Casting a critical light on Lumumba’s legacy: Patrice Lumumba: review

Casting a critical light on Lumumba’s legacy: Patrice Lumumba: Africa’s Lost Leader

This is an excellent book by Leo Zeilig who co-ordinated the Independent Media Centre in Zimbabwe during the presidential elections of 2002. It is full of useful information showing why Patrice Lumumba has become such an important figure on the African left. Crucially, it does not join in the myth-making or gloss over Lumumba’s faults.

Lumumba, the first and only democratically elected Prime Minister of the newly independent Congo, has assumed an almost mythical status due to his early death, almost certainly at the hands of, or with the connivance of the CIA. Lumumba was deposed as Prime Minister in 1960 and was executed by firing squad at the age of 36.

The murder of an African leader in the early years of decolonisation sent a warning to others who might have been inclined to uproot neo-colonial power in Africa. Unfortunately, his early death has also resulted in hagiography preventing a critical analysis of the man’s politics and its limitations.

Lumumba’s first public speech as Prime Minister accused the Belgians of having subjected the Congo to “humiliating slavery imposed upon us by force”. This was no exaggeration. From the late 1890s, along with ivory and minerals, millions of tonnes of rubber and millions of francs of profit were extracted from the country by forcing the population into slavery.

Workers who didn’t meet quotas had their hands amputated. Rebellion was mercilessly crushed: forced labour, famine and systematic violence killed over
10 million people in the 20-year period between 1891 and 1911. By the 1930s diamonds had joined this bloody trade and workers were also beginning to get organised.

In 1941, about the time Lumumba was becoming politically active, miners and factory workers went on strike, winning 30% wage increases. By 1944 an insurrection was organised which marked the beginning of the end for Belgian colonial rule.

In the 1950s Lumumba was a talented journalist but “far from a radical voice”. (p49) His earlier writings advocated co-operation between the small minority of educated Congolese – the evolues, of whom he was one – and the colonial rulers. He reasoned with the authorities to advocate a more benevolent form of rule. He was entirely uninterested in communism or Marxism.

Eventually, his appeals to the Belgian rulers rebuffed, Lumumba advocated independence. However, his Congo Nationalist Movement (MNC) offered no solutions to workers’ or small farmers’ grievances: Lumumba dismissed “class struggle” as a foreign idea.

With the economy still dominated by foreign-owned capitalist enterprises, a socialist solution to the Congo’s problems would have been to attempt to unite the workers’ movement to implement land reform. Granting the right of different nations and ethnic groups to autonomy – and even secession – would have drawn these forces to the side of the independence struggle. Whilst Zeilig’s book does not endorse ideas such as these it is sharply critical of Lumumba’s political limitations.

Lumumba’s ineptitude led on 11 July 1960 to the Belgium-sponsored independence of Katanga, a region comprising 12% of the population but with 60% of the mineral wealth, just 12 days into Congo’s independent existence. Lumumba fatally asked for UN intervention, giving the green light to US and other troops to enter the country. By August 1960, with Lumumba seeking Soviet support and military hardware, a CIA-backed coup by the military led by Mobutu took place on 5 September. Lumumba was put under house arrest and subsequently murdered.

Zeilig argues that Lumumba was a naive nationalist, genuine in his fight for meaningful independence and decolonisation, but with no coherent political strategy to challenge imperialism.

Yet he was disposed of because he was not a safe pair of hands to administer a post-colonial Congo, because he still opposed US and European hegemony, however incoherently and ineptly. He concludes that US imperialism could not tolerate an independent Congo becoming important as a source of uranium as well as diamonds and other mineral wealth.

Zeilig shows orders for Lumumba’s assassination came straight from the White House, though he somewhat controversially concludes that the Belgians beat them to it.

The Mobutu dictatorship that followed in the Congo from 1965 was one of the most corrupt and subservient governments in Africa. This legacy and the civil war that followed his overthrow in 1997 has led to more than 5 million Congolese dying in the last 10 years. It is the direct result of the west and their multinationals destabilising the state, ensuring that the country is prey to private militias that can plunder the country’s mineral wealth. Every time you make a mobile phone call, watch a DVD or use a computer it uses probably illegally mined coltan from the Congo.

A useful and clearly written book, this is a valuable resource for any socialist wanting to learn more about the Congo’s bloody past and present. Its extensive references list sources for those wanting to dig deeper.

Tue 02, December 2008 @ 17:41