d o c u m e n t
THE MURDER OF PATRICE LUMUMBA III
New African Nr. 382, UK- IC Publications Limited; London, February
2000, pages 25 -28.
Lumumba — the UN and American role
Story by Osei Boateng
Two weeks after Congo’s independence, the country was plunged into a
spiral of crises. It all started when soldiers of the Force Publique, the
colonial army trained, and headed, by Belgian officers, mutinied over the
refusal of its Belgian chief of staff to consider any improvements in their
pay and service conditions. The soldiers had not been paid for months and
when the chief of staW General Janssens, refused to grant their pleas for
service improvements, they vented their spleen on Lumumba’s two-week-old
government.
The soldiers were soon joined by civil servants who had equally not
been paid for several months.
Then Moise Tshombe’s CONAKAT parry which had won only eight of the
137 seats in the national assembly demanded two of the most important portfolios
in the country — defence and interior as condition for joining Lumumba’s
MNC in a coalition government. The MNC refused, and the negotiations broke
down.
Tshombe’s party had also won 25 of the 60 seats in the Katanga provincial
assembly, but technically, according to the letter of the Loi Fundamentale
(Congo’s constitution), he could not even form a provincial government
in Katanga since he did not win an overall majority in the provincial elections.
He won only 25 seats but he needed 31 to form the provincial government.
Yet Belgium, under pressure from Tshombe, amended the Loi Fundamentale
without consulting the other parties, and thus paved the way for Tshombe
to form a provincial government in Katanga. It was this provincial government
that declared UDI (unilateral declaration of independence) in Katanga on
11 July 1960, less than two weeks of Congo’s independence.
Katanga, later renamed Shaba by Mobutu, was then the richest and most
developed region of the country. It was also the home base of the mining
giant, Union Miniere de Haut Katanga. The province was so important to
the future of the country that no national leader, and least Lumumba, could
let it secede. Katanga was Congo’s “Niger Delta” (home of Nigeria’s oil
wealth).
On the eve of independence, Lumumba’s government had signed a “treaty
of friendship” with Belgium, stipulating that Belgian troops in the Congo
could only intervene militarily in domestic affairs at the request of the
Congolese government. But as soon as Tshombe announced Katanga’s secession,
Belgium (without consulting Lumumba’s government) sent its troops into
action in Katanga’s capital, Elisabethville (now Lumumbashi). They were
not to quell Tshombe’s rebellion but to give him support.
Thus within two weeks of independence, Lumumba’s government was &ced
with four serious problems: an army mutiny, a workers’ strike, a secession
in Katanga and a re-occupation of the country by Belgium. Lumumba’s enduring
mistake was to decide to invite United Nations’ troops to help him solve
the Katanga problem. He played straight into the hands of those who did
not wish him well.
How the UN did it
The UN Security Council passed two resolutions on 14 and 22 July 1960:
(a) calling on Belgium to immediately withdraw its troops from Katanga;
(b) declaring the entry of UN troops into Katanga as necessary for the
full implementation of the UN resolutions; and (c) reaffirming that the
UN Force in the Congo would not be a party to, or in any way intervene
in, or influence the outcome of any internal conflict, constitutional or
otherwise.
But that was not what happened. By 25 July, the UN had 8,396 troops
in the Congo composed of 2,340 Ghanaians, 2,087 Tunisians, 1,220 Moroccans,
1,160 Ethiopians, 741 Guineans, 623 Swedes and 225 Liberians. Later contingents
from Ireland, Mali, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and other countries joined the
Force. Though the Force was predominantly African, there was not a single
African in the UN Operational Command (UNOC) based in New York.
As President Nkrumah of Ghana wrote later: The Secretary
General on the civilian side [of the UNOC] was assisted by Sir Alexander
McFarquhar and Brigadier Rokhe. Below them were three Americans. Gen Karl
von Horn [the Swede] headed the military side. In other words, in all the
major issues, it was these men from the Western countries who made the
decisions, and it was the Africans, who were not even consulted, who received
instructions to carry them out. Thus, we see the spectacle of Africans
being used to crush fellow Africans. It was all done under the grandiose
phrases of the UN charter.”
Was it surprising, therefore, that the UN troops
were initially sent all over Congo except Katanga where the problem really
was. In other words, the UN occupied the very provinces controlled by Lumumba’s
government, and left Katanga free for the Belgians and Tshombe’s rebels
— an act which was against the very spirit and letter of the UN resolutions
of 14 and 22 July. It was not until 14 August that the first UN troops
were sent to Katanga. Even then, Tshombe demanded from the UN that no troops
from Ghana and Guinea be sent to Katanga. His wish was granted.
This is where America’s “national interests” took
centre-stage in the running of the UN operations in the Congo. Disguised
as the voice of the UN, Washington ran the show from behind the scenes,
using the UNOC as the lever to support the secessionists.
By August 1960, the senior posts in the UN Secretariat
in New York were held by America and its Western allies. The UN Secretary
General, Dag Hammarskjold (from Sweden) was surrounded by American advisers
— notably, Ralph Bunche (under-secretary for political affairs), Heinz
Wenshoff (Bunche’s deputy and personal representative in the Congo) and
Andrew Cordier (executive assistant). Hammarskjold himself had personal
connections with the Belgian royal family.
Records show that what was supposed to be
a UN operation in the Congo was in fact financed largely by America. Between
July 1960 and June 1963, American “aid” to Congo totalled $299.7m. Forty
per cent of this ($118.5m) went to the UN Force alone. In addition, Congress
put a further $1 Om at the disposal of the US president in case of emergency
in the Congo.
Thus, the scene was set where the “African” commanders of the UN troops
would not take instructions from their national governments, unless they
came via the UNOC.
Some of the most infamous of these “African” commanders were the trio
in charge of the Ghanaian contingent, the largest unit in the UN Force.
Major-Gen H. T. Alexander (a Briton seconded to Ghana in 1959 and appointed
chief of defence staff) led the way. In fact Gen Alexander had no “official”
business as such in the Congo — he was neither, technically, the commander
of the Ghanaian contingent nor held any official position in the UN team.
The Ghanaian contingent was commanded by Brigadier Stephen Otu, assisted
by Col. J. A. Ankrah.
Yet Gen Alexander went to the Congo and using the cover of being the
chief of defence staff of Ghana, and the pretext of restoring “law and
order” in the areas controlled by Lumumba, set out to demobilise the Force
Publique (the army controlled by Lumumba) and, in the process, achieved
the twin aims of rendering both Lumumba and Nkrumah ineffective. In fact,
he reduced Nkrumah to a laughing stock, given the fact that Nkrumah was
Lumumba’s best friend yet Ghanaian soldiers were used to block Lumumba’s
every move.
Nkrumah finally sacked Alexander in 1961. But it was too late. By then
Lumumba had been murdered and his government overthrown.
Enter Kasavubu
Before he died, Lumumba suffered another deadly blow. Joseph Kasavubu,
the titular president who had been a staunch Lumumba ally, suddenly turned
tail, believed to have fallen for the wiles of the CIA. In a surprise radio
broadcast on 5 September 1960, Kasavubu told the Congolese:
“I have most important news to announce. The prime minister who was
named by the King of Belgium has betrayed the mission assigned to him.
He has been governing arbitrarily and even now he is in the midst of throwing
this country into a civil war. That is why I have decided immediately to
dissolve parliament.”
Kasavubu went on to appoint a new government under Joseph Ileo, president
of the Senate.
Lumumba was stung! That same evening, he made a counter announcement:
“The popular government will remain in power. I proclaim that as from today,
Kasavubu who has betrayed the nation by collaborating with the Belgians
and the Flemish, is no longer the head of state.”
But more bad news awaited Lumumba. There were further rebellions in
Kasai led by Albert Kalondji as well as secessionist moves in Ba-Congo.
Then, Lumumba’s foreign minister Bomboko went over to the enemy. But
when all hopes appeared to be lost, a chink of light appeared at the end
of Lumumba’s tunnel. Both houses of parliament voted overwhelmingly on
7 September in support of Lumumba’s position against Kasavubu. The Senate
voted 41 to 6 (with two abstentions), condemning Kasavubu’s attempt to
outlaw Lumumba’s government. But that important decision did not have much
value because Kasavubu had already received American support.
It was during this time that the UNOC used the Ghanaian troops to damaging
effect against Lumumba. On 6 September, 24 hours after Kasavubu had gone
over to the enemy, the Ghanaians were ordered to seize the Ndjili airport
and the national radio station in Leopoldville and prevent Lumumba from
using them to rally his supporters. Meanwhile the UN was allowing Tshombe
and Kasavubu free rein over Radio Elisabethville and Radio Brazzaville
respectively, to broadcast against Lumumba.
On 11 September, an angry Lumumba led a group of
soldiers to take the radio station. The Ghanaians threatened to shoot him
and his soldiers if they didn’t get lost. Lumumba protested vehemently
to Nkrumah in Accra who instructed his ambassador in Leopoldville, Kofi
Djin, to intercede. The Ghanaian commander, Brigadier Otu, told the ambassador
in the face that he only took orders from the UNOC and not from him.
Nkrumah was forced to protest to the UN Secretary
General, Dag Hammarskjold, on 12
September thus:
“Ghana originally went to the Congo to aid the legitimate Lumumba government...
The whole development since has perverted the real objective and seriously
undermined Ghana’s position, in that at present Ghana’s troops are used
almost exclusively as a cat’s paw against Lumumba, preventing him from
using his own radio station. At the same time, Radio Brazzaville which
is couitrolled by France, a permanent member of the Security Council, is
allowed to indulge in the most virulent propaganda against the legitimate
Lumumba government. Radio Elisabethville, which is in effect under Belgian
control, is allowed to indulge in similar propaganda. Thus Ghana is used
virtually to tie Lumumba’s hands behind him while a permanent member of
the Security Council is allowed to whip him.”
Nkrumah threatened that if the UN did not take action to right the
wrongs, he would withdraw the Ghanaian troops from UN command and place
them at the disposal of Lumumba’s government.
If only Nkrumah had carried out his threat! It might have had a snowball
effect on the other African contingents, and Lumumba might probably have
lived longer.
But Nkrumah did not make good his threat — his reasons being that,
as he told Lumumba in a letter on 12 September: “You must not push the
UN troops out until you have consolidated your position, [only] then can
you ask them to leave... But if the UN troops move out now, you will not
be able to cope with the confusion that will ensue, fomented by the colonial
powers, Belgian and other imperialists, working with the reactionaries
at home.”
It was a fatal miscalculation by Nkrumah.
Because the UNOC, dominated by Western interests as it were, was never
going to save Lumumba. And the longer the Ghanaian troops stayed under
UN command, the longer they were going to be used to stab Lumumba in the
back. And the longer they were going to be exposed to the various Western
intelligence agencies and their manipulations. It was no surprise, therefore,
that six years later, in February 1966, two of the prominent names among
the generals who led the now acknowledged CIA-instigated coup against Nkrumah,
were Ankrah and Otu. Ankrah in fact went on to become military head of
state in 1967 after Gen Kotoka, leader of the junta, had been killed in
a counter coup.
Mobutu’s coup
But back to Congo, the real drama in the crisis was
yet to unfold. As the LumumbaKasavuhu tussle continued, Colonel Mobutu,
the chief of staff, staged what was independent Africa’s first ever coup
on 14 September 1960. The previous day, Lumumba had been given emergency
powers by a joint session of the houses of parliament. Twenty-four hours
later, Mobutu went to the radio station and announced that the army was
taking over, and that parliament and the “two rival governments” in the
country had been “neutralised” until 31 December 1960. The government,
he said, was to be replaced by a “College of University Students”.
Mobutu’s action was quite interesting because he had been a man of
Lumumba’s heart. Mobutu had been a member of Lumumba’s MNC and from 1958
had wormed his way into Lumumba’s confidence. Lumumba considered him bright,
politically honest and a man of the future. He appointed him into the cabinet
as a junior minister, and later made him chief of staff of the newlyAfricanised
Congolese army, the Armée Nationale Congolese.
But all unbeknown to Lumumba, the CIA had recruited Mobutu for precisely
the job he did on 14 September. The CIA considered Mobutu as one of its
“bright discoveries”, because he knew Lumumba and the MNC inside out.
Four days before the coup, the CIA and Belgium had given Mobutu millions
of Belgian francs to go round the garrisons in Leopoldville to pay the
salary arrears of the soldiers. The money which came through the UN system
was to help Mobutu ingratiate himself with the soldiers, consolidate his
position and make the coup of 14 September easier to execute.
No wonder one of the significant actions of Mobutu after the coup was
to close down the Soviet embassy in Leopoldville on 17 September. He followed
it up a month later by closing down the Ghanaian and Egyptian embassies.
President Abel Nasser of Egypt retaliated by closing down the Belgian embassy
in Cairo.
UN In the dock
At the start of the Congo crisis, the personal relations
between Lumumba and the UN Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjold, were not
too bad. After their first meeting on 24 July 1960 in New York when Lumumba
attended the General Assembly, Hammarskjold was heard to remark: “Now nobody
can tell me that man is irrational.”
But a few weeks later, when the UNOC started using the Ghanaian troops
against him, Lumumba wrote several angry letters to Hammarskjold, especially
after Hammarskjold’s visit to the rebel capital, Elisabethville on 12 August
1960. Hammarskjoli even went further to grant Tshombe’s wish not to include
Ghanaian and Guinean troops in the UN force sent to Katanga on 14th August.
Lumumba protested: “The governmentment and people of the Congo have lost
confidence in the Secretary General.”
The relations deteriorated further to the point where Hammarskjold,
according to Madeleine Kalb, in her book Congo Cables told Western
diplomats in a private conversation: “Lumumba must be broken”.
Later, the UN representative in Congo, Mr Dayal (an Indian) appeared
to mend fences between the two men when he published, on 2 November 1960,
an report very favourable to Lumumba. Dayal criticised the Belgian role,
Mobutu’s coup and his foreign supporters, and called for a return of Lumumba’s
constitutional government. Washington opposed the Dayal report, saying
it would accept the return of parliament government in the Congo only if
the nominee of Kasavubu was made prime minister.
But it was Mobutu, not Kasavubu or his nominee, that grew
from strength to strength —supported by America and its European allies.
In January 1961, Mobutu was promoted from colonel to general. He remained
head of state for the next 37 years, serving eight American presidents,
being feted at the White House, making Kinshasa the HQ of the CIA operations
in Africa; and in the end, after his overthrow by Laurent Kabila’s rebels
in 1997, being declared “a creature of’ by his American friends.