America, the UN and Decolonisation

Cold War Conflict in the Congo

John Kent

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415510103
• eBook ISBN: 9781136972898
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

This book examines the role of the UN in conflict resolution in Africa in the 1960s and its relation to the Cold War.

Focussing on the Congo, this book shows how the preservation of the existing economic and social order in the Congo was a key element in the decolonisation process and the fighting of the Cold War. It links the international aspects of British, Belgian, Angolan and Central African Federation involvement with the roles of the US and UN in order to understand how supplies to and profits from the Congo were producing growing African problems. This large Central African country played a vital, if not fully understood role, in the Cold War and proved to be a fascinating example of complex African problems of decolonisation interacting with international forces, in ways that revealed a great deal about the problems inherent in colonialism and its end.

This book will be of much interest to students of US foreign policy, the UN, Cold War history and international history in general.

1
The independence disaster, 1958–September 1960

The Congo was a country one-third the size of the United States and almost as big as Western Europe. It was the third most populous African state with a population of just under fourteen million people. The latter were divided into well over 200 ethnic groups in six different provinces all at different stages of failing to secure sustained development. Politically the lack of progress towards independent nationhood was far more complex than is often acknowledged.

In Belgium the belated realisation that the Congo required some action if Belgian influence was to be retained effectively ended the assumption that Africans were happy with the alleged economic benefits provided by Belgian capitalism even if the harshest form of exploitation was no longer present. Yet political awakening was bound to follow the changes in the surrounding territories that provided new challenges for settlers and Africans alike, which the Belgian authorities could no longer ignore. This not only influenced the nature of the independence process but created the disastrous state of the colony’s finances. The financial requirements of settlers and the employees of foreign companies like the Union Minière de Haut Katanga continued to leave a mark on the colony even if the Belgian government wished to abandon the Congo. The actions of private Belgian citizens, and the reactions to them by a Belgian government whose domestic political circumstances were generally far from propitious and never free from colonial policy constraints, presented an even bigger problem to the economic viability of the newly independent state.

In January 1960 the history of Belgian policy was explained to the Americans by the animated Minister of the Congo and Ruanda-Urundi, Auguste de Schrivjer. The US, for essentially Cold War¹ reasons, had a desire to discover how things might develop in the Belgian territory. De Schrivjer explained how the Belgian reaction to events in French Africa had produced a decision in June 1958 on future policy which established a Congo Working Party. In the autumn of that year, Wigny, the Belgian foreign minister, may have been surprised to hear that Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State for six years, believed many new states were unprepared for independence. For such countries to have a United Nations vote in the same way as older and greater powers was debasing the concept of newly independent nations capable of exercising responsibilities.²

De Schrivjer had initially favoured internal autonomy created through Congolese institutions, and when the Congolese were better prepared, they could decide about their own independence. Unfortunately in January 1959 serious riots took place which convinced the then Minister of the Congo, Maurice Van Hemelrijek, that on 13 January the governor should proclaim independence as the objective of colonial policy. Keeping ahead of the independence game then left little or no time to find collaborators who would establish new state structures with the Belgians to enable the latter to retain influence. The result was that measures to delay independence, while the ground for it was being prepared, were inevitably overtaken by events whatever gloss was put on them.³ This need for speed had produced de Schrijver’s October 1959 statement that stipulated a maximum of four years for full independence. Even this delay was not well received, and the Belgians blamed this for causing the November 1959 disturbances in Léopoldville.⁴ Once independence had been conceded in principle, the maintenance of good relations between the Congo and Belgium by acceding to African demands while retaining certain ‘essential problems’ in Belgian hands was what mattered.⁵

One of the dangers of implementing independence in too rapid a manner was undoubtedly the prospect of the state fragmenting. It must be remembered that this concern arose before Katanga seceded and related to pre-independence difficulties in other areas of the Congo. One was ABAKO, a tribal political grouping, who were threatening to establish an independent enclave in BasCongo in the south of Léopoldville province. The ABAKO, and its leader Joseph Kasavubu, had objected to the idea of a central government in 1959 and called for a Republic of Central Congo, broadly along the lines of Léopoldville province, to be established in January 1960 once Belgium granted immediate independence.⁶ Kasavubu then walked out of the Round Table Conference on the Congo, held in Brussels between 20 January and 20 February 1960 on the stages by which independence was to be achieved, because his call for a Constituent Assembly was rejected. It may also have been connected to the growing rivalry with Lumumba (the key figure in the early days of independence), not least over the issue of a centralised as opposed to a federal Congo government.⁷ Kasavubu’s position as an important leader was therefore associated with the demand for immediate independence that represented his best chance of personal advancement through ABAKO influence in an independent state.

Léopoldville province was not however the main threat to the integrity of a future Congo state now that the Round Table Conference had agreed a date for independence of 30 June 1960. As early as March that year the State Department was made aware of the fact that Belgian settlers in Katanga were seeking a union with the Central African Federation under Roy Welensky.⁸ Rumours were also being heard by the US embassy in Brussels that Belgian corporations wanted to see a Katangan secession. They were being used by Welensky in his attempt to convince London that all was well in the Federation because others were wanting to join.⁹ An unnamed Cabinet minister had stated Welensky had been approached by individual business leaders, most notably in January by Herman Robiliart, President of Union Minière, and Edgar Van Straeten, Vice Governor of Société Générale.¹⁰ In April 1960 it was reported in Northern Rhodesia that colleagues of Tshombe, the right-wing, pro-Western Katangan leader, were stating their desire for independence because of Lumumba. Thus it was clear well before independence that there were those pressing for Katangan secession and opposed to independence under the left-wing Lumumba.

Katanga was one of the two wealthy Congo provinces with substantial revenue and industrialisation and which had the highest level of investment (predominantly private) and expenditure on infrastructure whilst under Belgian rule. Taxes paid on revenue earned in Katanga formed 47 per cent of the Congo’s income from taxation and 45 per cent of customs duties. The means by which Katangan minerals, essentially copper, were exported did not involve transport through Léopoldville or Matadi but a journey either to Beira or to Benguela, both in Portuguese territory. Katangan mineral production, of which 70 per cent was copper, was in the hands of the Union Minière du Haut Katanga and the associated companies created by it or by the Société Générale.¹¹ The UMHK’s involvement in local politics began with the initial creation of Katangan political parties in 1958, and with the role of settlers and its African employees in Élisabethville and Jadotville in particular. The Confédération des Associations Tribales du Katanga (CONAKAT) was assisted by the Belgian administration and officials of the UMHK. Under its leader, Moïse Tshombe, CONAKAT had from 1959 on, as independence seemed inevitable, advocated the creation of an independent Katangan state as laid down by settler groups. Its main opponent was the BALUBAKAT led by Jason Sendwe which was composed of three main groups. The Balubas native to Katanga (as opposed to Kasai); FEDEKA, an association of African groups from Kasai concentrated in the three main cities (Élisabethville, Jadotville and Kolwezi); and ACTAR formed by the Tchokwes who were a major ethnic group in Western Katanga.¹²

The other major political problem after Katanga as the Congo approached independence was the province of Kasai and the hostility between the Balubas and the Luluas. The Belgian provincial government had agreed to move Balubas out of Luluabourg, which was a Baluba island in an overwhelmingly Lulua electoral and administrative district. Unfortunately given their domination of administrative jobs, the Balubas could ill afford to be moved out, but in the wake of Lumumba’s April congress, Luluas started forcibly ejecting Balubas who soon retaliated.¹³ The situation was translated into politics by the formation and subsequent split of Lumumba’s Mouvement National Congolais (MNC), the only party which attempted to build national support within the traditional Western framework of a multi-party state. The split was largely connected to the Balubas, who formed the basis of the lesser MNC-Kalonji wing of the party as a reaction to the demagogic leadership of Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba, a Batetela, did not have a large ethnic base anywhere in the Congo and as the national elections, fixed for May, approached he lacked both a tribal affinity and the personal following of a traditional tribal chief. His oratory and organisational skills were well used after he had spent the four months preceding the Round Table Conference in a Belgian jail. Coming from the north-eastern part of Kasai, by the time of the elections he had nevertheless only developed support in three of the Congo’s provinces (Kasai, Orientale and Kivu) without making inroads into the two important provinces of Léopoldville and Katanga. His reliance on a political and personal, rather than a tribal, base of support in Stanleyville, the capital of Orientale, meant his idea of a national party was more of a theoretical aim than a practical development. In the Congo the coalitions of evolués and potential political leaders had preceded political parties, in the form of tribal cultural associations in a myriad of forms. It was an easy way out to use the traditional structures of ethnic groups as an electoral tool in May 1960, as epitomised by the MNC-Kalonji and the Balubas of Kasai. Local allegiances were inevitable in those areas where most of the population had little or no experience of the world beyond the locality in which they were born and brought up. The problem was how to weld this competing and disparate ethnic and cultural diversity into a single political unit constituting a modern state.

The political aspects of this problem were evident in the run-up to the 1960 election when there were around 100 political parties. This prompted Eisenhower to comment that he was unaware there were that many people in the Congo who could read.¹⁴ In addition to the important regionally based party of ABAKO, and the two branches of the MNC, the Parti National du Progrès (PNP) was a coalition of traditional chiefs, that was soon damaged in the eyes of African electors by its association with white colonial administrators. The growing strength of locally based organisations, produced the Parti Solidaire Africain (PSA), which came to dominate the Kwilu district in Eastern Léopoldville region. In Équateur province the Union Mongo was the party of the large Mongo ethnic group, present throughout that province, and was led by the moderate Julian Bomboko. Équateur province was also home to the Parti de l’Unité Nationale which was essentially the personal party of Joseph Bolikango, the former leader of the Bangala ethnic group in the city of Léopoldville. Kivu province was particularly complex as in addition to the support for the MNC-Lumumba there was also support for CEREA led by an evolué from Bakuvu, Jean-Christophe Weregemere. The party was close to Lumumba and contained younger members who the Americans felt had been ‘taken in’ by the Belgian communist party and sent to Czechoslovakia and East Germany.

With this disorganised mix of personalities, traditional leaders and those seeking to respond to the requirements of modern social and political structures, a weak coalition was likely to be the outcome of the May elections. The Americans feared that this would lead to instability which would in turn encourage the growth of communism, even though communism in the Congo, as in the rest of Black Africa, was weak or non-existent. Yet those hoping for opposition to Lumumba to emerge and develop into a coherent force to counter the Left before the elections in May 1960 were to be disappointed.¹⁵ Already American officials were inhaling troubled left-wing fumes and exhaling them as communist smoke to screen other problems which might develop from the socio-economic issues and political values that might be produced in a new African state unprepared by Western colonialists. The Cold War, however much an influential fear, could therefore provide the rationale for the protection of profits and the conservativestatus quo-values of Western European ways. These economic and social values, if not a definite ideology, could in fact be threatened by all things radical or leftist, which had little or nothing to do with communism, let alone the Soviet Union. The threats perceived in conservative circles and amongst policy makers and corporate elites stemmed more from a potential African rejection of the rules and customs enabling European social and economic interests to continue unaffected by the emergence of independent states. They stemmed less from a realistic assessment of communist political realities in the Congo.

Traditionally African rivalries made a significant contribution to the problems of the Congo on the eve of independence, but in economic terms the fundamental problem was not essentially of African making. Hence it has received relatively little attention compared to the problems presented by limited education and the lack of administrative experience facing those having to apply themselves to the tasks of governing. Part of the reason has been that the colony of the Congo actually covered the current account deficit with Belgium by using the foreign exchange earned from its trade with the rest of the world that was dominated by the UMHK. It is reasonable to assume that settler interests in the Congo would have benefited from the unrestricted foreign purchasing power they were thus able to enjoy in Belgium. It is also unlikely that the prospects of an independent Congo continuing to use surpluses as if there was one combined Belgo-African state, would have been considered by Africans to be part of the attractiveness of independence. When world raw material prices fell after 1957 there was a sharp decrease in the reserves of the central Congo bank, although the year 1959 saw an upturn and a Congo trade surplus of around nine billion francs. Yet this was accompanied by a current account deficit of 5.6 billion because of direct capital transfers and invisible outgoings. In terms of who was benefiting from spending foreign exchange, the picture could not have been clearer.

Economic problems were not simply the result of a post-1959 loss of business confidence, although the impending independence may have played a contributory role in this. Yet the exacerbation of the capital flight was facilitated by Belgian reluctance to strengthen the economic links between the soon to be independent Congo state and Belgian expatriate activities within it. By the spring of 1960 transfers of capital from the Congo back to Belgium reached six hundred million francs in a single week in March when only the major companies were likely to have been holding such large liquid reserves. At the same time of course the influx of capital from Belgium to the Congo was halted while the movement of capital back to Belgium was taking place. It eventually led the Belgium government to impose exchange controls to assure that the transfer to the Congo of funds to the value of its imports took place as needed. The transfer of funds from individual accounts was then also limited to 10,000 francs per household per month when the controls were introduced on 29 March 1960. It did not prevent every settler family suddenly finding 10,000 francs to transfer but the effect of the controls on the reserves was a 350 million franc increase during the month of April 1960.¹⁶

The exchange issue and financial transfers was not the only problem. Nor was the creation by the Belgian government of significant debt which it was happy to hand over to the new independent state. The settling of these outstanding financial and debt questions (the contentieux) were to be a thorn in the side of the newly independent state because they were linked to the specific arrangements pertaining to capital invested in the Congo since the days of King Léopold. And particularly the investment of Belgian and British capital in the UMHK was still a significant consideration. The issue in the political manifestations of independence concerned the roles of the Belgian government in the Congo Portfolio and the Comité Spécial du Katanga (CSK). The latter was operated by representatives of the Belgian government and the private Compagnie du Katanga (CK) while the Portfolio consisted of a number of parastatals (government-owned but autonomously administered institutions) including the loss making public corporations providing public services which were managed by Boards of Directors in Brussels. On 24 June 1960, just prior to independence, the Belgian government and the Compagnie du Katanga signed an agreement to dissolve the CSK and transfer its holdings one-third to the CK and two-thirds not to the future Congo government, but to the Portfolio. It was envisaged that the Portfolio, with its parastatals, would eventually have to be transferred to the new government but the increase in the profitable shares in the Portfolio could now become a bargaining tool for the private CK. The latter was seeking compensation for its proprietory rights that it would be surrendering to the newly independent state.¹⁷ Not surprisingly the newly independent government refused to ratify the agreement, whereupon the CSK refused to transfer its holdings to the Portfolio until the agreement was ratified. The Belgian government after independence recognised that the Congo Portfolio belonged to the Léopoldville government but insisted on retaining custody of it and o...

Table of contents

• Series: LSE international studies
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The independence disaster, 1958–September 1960
• 2 The elimination of Lumumba and the establishment of the Adoula government, September 1960–August 1961
• 3 The Adoula government and Kitona
• 4 Too little too late
• 5 Adoula struggles to retain power in a divided Congo, July–December 1962
• 6 The end of secession and the beginning of the end for the Congo, December 1962–January 1963
• 7 Unified nation-building with no unity to build on, January–October 1963
• 8 The emerging chaos and the forces of national disintegration bring Tshombe’s return, October 1963–July 1964
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index