The Assassination of Lumumba by Ludo De Witte (Verso 2001 224 p $27)
Black Livingstone by Pagan Kennedy (Viking 2002 237 p $24.95) 

reviewed by Jimmy Jazz

Ted Koppel’s sojourn to the Congo does not mark the first time that either the American media or the world has focused on the region. I’m recommending Black Livingstone and The Assassination of Lumumba for Congo immersion. I've got this very real and very dangerous disease where I enter the books I read, and these 2 books, Koppel's special and the indie film Lumumba took me to Africa for awhile. Just like Rigoberta Menchu’s book I, Rigoberta took me to Central America. Anyone educated in the US, like myself, risks holding a narrow view of the world. I’m not just talking about public school where we hear about famous people like say Thomas Jefferson, but don’t read books that deeply explore their ideas. I’m talking about radio that plays less than 40 songs in a world of millions of songs. I’m talking about a television world where 90% of the people are white and every problem is solved in less than an hour. Central America, it’s south of Mexico right? Maybe we know that old-timey maps of the world drew Europe larger than Africa. And maybe in college we were assigned Heart of Darkness (or maybe we skipped it and watched Apocalypse Now). Though Heart of Darkness resonates with us still as a powerful book, it does not provide a complete picture of the region. As far as the American mind is concerned Africa is still an unexplored country. What I know about the explorers Stanley and Livingstone probably came to me through a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Didn’t Mohammed Ali fight the “Rumble in the Jungle” in the Congo? Or was it Zaire then? Shit. From my own reading I knew that Che Guevara went to the Congo in 1965 to foment revolution, and failed, but I didn’t know why, or what he was stepping into. 

According to Ted Koppel’s Nightline special, two and a half million people have died in the last few years because of a continuing state of civil war. This death toll does not include the aftermath of the January 2002 volcanic eruption. After reading these two books I know why Che went to the Congo and I have a better understanding of the history of so much spilled blood.

 In 1960, just a year after the successful revolution in Cuba, Belgium decided to grant independence to its colony. The Belgian Congo had been controlled by King Leopold and his seed for 80 years. More than giving the towns unwieldy names like Leopoldville, Stanleyville and Elizabethville (it’s ironic in the book Assassination of Lumumba how they shorten Elizabethville to E’ville) Belgium took billions of francs out of the ground in the form of rubber, copper and other minerals. Antwerp still brokers diamonds from the Congo. They did this with a system of ruthless forced labor. After WWII most of the European countries lost the grip on their colonies. Belgium had the idea to give their colony independence in name only, installing a puppet regime. But on independence day the first elected prime minister of the Congo-- Patrice Lumumba-- made an unscheduled speech to the king of Belgium (who was present) and the former colonial master: 

We have known sarcasm and insults, endured blows morning, noon and night, because we are “niggers.” Who will forget that a Black was addressed in the familiar tu, not as a friend, but because the polite vous was reserved for Whites only? We have seen our lands despoiled under the terms of what was supposedly the law of the land but which only recognised the right for the strongest. We have seen that this law was quite different for a White than a Black: accommodating for the former, cruel and inhuman for the latter. We have seen terrible suffering of those banished to remote regions because of their political opinions or religious beliefs; exiled within their own country, their fate truly worse than death itself… And finally who can forget the volleys of gunfire in which so many of our brothers perished, the cells where authorities threw those who would not submit to a rule where justice meant oppression and exploitation.

That kind of noble pisstake was unheard of in Africa at that time. Lumumba was such a powerful speaker that the Western powers decided to eliminate him. They couldn’t allow him to unite the masses of Congolese people and kick the white-owned companies and landowners out of the country (like Castro did in Cuba.) 

The Assasssination of Lumumba gives a detailed account of how the Belgian government conspired with the United Nations, the United States and the elite class of White Belgians and Black Congolese to double-cross, brutalize, torture and kill Patrice Lumumba in order to keep control of the mineral wealth. The US was afraid that Lumumba might turn to the Soviet Union and grant them a foothold in Africa (according to De Witte this was paranoid nonsense.) The CIA actually went after an elected head of state with poison toothpaste! Ike and CIA chief Dulles (and later JFK) rationalized their murder conspiracy as the fight against communism. Remember in 1954, Guatemala, we combined the fear of communism with “national interest” to actually overthrow an elected head of state, but no one in the US was claiming that we had a national interest in the Congo. 

Neo-colonialism pit tribe against tribe and used iron-handed dictators like Joseph Mobutu to keep the mineral wealth trains rolling into Europe.

 Ludo De Witte tells a complicated tale, with dozens of characters, and conspirators. Since it is a short book the bombardment of Belgian and African names may throw off the casual reader. De Witte does answer all the questions that come to mind, and I found his story intriguing. He provides only a little  background of colonial rule, documents the rise of nationalism, gives the grim details of the Patrice Lumumba’s torture and the cover-up (a UN report fingered the guilty parties but nothing was done about it.) De Witte goes on to note how the West continues to screw over the Congo with the interest on loans from the IMF. He not only makes a case against the UN and Belgium for the murder, but shows Lumumba as a man of democratic ideals and squandered vision for his people. 

 Pagan Kennedy’s book by contrast is a fast read. It tells the true story of an African-American Presbyterian missionary--William Sheppard-- who went to the Congo in 1890. He was a “penniles minister [who became] one of the most eminent black men in the United States.” (108) 

The art of the great Kuba people of the region, which Sheppard brought to Europe and America, inspired Pablo Picasso and began to change racist perceptions about the intellect of African people. His adventures inspired Mark Twain to imagine in “King Leopold’s Soliloquy… the king as a cartoon character, stomping around his castle and fuming about the ‘meddlesome missionaries’ spoiling his plans to rape the Congo.” (163) Sheppard helped to focus the attention of the world on the Congo and the human rights atrocities being perpetrated by Leopold. On his return to America  the “Black Livingstone” as he was called, shared lecture stages with Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. 

 Pagan Kennedy’s book uses Sheppard’s autobiography, letters and documents. She looks at the role of his wife. She relies heavily on the diary of Sheppard’s white partner Lapsley, who died of fever in Africa and the efforts of William Morrison, another missionary.

Morrison made it his personal mission to expose the Belgian atrocities in a way that Sheppard did not (or as a black man in a racist world could not expose the crimes of white people.) Morrison linked responsibility for the inhuman treatment of the Congolese directly to the consumer. He believed that if he could get Sheppard’s story out to the world, “Americans and Europeans would understand that the rubber in their bike tires and telegraph wires had been harvested by slave labor.” (147)

 The book includes photographs and corroborating experiences from other travelers in the Congo including Joseph Conrad. Kennedy uses her skill as a fiction writer to imagine how Sheppard might have faced situations and obstacles where no record exists. William Sheppard’s story is truly amazing -- full of heroism, saintly personal sacrifice, superhuman political skills and a sex scandal worthy of Jesse Jackson. Kennedy provides extensive background on the terror Belgium brought to bare which resulted in 10 million Congolese deaths and the destruction of Congolese civilization. “Hand collecting had become a grisly tradition in the Congo. It started years before, for practical reasons: African soldiers preferred to use bullets for hunting food rather than killing other human beings. So some Belgian officers required soldiers to proffer a human hand for every bullet they used, to prove they hadn’t ‘wasted’ any ammunition.” (142) In the end Kennedy presents us with the bitter irony of a man who dined with Kings and Queens who returns to a life of struggle in the Jim Crow south. 

 The Assassination of Lumumba explores the brutal details of Belgium’s attempt hold onto the Congo after colonialism had lost its flavor and specifically indicts the UN's acquiescence regarding the destruction of the 1960 constitutional government. Black Livingstone fills in some of the history of the Congo, indicting the missionaries as trailblazing pawn’s of King Leopold and ruthless corporate exploitation, yet both books together are not enough. I’d like to read more of Patrice Lumumba’s writing and hear the state of the Congo by a Congolese writer. It seems impossible for a Western writer to overthrow the paternalism that has marked Western dealings with Africa. If there is a book like I, Rigoberta for the Congo I would like to hear about it.