Lumumba Lost

By Sallie Pisani

Lumumba Lost is the story of Patrice Lumumbas failed attempt to bring the former Belgian Congo into the global market in the immediate post-Independence period, circa 1960. Lumumba, the Congos first Prime Minister, was assassinated as a result of his attempt to freely market the Congos rich mineral wealth. Told in first person by a variety of people involved in Lumumbas power struggle and ultimate demise, Lumumba Lost sheds light on the constraints placed upon African independence leaders by the western corporate world with which they had hoped to trade. While framed as fiction, Lumumba Lost gains its verisimilitude from the authors extensive research into the historical record.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 24, 2003
• ISBN: 9781465327642

Sallie Pisani

Sallie Pisani received her Ph.D. in history at Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey. She is retired from the academic community where she thought diplomatic history. Her first book The CIA and the Marshall Plan was published by the University Press of Kansas. She resides in Hollywood, Florida with her husband Francis, and is currently at work on a history of interracial marriages among commercial elites of the lower Mississippi River region in the post-Civil War period.

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Copyright © 2003 by Sallie Pisani.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

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Contents

Bíssell

The State Department

Harlem

Cordier

Lumumba

Pauline

FOR FRANK

Pauline was standing on the tarmac at Ndjili airport, screaming. Well, she wasn’t really standing, she was hysterical. U.N. troops were trying to restrain her as she clawed at them to be free, screaming something about her baby, her taunt body stretching toward the Air Congo four-prop taxiing down the runway. A nice looking woman, Pauline Lumumba. Those soldiers who weren’t busy restraining her couldn’t help notice, with her Paris finery—small, pretty and fashionable. The Prime Minister’s wife, but what was she screaming about. Practically nuts.

Pauline’s baby had died. She wanted to bury the little girl. But the matter was complicated by her husband’s predicament. Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister of the new Congo Republic was under house arrest. According to the U.N. troop commanders on the ground in the Congo, it was for his own protection, but no one in the Congo believed that. Certainly Pauline didn’t. But for now, her concern was the burial of her child and she wasn’t going to bury the baby in Bakongo territory. It had made Patrice very angry that she wouldn’t because he despised the tribal system in the Congo, believing it held back progress and destroyed hopes for a central government. He could say what he pleased, but she would only bury her family in Orientale province, in Stanleyville, where her ancestors were buried.

But the U.N. commanders refused permission for any of Lumumba’s family to lease the capital. Even for one day, with her husband under guard, so that they could bury the child. After much screaming and yelling, they were told that the U.N. would provide transport for one person. That infuriated Patrice. By the time he had transmitted his views on this offer to the U.N., even that offer was rescinded. And so now, Pauline and her sisters had concocted a scheme. They wrapped the baby up as a parcel and put it on the plane. Then Pauline and her family tried to board the plane and were stopped. Now the plane was taking off, with the baby in the hold as a parcel.

She was nuts, and as the soldiers began to piece together what had happened, they knew their boss would raise hell about the baby on the plane. They also knew that Patrice Lumumba would raise hell too.

Even for a man under house arrest, Patrice Lumumba could still cause a stir. He knew that his situation was deteriorating, the fact that he couldn’t attend his own child’s funeral made matters pretty obvious. But he could still fight. Various military units were sent to his quarters, probably to kill him, but he always talked them out of it. All he needed was a few minutes with a Congolese and he could change their mind. But his predicament was dire. And to make matters worse he was drinking, and he never was much of a drinker. A little beer of course, especially when he worked at the Polar factory. You couldn’t very well sell beer and not drink some of it. But this was different. There were rumors about drugs too. But Lumumba’s supporters believed that he was driven crazy when he realized that in spite of independence, the Congo was still powerless. Rich yet powerless.

Power and wealth go hand in hand in the west, but not in the Congo. The Congo is rich in ways we can only dream about and the Congolese knew it. From the days of the Kongo Kingdom in the 16th century, powerful Congolese kings traded their wealth in Europe. In those years it was copper from Katanga, but in Lumumba’s time it was industrial diamonds, cobalt, uranium, valuable types of asbestos and the rare earth minerals so necessary in the modern defense industry, and found only in the Congo. Even in the 17th century, wars were fought to the Kongo Kingdom’s copper. The Kongo lost, eventually dooming the Kongo dynasty and preparing the way for a new and more powerful kingdom called the Lunda Empire.

The Lunda lasted until the time of Leopold II, but they were encroached upon by new entrepreneurial tribes, the Chokwe and the Yeke, among others, tribes that refused to trade in slaves, relying instead on skilled crafts or providing services. The Chokwe, originating as a poor forest people who created beehives and harvested wax, eventually became the rubber barons of precolonial central Africa. The Yeke, in the eastern region of the Congo, created transportation networks from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. If you wanted your products moved almost anywhere in 18th century Central Africa, you called the Yeke. But by 1885 Leopold II had taken the Congo as his personal property and the troubles of the Congo had just begun.

Leopold had every appearance of being a small time player in colonial Africa before 1885. The European powers were already there—the British, French, Germans, Dutch, Portuguese. Leopold had desire and that was all. He studied Africa, probably knew more about it than any monarch of his time. He courted scholars and explorers who had been there. He schemed. All the while his government laughed behind his back. They were completely uninterested in his mission, joking that he would get over it. But he didn’t and Africa has yet to. As part of the Berlin Act, Leopold II, the king of Belgium, personally purchased the Congo. Not as a colony of Belgium, as his own property.

Americans don’t know much about the Berlin Act, even now, and at the time of Patrice Lumumba, it was practically unknown. But the fact was that in 1885 the major powers of Europe sat down and divided up the map of Africa, each power taking its portion. Belgium wouldn‘t have received a portion unless Leopold had purchased one, they simply weren‘t major players. Americans were taught then, and many still believe, that western influence in Africa came about gradually as a result of missionaries and marketing. But it was sudden and bloody. Africans resisted and were defeated. Colonial governments were established to organize African society in ways that enabled the most efficient exploitation of resources in each colony.

African life was terrible in all the colonies but nowhere was it worse than in the Congo. Leopold hired a consortium to run the various businesses in his African property. The consortium had no constraints from institutions in Belgium. Eventually stories worked there way out of the Congo into the west and even the colonial powers were mortified. Investigations ensued, statistics were compiled, demands were made that Leopold change his ways. Even Mark Twain weighed in with a particularly bitter report on the depths of European paternalism in King Leopold‘s Solliloquoy.

But to most people the facts and figures of missionary statements and government reports were more convincing and in the end, forced Leopold‘s hand. For him the hand was only forced, for his subjects, they were removed. In a bold stroke of European intellectual prowess, Leopold had determined that the punishment for non-compliance with compulsory labor laws was to have one‘s hands chopped off. Missionaries reported finding villages with baskets and baskets filled with human hands. Their shock fueled government reports in England and American which forced Leopold to cede the Congo to the Belgian Parliament as a colony. No more hands were cut off.

Not that Eden suddenly appeared on the Congo River. The Congolese were given plenty to do with their newly spared hands: mining, farming on state-owned plantations, working at countless menial tasks. For the fortunate, apprenticeship at a trade. Of course everyone was educated. The Belgians were a modern people, all of their Africans could read and write. But that was all. Basic literacy and nothing more. All of this left the Congo, at independence, with the highest literacy rate in Africa, perhaps three-quarters, but only about one dozen college graduates.

All of this history became a problem for Patrice Lumumba. At first it was a problem that needed solving through the gaining of independence. But on Independence Day it became a problem of another sort. There were three major speakers in Leopoldville on Independence Day and a huge crowd to hear them. There were Africans and Europeans, all eager to participate in the momentous occasion and wondering how the Africans would acquit themselves. The first speaker was Leopold’s nephew, King Bauduoin. Rising to the podium he recounted at great length the generosity of his uncle in civilizing the Africans and how successful Leopold’s efforts had been. Now his work was to come to fruition, independence was the reward of his tutelage. A chill settled over the Africans present.

Then the President rose. Joseph Kasa-Vubu. Surely he would straighten the record. But no, Kasa-Vubu reiterated the speech of the King saying that it was a wonderful and generous gesture on Leopold’s part to bring the Congolese into the modern European scheme of things.

Then Lumumba rose. He was furious. He attacked both the King and the President noting that the only thing the Europeans had given the Congolese was beating, terror and destruction of their country. Belgians at the scene went beserk. They fled the celebration as though Lumumba was treating them to a pornographic show. Africans laughed. But later it turned out not to be very funny. Lumumba’s problem was that the world outside of Belgium really didn’t know that much about the history of terror in the colony. There was no context for his comments in the reporting that went around the globe. From the Congo’s first day he was branded in many circles.

Bíssell

Dick Bissell certainly wasn’t very happy. He had just received a fairly unpleasant assignment, even for the Director of Covert Operation of the CIA. He knew it would probably come his way, but there was always the outside hope the new president would just ignore this problem and leave it to the experts. No such luck. The call came late in the morning, but Dick wasn’t in yet, being a night person. That was trouble because the new president was an early riser. He’d waited until almost eleven to call Dick, who was hardly out of bed at that time.

Dick arrived around noon and settled into his lunch, at the desk, as usual. He called the president around one and heard the question he dreaded: What should I do about Lumumba? What a question, who had the answer, who even wanted to try? It was one of those problems no one really wanted to talk about in any official capacity. Better to see if it just couldn’t be handled by someone in the field. No one really wanted to go on record with a suggestion. But there could be no getting around a call from the president.

Dick had been quick on his feet and suggested to the president that he bring along Bronson Tweedy, an old hand at the Agency, specialist on Africa. Well, I don’t want the whole world in on this, Dick, said the president, I want your advice, not a consensus of experts. It’ll be just Bronson and me, Mr. President, and I really think you’ll find that his background knowledge of the region is indispensable. Well, all right. Call him and get something together for me by tomorrow. Call back my office and set up a time.

There was no sense arguing with this, although he was conscious that his breathing was a little fast. This was going to be very uncomfortable. There was a lot going on that the president wouldn’t like and the question was, how much would they have to tell him. They really didn’t want him botching the situation now, it was bad enough.

He didn’t call Bronson right away. That posed its own problems. Bronson was a case in himself. Testy was the word Allen Dulles used to describe him. Others were a little more terse. Bronson would be particularly difficult about this situation.

Bronson had been an African specialist since OSS days. It was fair to say there really were no others. No one cared. Bronson was sure the world would someday revolve around Africa and constantly chided everyone for not paying attention to the continent. In the Marshall Plan days Africa had become a big issue and Bronson was impossible to deal with since then, constantly reminding people he had predicted everything.

Worse than that, Bronson had always felt passed over in the promotion scheme at the Agency and Dick knew he’d hear about that when he called for help. Delaying the call, he asked his assistant if there were any pistachios around. He always liked to east pistachios at times like these. It seemed so comforting to concentrate on picking out the ones that had a bit of a crack in the shell so he could get his long fingernails in there and pop out the nut. This could be a good occupation while he thought about how to handle Bronson, or rather gathered up the patience to listen to him.

The trouble with pistachios was that they really were a mess. He was never able to keep the outer shell and the paper thin inner shell in the dish. So periodically he would stop and moisten his finger tip and vacuum up the crumbs. His assistant always spread a little table cloth on his desk when he was eating, so that made matters a little easier.

Finally he picked up the phone to call his old friend. Bronson Tweedy, Dick thought as the phone rang. Whoever thought up a name like that. One of their colleagues liked to quip, And his mother didn’t even know he would grow up to be a spy! Funny line, but Dick wasn’t sure it was true. Bronson’s father was a spy.

Dick Bissell here, he told Tweedy when he reached him. Bronson was in a very bad mood.