his views to his audiences and persuading conservatives, socialists and Communists alike that he agreed with them.’ Given this political mercurialism, the question became, as CIA Station Chief Lawrence Devlin posed it to Washington, was Lumumba ‘actually Commie or just playing Commie game’? This section argues that neither proposition is quite true. Rather, through analysing the words and actions of Lumumba and his African political contemporaries, it will show that Lumumba’s neutrality was genuine, but was undermined by his naïveté about the cold war international system.

Lumumba’s political hero was Kwame Nkrumah, the widely-respected first President of Ghana. The events in Katanga deeply troubled Nkrumah, whose firm policy had always been to ‘keep the cold war out of Africa,’ which in reality meant, according to Kalb, ‘a plague on both your houses – East and West.’ Lumumba’s version of this policy was very different, however, and revealed his idealistic streak: the Congolese leader favoured engaging both sides. What the two leaders shared, however, was an instinctive sense that to participate in the alliance-forming of the cold war was to perpetuate the experience of colonialism. In appealing for international help in Katanga, Lumumba expressed his view in the following way:

The Congo does not want to live in isolation; we want to cooperate with every country in the world. We want the United States, France, Belgium, Great Britain, all the African countries, the Soviet Union – all nations willing to help us – to be able to do so… We will turn no one away. The Congo is a country that holds out its hand to you. A fraternal hand.

The older and more direct Nkrumah is quoted as describing Western policy in the Congo as ‘imperialist intrigue.’ Another significant African leader, Lieutenant General Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, echoed the same sentiment years later:

To the Soviets and their friends, I should like to say that, having been invited to Africa in order to assist in the liberation struggle and the consolidation of national independence, they should not overstay their welcome. Africa is not about to throw off one colonial yoke for another… To the Western powers, I say that they should act in such a way that we are not led to believe they have different concepts of independence and sovereignty for Africa and for Europe.

It is clear that in the context of postcolonial Africa, the rhetoric and structure of cold war international relations were too close for comfort. Imperialism had shaped the political ideologies of these leaders, and the spectre of looming superpowers evidently evoked in them an analogy of their peoples’ former subjugation. It is therefore fairly safe to assume that Lumumba’s avowed antipathy towards the cold war was genuine.

Yet it is also clear is that the Eisenhower administration and its outer diplomatic reaches had no comprehension of this dimension of African politics. Washington could not see beyond the notion of a ‘socialist’ agenda, which, in the Manichaean configuration of 1960 American foreign policy, translated as ‘enemy’. As Weissman points out, American diplomats in this period commonly used terms denoting leftist ideology of any kind ‘interchangeably.’ Clearly, the notion of ‘neutral’ socialists confounded the dualistic American worldview, and a wary Washington decided to err on the side of caution.

These ideological blinkers caused the United States to ignore two key facts about Lumumba and the Katanga secession. First, when Lumumba went to the United States in July 1960, it was to appeal to the West for help: Washington was Lumumba’s first point of call, and indeed, he never visited the Soviet Union. It was not until it had become clear that the Americans were going to hide behind the auspices of the UN system that Lumumba considered the offer of Soviet aid. Second, as Nzongola-Ntalaja points out, the Russian assistance that was sent to the Congo (to the horror of the United States) fell within the remit of recently-passed UN resolutions on the Congo, since they ‘set no limit on the right of the government to ask for or be given bilateral aid.’ By then, moreover, Lumumba was prepared to accept all the help he could get; as he himself said while in New York, ‘We will call upon any friendly nation willing to help us. We will call on the devil if need be…’ Thus, Lumumba’s genuine overtures to the West were ignored, so in growing desperation the Congolese Prime Minister turned his gaze eastward.

Patrice Lumumba was a flawed and inexperienced leader, but he was not a communist, and nor was he playing a ‘Commie game’. He was, however, inexperienced, and he made some serious political missteps in those crucial first weeks of independence. The first was a pragmatic error: as John Henrik Clarke points out, the decision to embark on an international tour when his country was at the point of ‘deteriorating into chaos’ in order to garner support was ‘one of his unfortunate mistakes.’ A broader and more intangible mistake on the part of Lumumba was to put his faith in the goodwill of the international community. He failed to grasp the true power of cold war ideology on the everyday business of international relations, only understanding it in terms of the superficial imperial analogy meaningful to him. Yet it is fair to say that the American leadership’s misjudgment of its Congolese counterpart was, in its own way, as naïve as Lumumba’s. Neither party could bring itself to imagine the other’s situation. Lumumba, skilled in bringing nationalism to a heterogeneous people, believed fervently in multipolarity, and the dualistic configuration of cold war politics was as alien to him as was the experience of colonial subjecthood to Eisenhower.

Conclusion

In failing to distinguish between different expressions of leftist politics, the United States generated a self-fulfilling prophecy for the Congo. What would drive an untried and desperate young leader to the Soviet Union more readily than denying him the assistance he needed? Patrice Lumumba believed in the idealistic notion of ‘the international’ – a semi-actual entity which roundly betrayed him. Lumumba came to New York in July of 1960 to ask the UN to come to the aid of his young nation. He said, ‘Africa is not opposed to the West, to the United States, to the Soviet Union, or to any other nation… Africa has asked only one thing, to be liberated completely so that we may collaborate with the West in total freedom.’ Something in this simple message was lost in its translation into stark cold war realism, and Patrice Lumumba’s request went unanswered for too long to salvage unity in the Congo.

When Lumumba was killed in January 1961 by Congolese groups supported by both the Belgian and American governments, he had already been deposed as Prime Minister. In his place, the pro-Western tyrant Mobutu Sese-Seko ruled over the Congo, (or Zaire as it became) for 35 years. Today, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is riven by civil war, poverty and political unrest. Lumumba has been martyred in the popular consciousness, perhaps rendering him a ‘more effective African nationalist in death than he was in life.’ As for the United States, it has largely failed to come to terms with its malign neglect in Katanga; Henry Kissinger has said of the Congo, ‘The United States was present at the birth of this nation and we have been a proud partner ever since.’ Given the profound lack of US leadership in Africa in 1960, this is only as outrageous a claim as any Eisenhower or William Burden might have made at the time. When Katanga seceded from the Congo, an opportunity arose for a creative and productive bilateral relationship to be established between the United States and the new republic. What occurred instead was the unsteady attempt on each side to incorporate the events into different ideological narratives. In such an environment, the only possible outcome was chaos.

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