Why The West Killed Patrice Lumumba
Later this year, the Belgian Parliament is due to report on the
murder of the Congo’s first prime minister after independence, Patrice
Lumumba, in January 1961. The circumstances of Lumumba’s death have been
shrouded in mystery for 40 years, but as the Congo’s vast mineral
wealth is once again becoming a focus for imperialist rivalries,
documents long hidden in official archives have been brought to light.
Last year, the BBC ran two documentaries on the tragic history of this central African state.
“Who Killed Lumumba?” was screened as part of the channel’s Correspondent series.
It drew heavily on the forthcoming new book by Belgian historian Ludo
de Witte (“The Murder of Lumumba”, Verso Books, ISBN: 1859846181,
published June 2001).
De Witte has put together the facts of the case from official Belgian
archives and the documentary also used archive film footage and
interviewed surviving witnesses, to show that Lumumba was murdered in a
plot masterminded by Western governments.
Mobutu, from the BBC’s “Storyville” documentary series, reveals how
the Western powers put Joseph Sese Seko Mobutu in power after the death
of Lumumba, keeping him there for 32 years while he systematically
looted the country. Mobutu became the West’s main Cold War ally in
Africa, and the Congo formed the staging post for CIA operations against
Soviet-backed African regimes.
The film reveals the very close personal and political relationship
that existed between Mobutu and several Western leaders. We see film
clips of Mobutu being embraced by Jacques Chirac (then President of
France), and sitting next to the British Queen in the royal carriage.
For many years, until he fell out of favour at the end of the Cold
War, Mobutu remained a friend of the Belgian king, but his closest
friends were President George Bush (Snr) and his family. Between 1885
and 1908, some five to eight million people fell victim to King Leopold
of Belgium’s personal rule over the Congo, under a barbarous system of
forced labour and systematic terror.
In 1959, the Belgian government finally decided to grant the Congo independence.
The first elections brought Patrice Lumumba to power as Prime
Minister. But his government was an unstable coalition of regional
interests, and collapsed within a week.
Sections of the army mutinied and the mineral-rich province of Katanga seceded.
“Who Killed Lumumba?” featured important new material about the Katanga secession.
Ludo de Witte has uncovered documents in the Belgian archives showing
that Moise Tshombe, who led the secession, acted on orders from the
Belgian government, which has always claimed that it only sent troops
into Katanga to protect Belgian lives and property.
De Witte’s research has shown that the Belgians plotted to dismember the Congo.
US Documents released last August reveal that President Eisenhower
directly ordered the CIA to assassinate Lumumba. Minutes of an August
1960 National Security Council meeting confirm that Eisenhower told CIA
chief Allen Dulles to “eliminate” Lumumba.
The official note-taker, Robert H Johnson, had told the Senate
Intelligence Committee this in 1975, but no documentary evidence was
previously available to back up his statement.
Larry Devlin, the CIA’s man in the Congo at the time, told the BBC
filmmakers how he had been told to meet “Joe from Paris”, who turned out
to be the CIA’s chief technical officer, Dr Sidney Gottlieb.
“I recognised him as he walked towards my car,” recalled Devlin, “but
when he told me what they wanted done I was totally, totally taken
aback.”
Gottlieb gave him a tube of poisoned toothpaste, which Devlin was to
smuggle into Lumumba’s bathroom. He claims he never did so, because “I
had never suggested assassination, nor did I believe it was advisable”.
Instead, “I threw it in the Congo River when its usefulness had
expired.”
The “usefulness” of the poison expired rather quickly because Lumumba
was murdered very soon afterwards, at the hands of Belgian agents.
Eisenhower was not alone in coming to the conclusion that Lumumba
must die. A British Foreign Office document from September 1960 notes
the opinion of a top-ranking official, who later became the head of MI5,
that, “I see only two possible solutions to the (Lumumba) problem.
“The first is the simple one of ensuring (his) removal from the scene by killing him.”
What steps, if any, were taken to put this plan into action remain
unknown. De Witte’s work reveals the steps that the Belgian government
took to remove Lumumba. Belgian military chiefs made nightly visits to
Mobutu, then head of the army, and President Kasavubu, to plot Lumumba’s
downfall.
Colonel Louis Maliere spoke of the millions of francs he brought over
for this purpose. The plot to kill Lumumba was called “Operation
Barracuda” and was run by the Belgian Minister for African Affairs,
Count d’Aspremont.
The Belgium government ordered Kasavubu to sack Lumumba, who turned to the new Parliament and won two votes of confidence.
Mobutu then led a coup d’état and Lumumba was placed under house
arrest, from which he escaped only to be captured by troops loyal to
Mobutu. Contemporary film shows UN troops standing by while Lumumba is
first beaten in front of Mobutu, then paraded through the streets of
Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) and finally beaten again.
When taken to Thysville prison, he almost provoked a mutiny among the
guards. Count d’Aspremont ordered him to be taken to Katanga Province
and certain death. On the flight there, he and two supporters – Maurice
Mpolo and Joseph Okite – were beaten so badly the pilot complained the
plane was in danger of crashing. All three were shot by a firing squad
commanded by Belgian officers and watched by Moise Tshombe. The Belgian
commander of the Katanga police force, Gerard Soete, was given the
grisly job of destroying the bodies. Enlisting the support of a friend,
they chopped up the corpses before dissolving them in acid. Soete
recalls that they were drunk for the two days because, “We did things an
animal wouldn’t do.”
Both these films do a valuable job in bringing to the attention of a
wider audience the new evidence about Lumumba’s death and in revealing
the way in which the imperialist powers supported Mobutu’s dictatorial
regime.
However, what neither of them fully explains is why the West acted as
it did. They present the assassination of Lumumba and the installation
of Mobutu as simply part of the Cold War rivalry between the West and
Moscow.
The central mystery of Lumumba’s death remains. Why was he killed?
Why was the might of at least three Western powers bent on eliminating
this one man – even as he was held prisoner, reviled and beaten by his
captors and was without military or political power?
Some say the answer is that he posed a threat to the West because he
was a committed Pan-Africanist, and since his death he has certainly
taken on the status of a Pan-African martyr.
By late 1959, Britain and America had concluded that, far from
representing a threat, Pan-Africanism offered the best chance for
preventing revolution in Africa. Pan-Africanists of much longer standing
than Lumumba, such as Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Nyerere, Obote and Azikiwe had
also come to power around this time. The experience of the Congo, with
its million-strong working class – the largest on the continent outside
South Africa, was a powerful factor in bringing them to that conclusion.
When strikes and demonstrations broke out in 1959, as the mineral
boom ended, the Belgian government decided to grant its colony
independence.
Their repressive apparatus was geared up to brutalising a divided and
dispersed rural population, not an increasingly well-organised working
class that was losing its local and communal loyalties.
When Lumumba showed that he could not be relied upon to control the
Congolese working class, his fate was sealed. The West decided to make
an example of him to the masses and to other African leaders, to show
what would happen if they opposed imperialist dictates.
Mobutu, who had impressed the CIA on his brief visits to Brussels as
Lumumba’s secretary, was chosen as the better candidate to safeguard
Western interests.
Through a mixture of brutality and political guile, Mobutu succeeded
in ensuring that the Congo (renamed Zaire) did not become the flashpoint
for an African socialist revolution.
Africason is a die-hard believer in Africa.
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