Remembering Genocides in Central Africa

Rene Lemarchand

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367654160
• eBook ISBN: 9781000332988
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Scene of one of the biggest genocides of the last century Rwanda has become a household word, yet bitter disagreements persist as to its causes and consequences. Through a blend of personal memories and historical analysis, and informed by a lifelong experience of research in Central Africa, the author challenges conventional wisdom and suggests a new perspective for making sense of the appalling brutality that has accompanied the region's post-independence trajectories.

All four states adjacent to Rwanda are inhabited by Hutu and Tutsi and thus contained in germ the potential for ethnic conflict, but only in Burundi did this potential reach genocidal proportions when, in 1972, in response to a local insurrection, at least 200, 000 Hutu civilians were killed by a predominantly Tutsi army. By widening his analytic lens the author shows the critical importance of the Burundi bloodshed to an understanding of the roots of the Rwanda genocide, and in later years the significance of the mass murder of Hutu civilians by Kagame's Tutsi army, not just in Rwanda but in the Congo.

The regional dimension of ethnic conflict, traceable to Belgian-engineered Hutu revolution in Rwanda in 1959, three years before its independence, is the principal missing piece in the genocidal puzzle of the Great Lakes region of central Africa. But this is by no means the only one. Reassembling the missing pieces within and outside Rwanda is not the least of the merits of this highly readable reassessment of a widely misunderstood human tragedy.

1 A region awash in violence

Few other countries have experienced a pre-capitalist exploitation so harsh, predatory, socially disorganizing and unrestrained; a colonial system of bureaucratic authoritarianism so massive, so deeply penetrative, paternalistic, and insulated from external monitoring; a democratic experiment before independence of such fleeting brevity and politicized ethnicity; an indigenous leadership so denied of experience and unprepared for independence; an imperial evacuation so precipitate and ill-planned; an initial post-colonial period of such Hobbesian chaos, secessionism and external manipulation; and the subsequent post-colonial agony of a protracted and seemingly interminable personalistic and patrimonial autocracy by one of Africa’s most durable presidential monarchs.

– James Coleman and Ndolamb Ngokwey on Mobutu’s Congo

Mobutu Sese Seko: He was the Guide, the Messiah, the Helmsman, the Leopard, the Sun-President, the Cock who jumps on anything that moves, and – it was Ronald Reagan who said it – A voice of good sense and good will.

– Bill Berkeley, The Graves Are Not Yet Full, p. 109

The Congo leapt to independence, on June 30, 1960, ushering a brief moment of hope, soon followed by a nightmarish plunge into the unknown. As one who lived in Kinshasa at the time I am still astonished by the abrupt, dramatic disconnect between the buoyant expectations of the African populace as it stood on the cusp of a long-awaited epiphany and the ensuing sense of shock when the mutiny of the Force Publique (the Belgian-led Congolese army) suddenly erupted. Soon after the joyful atmosphere of the early days – nicely captured in the syncopations of the Afro-Cuban rhythms resonating through Kinshasa, most memorably in Joseph Kabasele’s runaway hit “Independence Cha-Cha” – came a far more somber sequence of events. It comes through with singularly evocative force in the urban paintings assembled by Bogumil Jewsiewicki in his lavishly illustrated Mami-Wata: La Peinture Urbaine au Congo.¹ Better than any other source, the book brings into focus the popular representations of the more tragic episodes of the Congo’s colonial history. Unsurprisingly, Lumumba’s assassination in January 1961 stands out as a central leitmotiv. Resurrected through multiple reincarnations – from a Christ-like figure (Lumumba christique) to an ethnic (Tetela), regional (Kasaian) and national hero – he is remembered as the symbol of hopes thwarted, promises betrayed, rebirth aborted.

The element of continuity between the grisly images of la colonie belge and the avatars that followed independence is unmistakable. Large-scale violence as a phenomenon inseparable from the Congo’s colonial experience is a theme that has received considerable attention from journalists, historians and anthropologists, but nowhere has it been more brilliantly explored than by Adam Hochschild in his widely acclaimed King Leopold’s Ghosts.² In it the author lays bare the hidden threads leading to the appropriation of the biggest and richest piece of real estate in the continent by one of Europe’ most villainous monarchs. Only in Belgium did the book receive mixed reviews, prompted by the suggestion that the human losses caused by the ravages of the Leopoldian Free State – aptly described in Conrad’s memorable phrase, as “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience” – could have reached as many as ten million. Despite corroborating evidence from noted historians many in Belgium reacted with skepticism if not outrage to such an earth-shaking conclusion. Its accusatory sub-text did not go unnoticed. Hochschild’s bombshell sent ripple effects far and wide. Efforts to refute the scale of his assessment did not prevent the Congolese historian Ndaywel e Nziem to up the ante to 13 million.

Today, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hand of a white policeman (appropriately named Chauvin), the mood in Belgium is shifting dramatically. At no other time in the country’s history has the Leopoldian myth been so reviled. No longer is the architect of the Congo Free State whitewashed for what he really was, a self-seeking despot responsible for the death of millions. The smearing of his graffiti-tagged equestrian statue in Brussels on June 10, 2020, bears testimony to the global impact of the Black Lives Matter movement. Of course, the Congolese did not wait 60 years to confront their colonial past; as a long-awaited symbolic gesture, Leopold’s statue in Kinshasa was finally brought down in 1966, six years after independence. And yet, unanimity on that score is still a long shot. There is indeed a strange paradox in the suggestion recently made by Princess Esmeralda, Leopold’s great granddaughter, that the sixtieth anniversary of the Congo’s independence be the occasion to present official excuses for the atrocities committed by her ancestor, and the message played out in Lumbubashi, capital of the rich Katanga province, where stands the statue erected to Leopold’s memory in 2018, one of several resurrected historic figures, along with Lumumba, standing side by side with his nemesis, Mobutu Sese Seko.³ The somber prankishness of historical memories is hard to miss.

Nor is there much of a consensus about the number of deaths traceable to the Leopoldian scramble for loot. As is the case for most of the estimates of human losses in the region precise figures are nowhere to be found. Even when dealing with orders of magnitude extreme caution is in order. Rather than engage in what Jan Vansina called the “numbers game” about the appalling atrocities exacted by the Leopoldian state, the more important point is to underscore the enduring, long-term effects of the devastating social dislocations forced upon the Congolese people in the name of the Leopoldian “civilizing mission.” In response to the consensus of opinion by Belgian historians that there is no discernible trace of recollection of the Free State abominations among Congolese – and hence no adverse legacy – Michela Wrong reminds us that “it is possible to be traumatized without knowing why; that indeed, amnesia – whether individual or collective – could sometimes be the only way of dealing with horror, that human behavior could be altered forever without the cause being openly acknowledged.”⁴

Despite occasional spurts of stability, the Mobutist interlude (1965–1997) opened a Pandora’s box of violent confrontations – armed mutinies, provincial secessions, large-scale rural rebellions, ethnic uprisings, political assassinations and arbitrary repressions. Much of this now sounds like ancient history, or as mere preliminaries before the immensely more costly civil wars touched off by the Rwandan intervention in 1996.

By then Mobutu had ceased to be Uncle Sam’s closest ally against the clear and present danger of communist expansion. The contrast is illustrative of the drastic refashioning of the geopolitical map following the end of the Cold War.

In the next few pages we try to sketch out the main features of the Mobutist state, and show how the clientelistic strategies that helped consolidate the dictator’s grip on society also led to his demise once the imperatives of the Cold War had evaporated, opening new opportunities for a major reshuffling of regional alliances. The appalling bloodshed that has accompanied the replacement of one dictatorship by another is impossible to ignore.

The Mobutist state: Bula Matari ascendant

The “crusher of rocks” (Bula Matari in Lingala) – a metaphor inherited from the Free State to designate the crushing impact of the colonial juggernaut – serves as a convenient label to sum up the oppressiveness of the Mobutu dictatorship. No one has used it more effectively than Crawford Young, a leading authority on Congo politics, in his compelling anatomy of The African Colonial State.⁵

The reconstruction of something resembling a state did not happen overnight, nor without considerable bloodshed. What I witnessed in the months that followed the independence festivities was the collapse of the post-colonial architecture, symbolized by the now risible motto Congo uni, Congo fort! The intrusion of a US covert influence, on a scale few had anticipated, did little to stem the rise ethnic conflicts so intense and widespread as to threaten to undo what little had been accomplished to lay the foundation of a stable polity.

In the days that followed Lumumba’s overthrow the country was effectively divided into three rival regimes. In Leopoldville (now Kinshasa), Mobutu’s army stood watch over the “legitimate” government as the day-to-day tasks of administration were entrusted to a College of Commissioners; in the Katanga the break-away government of Moise Tshombe, backed financially by Belgian interests and militarily by French and Belgian mercenaries, held its ground against the twin menace of Lumumbist sympathizers and UN forces. In Stanleyville (now Kisangani) pro-Lumumba supporters tried in vain to consolidate their hold over the city while awaiting the return of their nationalist hero. His tragic fate at the hands of his captors, acting with the blessings of US and Belgian advisors, would soon turn him into a near-Messiah.

Once lambasted on the floor of the US Senate as “a cheap embezzler, a schizoid agitator, half witch-doctor, half Marxist, an opportunist ready to sell out to the highest bidder,”⁶ his death opened the way for a far more consequential “sell out” of the Congo resources to Western bidders

Despite claims by some analysts that the Cold War created the context for a stability of sorts, its disastrous consequences cannot be overemphasized. Besides driving a deep wedge between rival factions backed by warring ideological patrons, it ensured that the support gained by aspiring politicians would hinge on their degree of sympathy for the West (or antipathy for the East), never mind their ability to promote economic development or democracy. Seen through such binary lens one can better understand...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Preface
• List of Maps
• Chapter 1: A region awash in violence
• Chapter 2: Rwanda 1959–1962: Where it all began
• Chapter 3: Burundi 1972: A genocide too far?
• Chapter 4: The view from Uganda: Refugee warriors at the gates
• Chapter 5: Mass murders in Rwanda: Unhealable wounds
• Chapter 6: Concluding thoughts: Lessons learned (and unlearned)
• References
• Index