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DR Congo conflict

KHAWAJA UMER FAROOQ Sunday, March 03, 2013
 

The Congo Crisis (French: Crise du Congo) was a period of turmoil in Congo-Léopoldville that began with national independence from Belgium in 1960 and ended with the seizing of power by Joseph Mobutu in 1966. At various points, the conflict had the characteristics of anti-colonial struggle, a secessionist war with the province of Katanga, a United Nations peacekeeping operation, and a Cold War proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union.The crisis resulted in the deaths of some 100,000 people.[5] It led to the assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, as well as a traumatic setback to the United Nations following the death of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld in a plane crash as he sought to mediate.  Prior to the establishment of the First Republic in 1960, the native Congolese elites had formed semi-political organisations which gradually evolved into the main parties striving for independence. These organisations were formed on one of three foundations: ethnic kinship, connections formed in schools, and urban intellectualism[citation needed].

Ethnic rivalry

The largest of these was Association des Bakongo (ABAKO), founded in 1950, which was an ethnic association which promoted the interests and language of the Bakongo (or Kongo) people, as well as Bakongo-related ethnic groups. ABAKO, led by Joseph Kasa-Vubu during the Crisis, was at the forefront of the more insistent demands for both independence and federalism. Other less successful ethnic associations included the Liboke lya Bangala, who championed needs of the Bangala ethno-linguistic group (a grouping created by Western ethnographers. The Fédékaléo represented people from the Kasai region. Fédékaléo later split into several groups. Though these organisations represented ethnic groups from all over the Congo, they usually based themselves in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa), since one reason for their existence was the need to maintain ethnic ties after the mass migration to urban areas[citation needed].Another source of political groupings was the various Alumni Associations—whose membership came from former students of colonial Christian schools in the Congo. 

Most of the major politicians of the period were Alumni members, and the associations were used to create networks of advisors and supporters. The third political tributary were the Cercles, urban associations that sprang up in the cities of the Congo, which were designed to foster solidarity amongst the évolués (the educated, westernised middle class). In the words of Patrice Lumumba, the head of the Cercles of Stanleyville (now Kisangani), the Cercles were created to "improve intellectual, social, moral and physical formation" of the évolués.[citation needed]In 1958, together with Cyrille Adoula and Joseph Ileo, Lumumba founded the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC), a national independence party intended to be non-tribal. It later split into two, MNC-L, led by Lumumba, and the MNC-K, led by Albert Kalonji, in Kasai.[citation needed]

The thirty year plan

In the early 1950s the Belgian government came under increasing pressure to allow the Belgian Congo to become a self-governing state. Belgium had ratified Article 73 of the United Nations Charter, which advocated self-determination, and both superpowers put pressure on Belgium to reform its Congo policy. The Belgian government's response was largely dismissive. However, Belgian professor A.J. van Bilsen, in 1955, published a treatise called the Thirty Year Plan for the Political Emancipation of Belgian Africa.
The timetable called for gradual emancipation of the Congo over a thirty year period—the time Van Bilsen expected it would take to create an educated elite who could replace the Belgians in positions of power. The Belgian government and many of the évolués were suspicious of the plan – the former because it meant eventually giving up the Congo, and the latter because Belgium would still be ruling Congo for another three decades. A group of Catholic évolués responded positively to the plan with a manifesto in a Congolese journal called Conscience Africaine, with their only point of disagreement being the amount of native Congolese participation. The ethnic association ABAKO decided to distance themselves from the plan, in part because most of the Catholic évolués who wrote the Conscience Africaine manifesto were not from the Kongo ethnic group favoured by ABAKO, but also because they had decided to take a more radical, less gradualist approach to ending colonialism. ABAKO demanded immediate self-government for Congo[citation needed]. This plan was never made official. All early political efforts were hampered because Belgium had made no plans for Congolese independence. There were only nine university degree holders,[6] and no Congolese in the entire military with a rank higher than Sergeant.

1959 Léopoldville and Stanleyville Riots

ABAKO gathered steam over the following few years, consolidating political control over much of the lower Congo and Léopoldville. By early 1959, much of the lower Congo was beyond the control of Belgian authorities. The Belgian authorities prohibited ABAKO from meeting and this caused widespread rioting in Léopoldville from 4–7 January 1959 during which 34 Africans died.[7]On 12 January, Joseph Kasa-Vubu was arrested and the Belgians stated that he would be released on 13 March. Subsequently, the Belgian government announced constitutional reforms intended to bring more Congolese into government, but only in an advisory capacity. They also indicated that the end result of the process would eventually be independence. With this plan the Belgians hoped to satisfy the demands of the more moderate Congolese for inclusion in the political process while neutralising the more extreme Congolese nationalists with the promise of eventual independence.[8]The end result was the opposite of what was intended. There was a surge of political activity, over fifty political parties were registered, nearly all of them based on tribal groups. Nationalist demands grew more extreme as parties competed with each other. There was further rioting, during which 24 people were killed, in Stanleyville on 31 October 1959, after Patrice Lumumba was arrested following a meeting of the MNC.[8]

The Roundtable Conference, Brussels 18–27 January 1960

Faced with increasing instability, the Belgians held a "Roundtable Conference" in Brussels for the leaders of the different Congolese parties. The MNC demanded that Lumumba should be released from prison so he could attend. The Belgians agreed to independence but tried to negotiate for a transitional period of three to four years. The Congolese insisted that independence be granted immediately and the most that they would concede was a few months.At the end of the conference on 27 January 1960 it was agreed that elections would be held by 22 May 1960, and independence granted on 30 June 1960. The experience of the French in the ongoing Algerian War for independence was something the Belgians desperately wanted to avoid[citation needed].

22 May 1960 elections

Main article: Belgian Congo general election, 1960
To create political institutions to govern Congo after its independence on 30 June 1960, the elections were held on 22 May 1960.
Only the two biggest parties presented themselves in more than one province:
  • The MNC-L (Patrice Lumumba) had won the elections: with about a quarter of the seats it ended first. It obtained a majority in the Eastern (Oriental) province.
  • The Parti National du Progrès or PNP, was second, was defeated as national party by the MNC-L. It was favoured by the Belgians.
Every other party was based in only one province; their strongholds followed ethnic divisions:
In the national parliament, Lumumba could count on a coalition of (in order of loyalty) MNC-L, UNC and COAKA (Kasaï), CEREA (Kivu), PSA (Léopoldville) and BALUBAKAT (Katanga). It was opposed by PNP, MNC-K (Kasaï), ABAKO (Léopoldville), CONAKAT (Katanga), PUNA and UNIMO (Equator) and RECO (Kivu).
As part of a deal, on 24 June 1960, Kasa-Vubu was elected president and the Lumumba government obtained the confidence of Chamber and Senate.

Independence

The independent Republic of the Congo was declared on 30 June 1960, with Joseph Kasa-Vubu as President and Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister. It shared a name with the neighbouring Republic of the Congo to the west, a French colony that also gained independence in 1960, and the two were normally differentiated by also stating the name of the relevant capital city, so Congo (Léopoldville) versus Congo (Brazzaville).

Course of the Crisis

The First Republic

Independence day

On 30 June 1960, the country's first day as an independent nation, Baudouin, the King of the Belgians, arrived for the formal handover of power. What was intended to be a day of pomp and national celebration turned into a public relations disaster. This was clear almost from the moment the king stepped off the plane. On his way from the airport, a man, Ambroise Boimbo,[9][10] snatched his ceremonial sword and began dancing around in the road with it. At his arrival in the parliament building on the following morning, the king was shown more respect. However he then made an ill-advised speech praising the "genius" and "tenacious courage" of his great uncle King Leopold II.[11]

In the Congo, Leopold II is mainly remembered as the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken by the King. The extraction of rubber and ivory in the Congo during this period relied on forced labour and resulted in the massacre and mutilation of millions of Congolese. President Kasa-Vubu altered his prepared speech to exclude ending remarks of praise for King Baudouin. Prime Minister Lumumba was not due to give a speech; according to some reports this was a deliberate exclusion. However, he rose and gave a speech which extolled the independence struggle "of tears, fire and blood". He attacked the Belgian Congo's "regime of injustice, oppression and exploitation".[12] Some media reported that Lumumba ended his speech by ad-libbing to Baudoin: "Nous ne sommes plus vos macaques" (We are no longer your monkeys)[13][14][15]—a reference to a common slur Belgians use against Africans. However, this is not found in the text of his speech and may be apocryphal.

This speech was well received by the Congolese who heard it. For many Congolese, hearing any European dignitary, let alone a king, being addressed this way was extraordinary. For the king and his entourage, this speech was an insult and they nearly decided to fly straight back to Belgium and skip the rest of the ceremonies. They stayed for the official lunch, at which Lumumba made a somewhat more conciliatory speech saying "At the moment when the Congo reaches independence, the whole Government wishes to pay solemn homage to the King of the Belgians and to the noble people he represents for the work done here over three-quarters of a century. For I would not wish my feelings to be wrongly interpreted."[11] However, it was his first speech that was remembered and broadcast throughout the Congo[citation needed].

Military mutiny

At independence, the Congo armed forces, the Force Publique, had both military functions and served as a gendarmerie. All officers and senior non-commissioned officers were Belgians. After 30 June 1960, resentment rose in the army whose privates and NCOs saw little opportunity for advancement. Further discontent was caused by the decision by Lumumba to raise the pay of all government employees except the military. On 5 July 1960, the commander of the Force Publique, Lieutenant General Émile Janssens, called a meeting of the Léopoldville garrison. Janssens was not a man of diplomatic talent. In an attempt to remind the soldiers of their oaths of loyalty and obedience, he wrote on a blackboard, "After independence = before independence".[16]

This was not a message the rank and file members of the army were prepared to hear. By the end of the day the garrison had mutinied against its white officers and attacked numerous European targets. Armed bands of mutineers roamed the capital looting and terrorising the white population. This caused the flight of thousands of European refugees to Brazzaville and Stanleyville. The credibility of the new government was ruined as it proved unable to control its own armed forces.[17]

This led to a military intervention into Congo by Belgian forces in an ostensible effort to secure the safety of its citizens. Whilst the danger to Belgian citizens and other foreigners was real, the intervention of these forces was a violation of the national sovereignty of the new nation, as it had not requested Belgian assistance. In an attempt to conciliate the soldiers, the Congolese government decided to "Africanize" the army. All personnel were promoted by one rank and its name was changed to the Armée Nationale Congolaise.[18]
The flight of officers left the 25,000 man force still armed but totally uncontrolled. This left the new country without an effective instrument of central control and was an important causative factor in the rapid descent of the country into chaos.[19]
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