The diplomacy of decolonisation

America, Britain and the United Nations during the Congo crisis 1960-1964

Alanna O'Malley

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781526116284
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia africana

The book reinterprets the role of the UN during the Congo crisis from 1960 to 1964, presenting a multidimensional view of the organisation. Through an examination of the Anglo-American relationship, the book reveals how the UN helped position this event as a lightning rod in debates about how decolonisation interacted with the Cold War. By examining the ways in which the various dimensions of the UN came into play in Anglo-American considerations of how to handle the Congo crisis, the book reveals how the Congo debate reverberated in wider ideological struggles about how decolonisation evolved and what the role of the UN would be in managing this process. The UN became a central battle ground for ideas and visions of world order; as the newly-independent African and Asian states sought to redress the inequalities created by colonialism, the US and UK sought to maintain the status quo, while the Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld tried to reconcile these two contrasting views.

1

A challenge for humanity

When the Congo crisis erupted in the heart of Africa in June 1960, it was not the first time that the country had been thrust into the international spotlight. The former Belgian colony, and once personal treasure trove of King Leopold II from 1885 to 1908, had been the focus of international attention since the journalist Edmund Dene Morel delivered a damning report of atrocities committed by Leopold’s regime in 1900. A British journalist, Morel wrote a series of lurid accounts of the abuse of the Congolese people as part of Leopold’s brutal exploitation of the country’s natural resources, at the time primarily rubber and ivory. Campaigning for human rights he created the Congo Reform Association in 1904 following a British House of Commons Resolution condemning Leopold’s actions. The British diplomat Roger Casement was dispatched to verify Morel’s claims, which he did in a 1904 report that compounded Morel’s story with accounts of similar humanitarian abuses.¹ The Congo Reform Association soon received support from a variety of public intellectuals including writers such as Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain, who depicted the Congo as a dark and mysterious place at the centre of the African continent in which appalling and unimaginable crimes were committed.² However, in the imagination of international policymakers, the Congo represented more than a blank space on the map. Even at the beginning of the twentieth century, the economic potential of the country’s vast resources and the struggle to control them, alongside its strategic location, foreshadowed that the independence of the Congo, and the transfer of control of its vast mineral deposits to the Congolese people, would have a significant impact on international relations, particularly on the process of decolonisation.

Up to the moment of gaining sovereignty from Belgium on 30 June, the Congo, in each of its incarnations as the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908, and Belgian Congo between 1908 and 1960, was a place in which other states were interested. The country’s immense natural resources from rubber and ivory in the nineteenth century, to diamonds, cobalt, copper and gold (among many more) in the twentieth century, lured prospectors, explorers and conquerors from around the world, keen to gain a share in the booty. As a result, the history of the territory is marred by conflict and adversity, but it is also marked as a place where the exposition of the limits of human struggle produced a surge in ideas about freedoms and rights, even under colonial regimes.³ In the case of the Congo, this discourse was led by Morel’s Congo Reform Association with the aim of activating a sense of international consciousness and responsibility to end Leopold’s destructive regime. The Congo, therefore, became one of the first cases in which human rights and native rights were articulated in the context of colonial governance.⁴ The collapse of Leopold’s Congo Free State and the establishment of the Belgian Congo in 1908 did little to change the plight of the Congolese people, whose country continued to be used as a source for materials during both World Wars and later supplied the uranium for America’s first atomic bomb. By 1945, the Congo, still with a significant portion of its resources intact, was poised to be an important pawn in the Cold War. From Leopold’s efforts to define the international project and shape the international system with the Congress of Berlin in 1878, to Morel’s campaign for the prevention of atrocities against the Congolese people, to Casement’s condemnation of standards and practices of Belgian colonial governance, the Congo continued to be perceived as a testing grounds for ideas about how to manage relations with Africa and policies defining internationalisms towards the region.

Therefore, the independence crisis that erupted in the Congo in 1960 had its roots in the longer history of exploitation of the people and their resources by successive regimes, the destruction of the original tribal system and the damaging effects of Belgian colonial rule. The conflict which broke out in 1960 was exacerbated by both conniving European strategic involvement in protection of their interests in the region, and the clash of provincial and tribal hostilities as various groups vied for power. As one UN official described it:

What made the Congo problem so particularly intractable was … the political setting was explosive in the highest degree: to other African states their new found independence seemed at stake in the fate of the Congo; to the USSR this was a heaven-sent opportunity to intervene in the name of anti-colonialism; to other Western states a valuable economic-strategic interest was involved in the big copper mines of the Union Minière of the province of Katanga.⁵

The road to Congolese independence was relatively short. Political associations were illegal in Belgian Congo, with the exception of those created by tribal groups in rural areas, which were not recognised by the administration. For the small number of Congolese students who were educated in schools run by Christian and Jesuit organisations, political activities were carefully monitored by the authorities. A turning point came when Patrice Lumumba, a young, charismatic postal worker, created the Mouvement Nationale Congolais (MNC), a nationalist party which called for independence in 1958. The MNC drew its strength and popularity by bringing together a range of Congolese politicians, including Cyrille Adoula, a trade-union leader, and Joseph Illeo, a politician who had been vocally asserting Africans’ right to self-rule since 1956. Even though their politics on other questions differed, Congolese politicians agreed on the question of imminent independence. This was fundamental to the party’s appeal as it was able to transcend divisions and helped to create a sense of the Congo as a nation, despite the wide array of tribal groups, ethnic divisions and internal identities which could be found across the vast territory.

In December 1958, Lumumba and a small delegation travelled to Accra in Ghana for the All-African Peoples’ Conference, organised by Ghanaian Prime Minster Kwame Nkrumah. This was an important turning point in solidifying plans to push for Congolese independence, as the group was introduced to a range of leaders from the independent African states, including Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and the United Arab Republic. Moreover, among the 300 delegates were a range of other embattled independence leaders from Angola, Algeria, Cameroon and Zambia. The noted Kenyan Pan-Africanist and independence activist, Tom Mboya, was the elected Chairman of the conference. For the first time, Congolese leaders thereby had the opportunity to exchange views with a wide range of African independence leaders, from those who governed newly independent states, to others who were actively engaged in violent struggles against former colonial powers.⁶ As Nkrumah later described it, ‘It was at this memorable conference that the Congolese nationalists had their baptism as apostles of the impending struggle for African’s liberation’.⁷ Similarly, Thomas Kanza, later Lumumba’s Chief Representative at the UN, described Lumumba’s visit to Accra as critical in creating the impression among outsiders to the Congo situation (including the Americans) that he was pro-Communist because he was known to have met with leaders such as Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Sékou Toure of Guinea.⁸ Upon his return to Léopoldville, Lumumba organised a mass meeting on 31 December at which he proclaimed, with ‘fiery oratory’, that there should be immediate independence for the Congo. The effect on the assembled crowd of 3,000 was electrifying and supporters immediately adopted independence slogans. The following week, on 4 January, riots broke out in Léopoldville when Belgian authorities tried to subdue a crowd chanting ‘Independence immédiate!’ as they gathered for a public lecture on independence from the other main Congolese party, the Association des Bakongo pour l’Unification, l’Expansion et la Defence de la Kikongo (ABAKO).⁹

ABAKO, led by Joseph Kasavubu, was formed in the late 1950s in defence of the Kikongo language and culture, with the aim of restoring the ethnic kingdom of Kongo. The party was strongly opposed to Belgian colonial rule and, through tribal and religious organisations at the local level, was also able to command widespread support, especially in lower-Congo among the Bakongo ethnic group. Following the Belgian authorities’ brutal treatment of the Congolese demonstrators on 4 January 1959, in which forty-nine Congolese were killed, the push for independence surged through supporters of both parties, and others organised along tribal lines, including the Bangala of the Equatorial Province and the Balubas of Kasai and Katanga.

Denounced by the Belgian press as ‘the bloodiest ever in Léopoldville’, Brussels responded to the riots by immediately convening an emergency session of the Belgian Parliament, and organising a commission of enquiry. The colonial administration, meanwhile, arrested 300 Congolese, including Kasavubu, charging him with ‘exciting racial hatred’.¹⁰ On 13 January the Belgian Government announced plans for independence, including the extension of elections at the local level, the organisation of a national election the following year, the abandonment of all forms of discrimination and the establishment of a Congolese Parliament. Local government reform had already been initiated by the Belgian Government in 1945 with the establishment of a Burgomaster (mayoral) system in the largest towns, each divided into several communes. In the December 1957 elections, ABAKO candidates had secured the majority of the positions in Léopoldville, giving them effective control of the Burgomasters in the capital, which created unease amongst the Belgian population and had led to discussions of independence, well before the riots took place. With a remarkable lack of foresight, announcing the plans to extend the democratic system nationwide, the Minister for the Congo Maurice Van Hemelryck told the Belgian Parliament ‘We have skirted catastrophe’.¹¹

It should be noted that the automatic appeal of the idea of rapid independence among Congolese people was not solely a desire for self-determination but also a reaction to the deteriorating economic situation in the Congo. Since 1957, falling asset prices in commodity markets, created in part by the aftershock of the Suez crisis and balance of payments problems in the Belgian economy, had created significant unemployment in the Congo, especially in the industrial regions of the larger cities, leaving many disenfranchised workers to roam the streets.¹² These individuals quickly succumbed to Lumumba’s charismatic charm, and his promise of a free and prosperous Congo. Therefore, while the economic predicament was an important primer in advancing the idea of independence for the Congo among Belgian politicians and among the Congolese people, it loaded the vision of independence with impossible dreams of wealth and prosperity. This would add to the sense of disillusionment and chaos that prevailed after independence, as the reality of everyday...