WITH THE LID OFF
John Matshikiza
The Belgian government has set an extraordinary precedent in its recent admission of guilt in the slaying of Patrice Lumumba, first and last elected leader of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The killing of the charismatic Lumumba early in 1961 has always been shrouded in mystery. It was an open secret that the deed was carried out at the behest of the American CIA, and that the Belgian, French and other Western governments somehow had a hand in the affair. But the official version from Washington, Brussels, Paris and London has always been that Lumumba’s death was an unfortunate outcome of tribal rivalries in the unstable politics of the murderous Congo state. After his overthrow by Joseph Mobutu, the story went, he was flown from the capital of Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) to the southern province of Katanga and hacked to death by soldiers loyal to secessionist leader Moise Tshombe. There were even film clips to lend substance to this version: brief glimpses of a dishevelled and badly beaten Lumumba, hands tied behind his back, being escorted from the Belgian military aircraft into the hands of a jeering mob of black soldiers, who proceeded to beat him with fists and rifle butts for the benefit of the cameras before taking him off to some unspecified execution ground.
The mystery was what happened to Congo’s short-lived hero after the cameras stopped observing his torment. The place and manner of his execution were never specified, and his body was never found.
The carefully stage-managed disappearance of all trace of Lumumba from the face of the Earth was designed to stir the imagination into contemplation of the depths of the horror he would presumably have been subjected to by his savage compatriots. This, after all, was the Congo.
The Belgian government’s admission of its central role in the killing of Lumumba finally gives the lie to this cynically manipulated version of events. It is not big news: it merely confirms what has been documented for many years most recently in a spate of books about the martyrdom of Lumumba, in Thierry Michel’s meticulously researched documentary film Mobutu, King of Zaire, and in Raoul Peck’s epic feature film Lumumba, recently released in South Africa.
But there are two things that give the Belgian admission a resounding significance: the fact that a former colonising power should make such an ignominious confession at all, and the fact that that admission was accompanied by a humble apology.
What should one read into this? Why has Belgium broken the conspiracy of silence while its fellow perpetrators in Europe and America continue to play along with their own charade? And what kind of Pandora’s box of admissions, apologies and possible reparations could this gesture conceivably open up?
The Japanese emperor has bowed down before the people of Korea and apologised for atrocities committed by Japanese troops during World War II. The German government has apologised and attempted to make amends for the evils of the Holocaust. But generally, superpowers don’t find it necessary to apologise for anything.
“It was before our time, anyway, so let’s just forget about it and move on,” is about the best they will venture.
The funny thing is that history doesn’t move on. It tends to hang around and haunt the heirs of victim and perpetrator alike, until some kind of catharsis can be negotiated that will allow ghosts to be laid to rest. And unlikely as it may seem, the human breast is always capable of some form of redemption.
While welcoming Belgium’s formal apology, one has to wonder just how far it goes. The assassination of Lumumba shocked the world, and the continued denial of the role of the leaders of a number of Western nations in the act added insult to the injury.
But Lumumba’s death was merely one scene in a tragedy that had already been running for several blood-drenched acts, and a prelude to greater and more murderous dramas that were to come.
Is Belgium now to apologise for the brutal excesses of King Leopold’s Congo Free State, where about five to eight million Congolese were slaughtered on the rubber plantations within the space of a few years? Assuming that the Belgian government can excuse itself on that account because the Congo was not officially its responsibility, but rather one of the king’s more lucrative private estates, what will it say about its conduct of the colony after Leopold bequeathed it to the state on his death? What, indeed, will it say about its manipulation of ethnic rivalries in the neighbouring territories of Rwanda and Burundi, which led to some of the worst genocides of the late twentieth century? And what will it say about its deliberate destabilisation of the vast Congo after its grudgingly proffered independence acts of destabilisation that included, but did not stop at, the sordid murder of Lumumba?
The Belgian government’s apology for its part in that crime is a remarkable and refreshing gesture of contrition, and a possible preamble to a mood of genuine reconciliation between Europe and Africa. Indeed, Belgium had already shown the way in its acceptance of its historical role in the fostering of racial enmity at the inconclusive World Conference Against Racism in Durban last year a stance not echoed by most other present and former imperial powers.
With its acknowledgement of its role in the slaying of Lumumba and the creation of an African martyr, one of Europe’s smallest nations has taken what, in the scale of things, is a giant step forward. But what’s next? And what it will take for the bigger guys to begin to follow suit?
A hero betrayed, Friday, Page 1