The sorry end of a nationalist
Syed Badrul Ahsan recalls an African martyr
Fifty years after his murder, Patrice Lumumba continues to inspire spirited passion in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Of course, in the days when the Soviet Union was around, Lumumba was accorded immortality through the establishment of a university after him in Moscow. On top of everything, men who have waged bitter struggles against western colonialism around the globe have been relentless in their remembrance of the man who became the Congo's founding prime minister and who, soon afterwards, was pushed to a death in the most horrible of circumstances. Leo Zeilig, in his study of the rise and fall of Lumumba, joins that select band of intellectuals who have looked upon the late Congolese leader with sympathy despite the harangues and emotional outburst he was often prone to. Take here the instance of his well-framed but nevertheless harsh speech denouncing Belgian colonialism on the day the Congo won independence. It was 30 June 1960. Lumumba, naturally present at the independence celebrations as the free country's first leader, was not expected to speak at the ceremonies which were graced by the presence of Belgium's King Baudouin. And yet something stirred in the man who had educated himself, had almost single-handedly convinced the world that his country needed to be free. After ages of domination by the Belgians, whose ruler Leopold made it a point in the nineteenth century to steal as much of the Congo's wealth as he could and whose grasping nature thereafter emboldened his Belgian subjects to follow suit, Lumumba was unwilling to be patronized on the dawn of freedom. He delivered a peroration that roused his people to good cheer and brought for him endless applause. The king of the departing power was outraged. Every Belgian present went livid with rage. Suddenly the colonisers realized that with Lumumba in charge, the idea of Belgian neo-colonialism in the Congo would dwindle into a pipe dream. There was of course the conspiratorial Moise Tshombe in the mineral-rich province of Katanga, ready to secede from the new country and go its own way. The Belgians were only too ready and willing to assist him in his struggle against Lumumba. The uncouth Tshombe was thus pitted against the scholarly Lumumba. Within days and weeks, the Congo would begin to unravel. Ill-equipped to run an administration, because of the sheer absence of educated Congolese (the Belgians all through their colonization had made sure that the Congolese people remained outside the parameters of education, the better to blunt any urge on their part for freedom), Lumumba was now faced with the collapse of a country that had barely been put into shape. Tshombe, with much arrogance and pomposity, declared Katangan independence. Other men in other areas were trying to do the same. It was a curious picture of decolonization: where Lumumba was moving heaven and earth to put a modern nation-state in place, his enemies were busy carving out their own tribal fiefdoms through defiance of the new government. The Belgians were gleeful. Zeilig's work is a composite study of the Lumumba character, beginning with his early years and going on to his work in the postal department like any other subject of a western colonial empire. Rebellion was not part of Lumumba's personality in the early years. Indeed, it was precisely the opposite of what he subsequently turned out to be. Impressed with the lifestyles of the Belgian colonizers and observing at the same time the emergence of a black elite determined to emulate the white rulers, Lumumba went into a pursuit of everything that would reshape him in the image of a gentleman, ready to clink glasses with the colonizers. He needed to be part of the evolues, black Congolese who had evolved, so to speak, from the status of the politically enslaved to a measure of dignity that would bring them socially closer to the Belgians. Lumumba read books, indeed read everything he could lay his hands on. He travelled to Belgium, came back home impressed and plunged into writing for journals. It remains a question as to how many Congolese, seeing that few of them were able to be autodidacts as their future leader was, were able to read the articles, to say nothing of mulling over them. And then came time for Lumumba to be carted off to prison. As always with men inhabiting lands under colonial domination, he emerged with a new perspective on the conditions his country was mired in. Increasing stridency now marked his writing. He was into politics. His speeches turned radical. The Belgian power was jittery, but Lumumba was on his way. The author dwells on the major characters in the story of the Congo even as he keeps his focus on Lumumba. Joseph Kasavubu, Joseph Mobutu, Antoine Gizenga, Tshombe (and every other Congolese enmeshed in the crisis) draw appropriate assessments from him. In the six months he was to live between his ascendance to power in June 1960 and his assassination in January 1961, Patrice Lumumba fought a battle that looked increasingly futile. The Belgians were propping up Tshombe's secession in Katanga. The United Nations, to which he repeatedly appealed for assistance to swat his rivals into submission, played a dangerously delaying game. Mobutu, the commander of the army appointed by Lumumba, was almost given a free hand to push the prime minister from power. Euphemistically placed under protective custody along with two of his comrades, Lumumba eventually escaped. That would prove to be his undoing. Captured by Tshombe loyalists, the three men were subjected to severe beatings before being taken, bound and bruised, before Tshombe. Lumumba and his comrades were shot as dusk fell on 17 January 1961. A bunch of happy Belgian officers helped the Katangans obliterate all traces of the Congo's first prime minister and the other two men. The bodies were treated to acid. Whatever little remained, a few bones or so, were burnt to ashes. It was the end of a dream. The Congo would for decades lurch from one nightmare to another. Joseph Kabila's difficulties today are a sign of the bad legacy inaugurated through the elimination of Patrice Lumumba. And do not forget that the Congo crisis was to claim the life of Dag Hammarskjoeld, secretary general of the United Nations, shortly after Lumumba's sad end.
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