Guerrilla History - The Congo - From Colonization Through Lumumba & Mobutu w/ Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja (AR&D Ep. 5)

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

With this episode of Guerrilla History, were continuing our series on African Revolutions and Decolonization with an outstanding case study on the Congo, looking at the process of colonization, how decolonization unfolded, Lumumba's short time as Prime Minister, and the transition to the Mobutu regime.  We really could not ask for a much better guest than Prof. Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, who not only is one of the foremost experts in not only this history, but also served as a diplomat for the DRC.  We're also fortunate that the professor will be rejoining us for the next installment of the series, a dispatch on what is going on in the Eastern Congo and the roots of the ongoing conflict there.  Be sure to share this series with comrades, we are still in the very early phases of the planned ~40 parts, so it is a great time for them to start listening in as well!   Also subscribe to our Substack (free!) to keep up to date with what we are doing.  With so many episodes coming in this series (and beyond), you won't want to miss anything, so get the updates straight to your inbox.  guerrillahistory.substack.com   Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja is Professor Emeritus of African and Afro-American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and previously served as the DRC's Permanent Representative to the United Nations.  Additionally, he is the author of numerous brilliant books, including Patrice Lumumba and The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You don't remember den, Ben, boo? No. The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to guerrilla history. History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims

to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki, joined as usual by my co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing well, Henry. It's good to be with you. Nice to see you, as always. We have an incredible guest and topic lined up for us today. But before I introduce the guest and the topic, I want to remind the listeners that they can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this

by going to patreon.com forward slash gorilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And you can keep up to date with everything that we're doing by following us on social media. We're on Twitter at Gorilla underscore pod. Again, Gorilla 2-Rs. We're on Instagram. Gorilla underscore History, and you can subscribe to our free Substack to get updates into your

email inbox by going to gorillahistory.substack.com. So this episode that we have today is a continuation of our African Revolutions and Decolonization Series, and is another case study episode within our series. I'm really excited for this episode, which is going to be focused on the Congo, and we have an absolutely incredible guest. We have Professor Georges Zongola Intelagia. Professor, it's nice to have you on the show. How are you doing today?

I'm doing very well, thank you. It's wonderful to have you. The professor is an author. He's a professor. He's a diplomat. He's a Professor Emeritus of African and Afro-American Studies at North Carolina Chapel Hill, author of several books, including one, which in my estimation is the definitive book that would cover the period and place that we're talking about today,

the Congo from Leopo to Cabilla, a people's history. It's a book that if you can find it, which isn't always the easiest thing to do. I highly recommend that you do. It was also the permanent representative of the DRC to the United Nations from 2022 to 2023. So with that housekeeping out of the way, we have a lot of history to cover. And unfortunately, it's history that is not nearly as well known as it should be. Even within left-wing circles, it seems to me that many people are at least somewhat familiar with the story of Leopold. And then there's maybe this knowledge that it transitioned from Leopold to the Belgian

state. And then, of course, they know about Lumumba. And then there's kind of gaps all around there. There's gaps in terms of what was happening under the Belgian state administration. There's gaps in terms of what has happened. happened after La Mumba was out, maybe they know a little bit about Mabutu, and then there's gaps in the present as well. So today I'm hoping that we can fill in many of those gaps. And I think that we should start back in that colonial period. So as I mentioned, a lot of people that are

listening to this will be familiar with the fact that the Congo was under King Leopold's personal rule basically for enriching himself and his family. And then, as I mentioned, some will probably be familiar with that it was eventually moved over an administration to the Belgian state. But can you talk about that period? How did that colonization happen in the way in which it did? What were the conditions of that late colonial period? And particularly in part of the discussion that is often missing. What was the political economy of that colonial period like? Well, King Leopold II, was the second monarch of Belgium. As you know, Belgium had been a colony of its neighbors for many years. The last colonial power was

Holland or the Netherlands. The Belgians were able to make a revolution. in 1830 to get their independence from Holland. And the first king was Leopold I was a German. As you know, at that time in Europe, it was a practice that when you have a state, you must have a monarch. And most of the best place to get monarchs was Germany. And they got there, for example, King Leopold I, the first, was actually the maternal alco of the great British monarch, Queen.

The Victoria, yeah. Yes. And then his son, Leopo II, when he became 20 years old, became a member of the Senate. And in the Senate, he was always making speeches about the necessity of having a colony, that Belgium must have a colony. Without a colony, we can't be anything. And, of course, as you know, at the time, Belgium was making a great revolution in the construction of railways. And Belgium had a last, for a small country, they had a lot of ambitions. But the government, the parliament, as you know, Belgium was a monarchy,

but in which the king did not have much power. The power was in the hands of the parliament. And the parliament had no desire for colonies. They said we are a small country. We just got our independence. We can get into fights of other countries for colonies. But we told the young prince that if he wants a colony, we can help you. We can help you get a colony of your own.

But you want to be a colony of Belgium, be a colony of your own. And so Ken Leopold got engaged with the geographers of Europe and found out that there was a big, big place in Central Africa where no one has ever taken anything except for the Portuguese. We're already in parts of the Congo kingdom

between Congo, Kinshasa and Angola. But other than that, there was nothing else. And so he got this Welsh American fellow, Stanley,

Henry Morton, Stanley, and he hired him to be his colonial agent. And Henry had already gone to Africa twice and had known the center of Africa, especially the area, which is now the Congo. And so he told the king that he can really get him this colony. So Stanley went to the Congo,

went to talk to African chiefs, African rulers, and made so-called treaties of them. But he's making treaties with rulers who didn't know how to write and read. And so Henry Stanley told them that we are making an agreement with the great king of the Belgians. He's going to bring you schools and highways and hospitals and so on.

Well, in reality, the real script said that I, king, so and so, I'm now giving my land to King Leopold the second. And, of course, King Leopold used all of this to convince the powers that be, you know, the United States, which was actually the first country to accept the King Leopold's claims to Central Africa. And of course, the European powers, and especially the three major European powers, Germany, Great Britain, and France. They didn't want any one of them to have this big territory, which is now the Congo. And so they were happy to have a little kingdom, like Belgium, being over the king, regent of the Congo, and therefore he could get. that country. And so at the Berlin conference, King Leop would send a letter

to Bismarck, who was the chairperson of the Berlin conference, to say that of the old countries sitting in Germany, in Berlin, all of them except

Turkey has now accepted King Leopold's claims to Central Africa. And so the whole number of people in this meeting stood up and applauded King Leopold. And that was that. So he was now the owner of this huge territory, which is bigger than much of Western Europe

and which has fabulous resources and so on. So that's how King Leopold. Paul became, and of course his claim was that he wants to do humanitarian work. He wants to fight Arab slavery and was able to do, was going to do there to do good works and to build a great country and so on. And of course, that's not what he did. Yeah, I just had a quick follow-up. I think it's very valuable to have a sense of the geographic features and scope of the Congo for people to understand and visualize. So maybe you could describe a little bit its position and something about the main

geographical features and how large a territory we're speaking of. And also something a little bit more perhaps about these groups of indigenous Congolese who made these agreements, you know, like, what was the political and maybe broader ethnic kind of character of Congo on the cusp of colonization? And I guess the reason why I ask is because, you know, sometimes we start the story with the Europeans. Of course, Congo, the revolution, and to decolonize, you need those colonizers. but it's important to know and understand what was the kind of broad characteristics and condition of the people that were subjected to colonialism to really understand, you know, what happens subsequently. So I'm wondering if you could give a little bit of that geographic and ethnographic, you might say, characteristics of the Congo.

Well, the Congo was made up of lots of people. As a matter of fact, we claim that the Congo has 450 ethnic groups, 450 ethnic groups. And we are now a country of 2,345,0,410 square kilometers. So it's a huge, huge country. Now it has 26 provinces. 145 territories, and therefore is a country with many of the people are people who are in the kingdoms. There were kings who had authority over a large territory, like the Lubba, the Cuba, the Lunda, and many are in the Congo, which the name of our country came from

the Congo Kingdom, which is part of southwestern Congo and part of northwestern Angola and part of southeast Congo Brazzaville. So it's a huge, huge kingdom, which was already in a relationship of Portugal from the 15th century when the Portuguese explorer arrived at the place where the Congo River goes into the ocean, the ambushier of the Congo River. And of course, he was there when he asked the people, what do you call this river? They said he was Zidi.

And he understood that to be Zayr. That's why Mobutu, in his fault, in his stupidity, began to say that Zaire is a, better name for the country than Congo, and he changed the country's name in 1971. But what the Bacongo meant was that this is a big river, and this relationship was very important because the Congo kingdom became the second Christian kingdom in Africa after Ethiopia, in Ethiopia, then the Congo kingdom. And as a matter of fact, one of the sons of a king went to Rome and was made a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church.

And so the church, especially the Pope sent Italian and Portuguese priests, and these are the people who were really in control of the church and so on. But when it comes to the other chiefs, these are people who were sovereigns in their own territories and were able to really protect their people against people like the Arabs who are coming to take slaves and so on. But there was no single authority for the country as a whole. And each one of the kings was a person who would make his own decisions. And of course, Henry Morton Stanley got them all of them to fool them in signing this so-called treaties and so on. And of course, as I pointed out, the most important thing for the fact

that King Leopold got the country was that the major powers did not want to have any one of them take the country because they said that was going to give him too much. And so they were pleased to have King Leopold take over the country because they believed that he was going to fail. As a matter of fact, France made an agreement of King Leopold, but should he fail, France will be the next country to take over the Congo. As a matter of fact, when our independence time came, we had to get the approval of France that they are going to allow us to become independent, you know. But of course, they never let us to really be free, because they continue to work of Mobutu

and then of Kabila, the son, Joseph Kabila, and so on. And we don't like the president we have now today because they think that they cannot control him. Yeah, I just had a quick that was fascinating. I mean, I think that's a very important point that the so-called Scramble for Africa and the Berlin Conference ended up being a success for Leopold because there were many competing European colonial interests,

that didn't want any of the other competing powers to gain this territory so they thought they could settle on somebody else, you know, in this. So that's interesting. But also it's interesting when you said earlier about how he even acquired the capability to pursue a colonial territory of his own and not of the Belgian state because the Belgian state itself was uninterested in trying to assume such responsibilities in the language that you framed it as because they didn't, they felt that they were a small country and that it would be put them in conflict and competition with rival powers that they couldn't hope to overcome. So that's

kind of an interesting. There was the fear that if we have a colonial territory will be in conflict with these other powers. But in fact, what ends up happening is that the rival powers actually settled on, you know, giving it to what they thought would be a small weak country that wouldn't pose a threat that if the territory was absorbed by one of their rivals would, you know, be a serious problem. So that was kind of an interesting contrast. But I did want to ask a little bit about what something you mentioned, which was, the raids by Arabs to take and capture slaves. I was wondering, were they coming mostly from what was or would be Sudan or from what is Tanzania today?

Which, you know, where were these coming from? I know that there was, of course, a lot of British colonial concern about it in the Sudan. Don as well, but where, what's the history of this taking place? And, you know, I'm wondering also the market for these, was this, was the market for the captured Africans at this point in history? Was it like the Ottoman Empire or where were they being taken to? Well, there were two sources of Arab slave seekers. One was in West Africa and the Atlantic shores of West Africa, which was a very important area of commerce between Africa and the Maghreb, the Arab North,

end to Europe. As a matter of fact, as one scholar has pointed out, West Africa was the main source of gold for Europe. As a matter of fact, all of the major of gold came from West Africa. You went up all the way to Morocco, with the Morocco being the last point on Africa before we go through the Mediterranean to bring things to Portugal and Spain and so on. During that time, the Trans-Saharian road was a major road of commerce, commerce in gold, in silver, and other. goods but also commerce in slaves and the slaves were taken to north Africa and to Europe and of course the Arab Mediterranean areas that's that road also went all the way to because as you know you look at the map one road would go all the way to Morocco

another one would veer up to the to the east to going to Sudan and Egypt and so on. That road sometimes went up all the way to the Great Lakes region of East Africa, where our country is now in the war with Rwanda. As a matter of fact, there were slaves taken from the Great Lakes region, from parts of our country, the Pongo, that went all the way to Iran. Iraq. As a matter of fact, in the 19th century, one of his slaves who had been taught how to become a military man, he made a coup. He took away the area of the second largest city in Iraq

today is in the south. Basra. Yes. He took over Basra for over 18 years. It was this African from the Congo who was the leader. And of course, until today, you still have black Africans in southern Iraq. And of course, that's the discrimination continues and so on. As a matter of fact, I remember hearing something last year, I think it was last year, a year before, when the head of the national television had decided to have a black girl, a young black woman to be giving the national news.

And everybody in that place was outraged. You know, this nigger took up giving news. But this young woman knew Arabic very, very well. She had learned that, you know, all kinds of Arabic and so on. And she was very, very competent to do the job. I don't know whoever she lasted longer or not, but this is the kind of citizen we have.

No, that's one A. The other one was Zanzibar, especially when the Arab sultans. Gosh, I used to talk to the ambassador from that country because we said that we have something in common, which is Zanzibar, because many of the people in Zanzibar came from the Congo. As a matter of fact, they are Tanzanian citizens today. As a matter of fact, one day at the University of North Carolina, we had invited the ambassador of the African Union to the United States to come and give a speech at our university. And when we took her to dinner that evening, she was sitting next to me.

She said, a professor, do you know that you and I are cousins? I said, how so? She said, well, my grandmother comes from Kindu in my Nema province. And so you have all these people in Tanzania who are Tanzanian citizens, but they are from Hong. As a matter of fact, during the Belgian colonial period, they had the Belgian passports and they could travel easily between Tanzania and the Congo. And because Malimun Herrera, the president of Tanzania said that, you know, they are all Tanzanian citizens and there's no problem with discrimination or anything.

They are citizens. And of course, they participated in a struggle for independence in Tanzania. And even the revolution of 1963 in Zanzibar, some of the people who led that thing were people of Congolese origin. So this was the second area where one sliver known as Tipo Tip was very, very influential. And he's the one who was able to control the territory all away from the Lake Tanganyi, all the way to Kisangani, following the Congo River, going all away from Akindu to Kisangadi. So all of these were the major sources, and of course, King Leopold was simply hypocritical

because he claimed that he wanted to go to fight. As a matter of fact, he collaborated with Tipo Tip, the Arab sliver. As a matter of fact, he even appointed him the governor of the Kisangan region, which Tipati simply left because he already had the control of that area. But, of course, when King Leppard was able to amass enough power, he went to war against the Arabs. It was mostly mixed people of both Arab and African origin. I want to talk about the political economy a little bit.

So you mentioned that the Congo is a fabulously rich region, but in particular, rubber was a particularly important thing at the time that we're talking about this colonial period. And if we're talking about not only the value that was extracted, but also the number of lives that were destroyed during this period, I think that this is an important point for us to talk about in terms of not only the political economy of that colonial period, but also the. the direct devastation on the people of that, of the Congo under the colonial period. I mean, there's many estimates that show that at least 10 to 15 million Congolese lost their lives during just Leopold's time. That's before it was transitioned to the Belgian Congo. So perhaps you can talk a little bit about the political economy at that time, the conditions for the people within the Congo. And then in 1908, there was. quite a bit of pressure in terms of trying to get a transition to happen to get the Congo

under Belgian parliamentary control, essentially. Can you talk about that transition as well? So I guess these couple of points, political economy conditions in the Congo and that transition. Right. When King Leopold took over the Congo, they didn't know much about minerals. Our greatest wealth is mineral. But at that time, they hadn't been, I think the first exploration of minerals took place at the beginning of the 20th century when a young expert went to the Katanga, and he said that the Congo was a scandal, in a sense that almost all the minerals, you can have. see on the chemical chart are found in the Congo just in that Lubumba, the Katanga area

where he did most of his exploration, he found all kinds of minerals right there. But when Leopold was in control of the country, the most important resources were rubber and

ivory and spices. And of course, at that time, When the Scottish doctor found a way to make a bicycle tire for his son's bicycle. And of course, there was also the discovery. I mean, the patent was gotten by Ms. Michelin in France for a tire for vehicles. all of this made it very, very important that the market for tires became extremely important. And so King Leopold took advantage of that to be able to get a lot of rob because the

Kong had a loss of rock bear, which was wild, which grew up in the forest and so on. And so he made it compulsory for the Congolese to collect this rubber and to present them to the king's administrators in the Congo. As a matter of fact, each village had a quota to satisfy each day. If we don't satisfy it, we have a problem. Women were raped and children would be given no food, no food. water for almost a whole day because the men have to go back into the woods and bring in the required quantity of rubber. And of course, many people died. There's lots of problems as to how many people. Some people talk about six, some people talk to 10 million. There's a whole discussion

about that. But of course, the problem is that it was a genocide. because it is not the question of numbers, the question of what was done to the people. For example, in Namibia, the people of the Herrero and Namba people who were killed by the Germans, they didn't go beyond a million. They were less than a million. But of course, it is known as the most important genocide,

the first genocide of the 20th century in the world. was the one that took place in known as South West African territory of Germany. And in the Congo, many of the people died, did not die from bullets. They died from the fact that many people ran into the forest to run away from their villages because of the problems they would face with the kings, the soldiers and so on. But people would go into the woods and there would be victims of snakes, of animals, of bad, you know, situations like places they're being very cold. And, of course, lack of food and so on. All of these contributed to people dying in large numbers.

And the Presbyterian missionaries in the Kassai area, for example, they documented a lot of these things. One was an African-American pastor who was one of the founders of the Presbyterian Church in the Congo, who wrote all of these things and even was taken to court by the Kassai company, This company that was in control of rubber in the Kassai area, and the company said that this pastor did do something that this was not correct and they didn't do what he did. Anyway, when the matter went to the courts in Kinshasa

because at that time, the Kinshasa was a place to have Malibis because it was a country, I mean, was an area at the place where the Congo River has two major countries, Congo Brazzaville on one side, and Congo, Leopoldville and the other. So Alvo, the capital was at Boma, towards close to the Atlantic, and Kinshasa was up north. And this, the judge who held the case, Belgian, understood that the Americans, they had sent the American hassle,

who was in Boma, who was then the capital of the Leopards Congo. And the deputy, who was in Kinshasa, then Leopoldville. They went to court every day. And because the Belgian king understood that the United States had the veto power and whether or not Belgium can inherit King Leopold's Congo. And so he understood that he better let these people go.

So what he decided was that he said, well, look, the pastor's, Ardipo did not mention the company of Kasai, the Kasai company. So why should we make them a problem? There's no problem. So he dismissed the case. And the pastor was freed. And of course, the United States did approve that the transfer of the Congo from King Leopold to the Belgian government.

So the rubber problem was a major problem, and certainly it did create lots of problem for the Congolese people, and many, many people suffered as a result of that. I think maybe it would be help. I mean, we could talk about some of the terrible atrocities and exploitation under the regime of King Leopold, and we probably should mention some of them. these have been, you know, become rather well known that at the same time, as you called him a sort of very hypocritical person at the same time, that he was presenting himself as saving, you know, the Congolese from these, you know, raids from Zanzibar, you know, enslavement raids, and that he planned to, you know, build a lot of infrastructure and provide them with, you know, modern institutions and so on. he was ruthlessly uh exploiting uh the people of this of this region so i'm wondering if maybe you could talk a little bit certainly talk a little bit about that in terms of the scale the the the magnitude and the character of his very tyrannical and exploitative rule but also um how uh resistance to his rule started to begin to express itself and manifest over the course of the colonial period so that we can understand how the Congolese freed

themselves from his colonial rule. Yeah. King Leopold is one Belgian scholar wrote that King Leopold owned the Congo just as John Rockefeller owned standard oil. And the question was, is it profitable? And so what he did was to make it profitable. He had an international administrators. There was not only Belgians, but also Italians, Scandinavians, and other Europeans were the administrators of Leopold's kingdom in the Congo. And the soldiers and clerks and so on were taken more. mostly from West Africa.

There were Nigerians and Ghanaians and others that came to work for King Leopold. And he also hired soldiers from Zanzibar. The soldiers who were working for the slavers came into his army and so on. So all of these were organizations that were really terrible. they mistreated people, they killed people easily, and so on. So this was, and of course, the European administrators were paid bonuses if they produced more and more resources to be sent to Europe. And this is the system of the economy that existed at the time.

And so now the Congolese, in terms of working against the system, yes, it happened all over the country. There were people in the north area, Kisandani, and of course the Kivu, the people in the Kassai, the people in the West. There were people who were revolting against the horrors and against the system of exploitation, but existed. And of course, the horrible way with the military, for example, they would move. And some of these remained even after Belgian rule, that, for example, they would send soldiers. to villages simply to say what they call a promenade

that promenade wasn't a little nice straw around villages were to give them an idea that you are under control they could go and take people's

animals like goats and the place where people have a big systems of having animals and so on. They would take their animals, and all these soldiers were from Africa or even Congolese, but who love meat, and they would go and take these people's meat and kill them and eat them and so on. And so all of these really revolted people, and they did their best to play.

protest and to pick up the arms, whatever arms of the head to fight against the system. And of course, the soldiers also went on revolts. We had revolts in the Khananga area, in Kassai, in

Lower Congo, close to the Atlantic. In Katanga, in Kisangani, we've had really lots of places where people would rise up against the system of exploitation and terror that the system presented to the people. Yeah, I think it would be great to talk a little bit more about some of the consequences of that and the transition to Belgian rule further.

But just to underline the point that the scale. and the level of atrocities was so high that in that famous Roger Casement report, he reported in his findings that the population of the Congo had been reduced by about half, you know, in the course of about 15, 20 years of Leopold's governance and exploitation. So that's just a devastating. effect of colonial exploitation. Yeah, the numbers are difficult to us, then, whether what Kessman and others,

many of these people, Kaysman, got his information mostly from Protestant missionaries, in Lower Congo, in the Kassai, in Ecuador, and some Scandinavians in northeast Kisangani area and so on. But the reality is that, yes, the system did collaborate to reducing numbers of people in the country. and the King Leopold, as a matter of fact, when King Leopold established his own group of experts to go into the Congo to see whether the Kessman's report was correct, he was really outraged to see that these people, he's

and American, I mean, French, Belgian, and Italian, they came back of a report saying that yes, whatever Casman said is correct, is true. And the king didn't know what to do. And that really gave the great powers of the day to decide that the combo should be taken away from King Leopold and given to the Belgian government. Well, I'll come in here then and then ask about what changes were seen when the transition happened to the Belgian parliamentary administration of the Congo. And then talk a bit about continued resistance and also even there's some more amorphous forms of resistance.

So in particular, I would also like to hear as you get through this process talking a little bit about the Leopoldville riots of January. January, 1959, and how that fits in within this story of resistance, continued resistance, in the lead-up to independence. Yeah, there's a British historian who wrote a book about the transfer from King Leopold to Belgian rule. To send out that, yes, the Bergen's may have diminished. the level of terror or the level of the bad things were dead to the Congolese.

But nothing really had changed. That the system was very much what King Leopold had left to be. And that the system, especially when it comes to the economy, was the same. As a matter of fact, the first Belgian minister of course, colonies, wrote an article saying that the major desire of Belgium is to develop the economic system of the Congo for Belgian needs. So in other words, we were there to make the Congo, the country that would bring wealth

to the Belgians. and of course they did nothing to improve the lives of ordinary people as a matter of fact he had a system of for example

we take Patricia Lumumba and people who were clerks of the colonial administration they would be doing for example Lumumba was put in charge of

the postal office's role of paying, we didn't have banks, you know, the banks came out very, very late. So before banks were abandoned, the postal service was the medium through which people can send money to their stores where they buy things, the pharmacies, the other things that they buy, you pay money to the postal service and postal service transferred to the owners. And that was a job that was reserved for Europeans. But they put Lumumba a Congolese in charge of that office, because he was very, very smart. He knew

the system very well. But he was paid one-tenth of what the Belgian would would earn. And the Belgian would be given a house, would be given a vehicle, would give a vacation every two or every three years for six months in Belgium. All expenses paid for. The Congolese would have no house. They have to buy their own houses. They didn't have no vehicles. They had to buy bicycles. And, and, and so on.

So it was this flagrant discrimination. And the people like Lumumba could not stand it. You know, they were really sick and tired of the manner in which they were treated. And so this is what the things that made it necessary for people to start thinking about changing the situation. And which led to the 1959 revolve. in Pinshasa. And of course, that revolt came out as a result of the first Pan-African conference that took place in Accra, Ghana, in December 1958. As a matter of fact, I was invited by the University of Ghana, the trading unions of Ghana, the socialist party of Ghana,

They invited me to be the keynote speaker at the 60th anniversary of that thing. So in December of 2018, I gave the opening keynote address because they said if they wanted to honor Patis Lumumba, because this was his first speech to Africa in Accra. And then after that speech, he went back to Kinshasa. And on the Sunday, before Christmas, he gave a speech in Kinshasa to tell people what happened in Akra and why we have to start fighting for our independence. The next Sunday, which was the 4th of January, Joseph Kasabubu, who was the first leader of the independence struggle in the Congo. He saw Nkrumah taken over his place.

I saw Lumumba taking over his place. So he said, no, no, no, I have to make my own speech. So he sent a letter to the Belgian mayor of Kinshasa, Leah Porville then, asking for permission to hold another rally on the next Sunday, January the 4th. The mayor responded in a very diplomatic language that, yes, we would agree to that thing if it meets all of the requirements of holding a nice the rally without any problems, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Kasarvubu, having been a person working in the Belgian colonial system for years, he understood that that was no.

It was not correct. So he went to the place where the rally was to take place to tell people that were, you better go home because they did not give us permission to organize the meeting. the people said no. And so it was a Sunday afternoon. There were people who were going to the soccer game, were coming out of it, and then they understood what happened. They said, okay, we are going to join this revolt.

And then this was a time when Belgians would be coming back from the countryside where they go for the weekend to very nice places to live. give well, and eat well, and so on. So people started sending, you know, sending all kind of things to their vehicles. You know, they send bricks and all kind of stuff they could find. And, of course, three, four days, Kinshast was nothing but a revolt. And lots of people were killed and so on.

So this was really, this is. why we have it today as the Independence Martyrs days, one of the major holidays in a Congo, the 4th of January of each year. And of course, Lumumba became the main leader of Independence struggle because he was the only one to work for a political party but is totally national, but is not tribal or ethnic, but one that is open to all Congolese and what has members in every one of the six provinces of the Congo and so on. So just talking about that process then,

you talk after this revolt that takes place in at the time Leopoldville now, Kinshasa, there's then a roundtable conference that takes place in Brussels that very month where it's decided that the Congo is going to become independent in June of that year, in 1960.

Yeah. No, the roundtable took place a year later. Yes, exactly. So the roundtable took place a year after the revolt and the independence would take place the same year as the conference had been held in January of 1960. Sorry for that small confusion.

But it was then going to be scheduled that there would be elections taking place. Yes. That would be leading up to the independence itself. And that is where Lumumba and his party, the MNC, you know, come to power at that point as we enter this independent phase. Can you talk about how that transition from the colonial entity ruling over the Congo to them granting so-called independence? And, you know, we're going to talk about how nominal independence doesn't necessarily mean that you are sovereign and independent from external influence, but that'll come up later in the conversation. But how does that transition happen with regard to going from being under colonial administration to this nominal independence?

Well, basically, what the Belgians did was to place, you know, a trick. The trick was that they decided, you know, here's a country where in 1956, a Belgian professor at the Colonial University in Belgium, this is where they teach the people who are going to be sent to the Congo as administrators have to go to get courses and how to administer. territory. The professor wrote a book, a pamphlet, basically, in Dutch, then was translated to English early in 1956, which says that a 30-year plan for the emancipation of Belgian Africa, Belgian Africa, meaning Belgian Congo, Rwanda, and Urundi, now called Burundi. And many people in Belgium insulted him as a communist, as a, you know, person have no, no ideas. He said, these Africans can be, you know, be given independence in 30 years. He said, you know, they're probably in about 100 years.

Kasavubu, the guy I mentioned. Kasabubu was the first Congolese to say no, hell no. We want our independence now. This is 1956 in July or August or 1956 where

Kasabubo said, no, we did our independence now. And so he became well known as a leader. Alvo, he was too much interested in his own group, the Bakungo and he wanted to of federalism and so on, because he didn't think that other people in the Congo were ready,

but he thought that the Bakongo, his own ethnic group, were the ones who were ready, and so on. So that's why he lost out to Lumumba, because Lumumba was open to everybody. After the revolution of January 4th, 1959, there was a meeting of political parties held in Kananga, then Lula Bur, where all the political parties who were there agreed with Lumumba that we want independence to arrive in two years, in 2000. I mean, 20161. This is what the Congolese wanted independence. But the Belgians didn't like that, because when they saw the situation was getting out of the hand,

they said the best thing to do is to make this thing go quickly so that the Congolese would not be ready for independence, you see? Because we had this round table conference took place from January 20 to February 20, 1960. And then at that conference, the Belgians decide that independence is going to be given on June 30th.

Everybody, you know, the Congolese were happy and they danced that night and so on. But they didn't understand that they were being tricked by the Belgians. You see, because how can you have independence in, what, five months, less than even five months, when we have no idea what it is to govern the country, to take care of a huge country like the Congo and so on. And so it was a major mistake by the Congolese leaders to go forward and play to the trick of the Belgians to have independence.

And of course, the Bergen's idea was that, it's like if you followed, what happened in Katanga? When independence came on June 30th, Katanga declared independence on July 11 of 1960. So 11 days after independence. But in Katanga, the Congolese never ran Katanga. Katanga was run by the Belgians. You had a Belgian, a guy who was the nephew of the chief of staff of King Leopold

was the person who was sent to the first to govern Katanga with a group of people. And of course, there was soldiers and police officers sent. by Belgium to take care of the security of Katanga, and Chombe and Munong and all the others, all they did to do was to sign. You know, you know, they had no control of Katanga whatsoever. And then, of course, the United Nations got in because Dag Hammershild was part of these people who believed that we should not change the system that all, the countries that were

European colonies have to remain parts of the European world, of the Western European world. And they should not be led to go into other spheres. And so that is best

to make it possible for Lumumba to be removed from power and of course to make it make it easier for him to be assassinated. So do you The United Nations owns us a lot. Until today, they haven't given us the excuses about why they did what they did.

When Doug Hammershold has the United Nations Security Council next resolutions about what should be done, for example, to remove Belgian troops and European mercenaries from Katanga, and he doesn't do it, you know. and he would send soldiers all over the Congo, but he wouldn't want to send them into Katanga and so on. So this makes it possible for them to do whatever is possible to work in Lomba and to lead him to his death. Maybe you can talk a little bit about, I mean, that's a very important component of the story. And I think, you know, so many people,

I mean, even today you go to New York in the vicinity of the UN, and there's Dag Hammersholtz, and all of this, he's held up as a hero. But the true history here that we should remember is the way in which these international institutions themselves were used to try and perpetuate forms of quasi-colonial rule

and to retard the development of, you know, the free nations, you know, from colonialism. And so perhaps we could actually talk a little bit since you alluded to it about what happened in the early period of Lumumba's administration. He won the elections and was the prime minister, won the parliamentary elections. So how was his government fully undermined and what would you say were the factors that really led to his assassination? And I guess I'm thinking partly also here about what you said contributed to the success of his popularity in the

decolonizing phase, which was that he presented a national, sovereign kind of movement for an independent Congo that didn't fit necessarily geopolitically into the plans of the former colonial. Okay, I see we're getting, you know, the story there. Yes, a famous book, important book. Perhaps you can tell us what, you know, that part of the story and talk about what the scholarship you're aware of has to say about the real deep history here behind. If you saw the back page where I give my endorsement to the book, I say this is a magnum opus. This is the best book ever written about. You see, white malice, the CIA, and the covert repolonization of Africa. This is what happened to Lumumba.

Of course, this book is about only, it's about two countries only. It's about Kwame Krumah and Patrice Lumumba. Both of them, well, Corona was overthrown in a coup data in February, 1960. and Lumombe, of course, was assassinated on January 17, 1961. What happened was this? The United States and Belgium, and of course, with the support of France and Great Britain, they were determined that African countries that get independence, should continue to be guided by their former colonial powers.

And that this, what Susan Williams refers to recolonization, this is the idea, but still have it until today. You can hear people in France saying that we should not allow the Africans to have control of their countries. We have to continue controlling them. I'm sure you've been following recently how country after country are asking the French to remove their troops. But here's 65 years after independence, you still have a French military bases in a number of African countries. And they are there.

The governments love them because they can protect them from coup d'etat. They can protect them, and so they can stay on forever, like this guy in the Cote d'Ivoire right now, who is now on his third term, and he really wants to have a fourth term now for election coming up by the end of the year. So in the case of O'Qaraman Krumah and Patis Lumumba, here are the leaders who say that their objective is to have really sovereign countries that will utilize the wealth of our countries to develop the country and to improve the living conditions of our people. The West is not like that. See, he takes our country, the Congo.

We have the best strategic minerals the world can find. We have the best, and yet our country is among the poorest in the world. Now, I have to explain that, that we have all of these governments that have been there in Congo for 65 years. We are unable to face up to a little Rwanda, which is like the size of one little territory in the Congo. we have 145 territories. And this little one Rwanda is able to humiliate us as they've been humiliating us for the last 30 years. And the question is, how to explain that?

It's because we have political leaders who don't really think about the future, who don't really think about doing what the Lumumba wanted to do. All of the interested in is getting rich. We have people who have billions and people who have all kind of wealth. And as a matter of fact, from time to time, they keep losing all this way. Because someday, someone in the United States said, okay, we're going to keep this money because it's stolen money. They never return to the Congolese people.

They keep it. Switzerland did the same thing, the French should do the same thing, and so and so forth. So we keep losing our money to these so-called developed countries. And so this is the problem. And the Congress showed when independence came,

what did it do? He sent his number two, Roth Donch, The African-American, you know, guy who won the Nobel Prize for his work in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. And his superior, the Swedish guy, was killed. And so he was the one in charge of continuing the process of peace. And so he won the... Now, this guy went to Kinshasa before. independence and was instructed to stay after independence.

And Dag Hammershaw already had a plan about sending troops, UN troops to the Congo. Before the problem arrived, he had already planned all of this. Because in collaboration of the America, as a matter of fact, he is almost all of his advisors were American and British. He had one Russian guy as Undersecretary General for Political Affairs. Doug Hammers showed excluded him from Congo discussions. And the guy who was his, the assistant to the Russian guy, was an American. And he's the one who kept all of the papers, all of the documents on the Congo.

But he was told never to show his boss, the Russian, never to see any of his documents. That's the Gama showed. So in his thinking, the Americans and the British were white-handed people. These are the people who will do the job because they are international civil servants. They don't work for their countries. But the Russian is going to work for Russia. But in reality, it is the Americans and British who are working for their countries. They're the one who are biased, who are already against.

I did my research before I wrote my book. In the UN archives in New York, you should see the language that that hammer shield and rough bunch use when we defer to Tunkrumah and Lumumba. It makes you sick to see that. That is how they kept them. They think of them. You know, they are impossible. They are responsible what happened

because that Hamishold took into his hands the whole authority of the United Nations. Rather than following what the Security Council asked him to do, he would do that. Of course, the Security Council knew very well that he won't follow. what they did anyway. But they did it to make the people in the world accepted, but in reality they know that Dagamishu will do the right thing. The right thing is to do whatever harm he has

to do to Lumumba. Just quickly, do you have any examples? I mean, you tantalized us with saying the kind of way they were describing these UN officials, a bunch and how... What were they saying? as a person who's not the right who's sick something you know I think

yeah that didn't that come out I think that came out that they were kind of portraying and characterizing the mumba as maybe you know unstable mentally as not one yes that's right and they were trying to spread those rumors too actually I think the CIA

tried to spread those rumors to undermine support saying, oh, he's... If you see, for example, the United States was against Mkrumer because Mkrumer wanted to develop nuclear energy, not to make nuclear arms, but nuclear energy in terms of making sure that the country has electricity and that, you know, he did this great Dan in Ghana to be able to provide water and for an electricity,

for not only for Ghana, but also for neighboring countries like Benin and Burkina Faso and so on. And, but they say that, you know, they send the CIA to work on visiting and to make sure that Krumah fails in his attempt. At the same time, they go and work with the South African apartheid regime to use nuclear weapons, to have nuclear weapons, and so on. So in other words, for white people to do it is okay, but for blacks, you can't allow

them to do it. So sheer racism and sheer lack of respect for black people and Africans. And this is what has been going on. So after we get to the point where Lumumba is killed, and that's a story that I'm sure many of our listeners are quite familiar with. But we come out of that period into a time of uncertainty and instability. And eventually we get to the period of Mobutu. And Mobutu is on the cover of your book,

the book which I referenced at the top of this episode. And which I wish I had a physical copy of. to, you know, utilize libraries throughout the years to read it. But it is, it's very difficult to get physical copies of professor. We're going to have to try to fix that somehow. But in any case, you have Mobutu on the cover of the book. And that is a period of time in which some will be familiar with the rampant excesses of the regime. But, you know, that there's not really a broader understanding

of that period of time. And it's interesting, like, even today you'll find people from the Congo who think fondly of that period of time. I told you before we hit Recora that I work with someone who is from the DRC and is a hardcore Mobutu fan for his own reasons. And again, we'll talk about that some other time, not now. But I'm wondering if you can take us through that period of Lumumba's assassination. up through the Mobutu period because that is a period which is extremely interesting

and is not nearly as well understood as I think it should be. Yeah. Well, Mobutu, as you know, was a person that Lumumba met in Belgium. Mobutu had been a soldier. He spent seven years in the military. At that time, in Belgium, Congo, a person who had done two years of secondary schooling could do military service for two years only.

But if he haven't done two years of secondary school, you're going to the military for seven years. Mobuto was in second year of secondary school, but he was an unruly fellow and the Catholic priest who were teaching him did not like him and so they kicked him out of school and asked the military to take him.

So he went in and that seven years he learned how to use a typewriter so he became to read and to write I started writing articles, and he became a sergeant in charge of paying soldiers of their money. And when he finished seven years, he went to Kinshasa, and a Belgian guy hired him in his newspaper. So he learned how to become a journalist. and then he was hired by the Belgian intelligence.

He went to Belgium supposedly to learn social work, but I know a woman who was there at the School of Social Work, he said Mobutu would come to the class once or twice a week. It was never there every every day because his real work was not, social work, he was there being learned to be an informer for the Belgian intelligence. And then Larry U.S. CIA man, Devlin, yeah, Larry Devlin, was sent to Brussels, after finishing his training at the CIA, was sent to Brussels with his unique task was to find out who are the next leaders of the Congo.

And the Belgians introduced him to Mobutu. They became friends. They became friends until the very end. So Mobutu became also an informer for the CIA. Now, when people told them all of these things, he just dismissed them. This is a problem. One of the great problems were of great leaders. that they tend to think that they have nothing to fear.

And you saw it with America Cabral. He was told in Guinea, in Guinea-Konacri, where he was the headquarter of his party was, were fighting the Portuguese in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. And they told him that, One of the guys that he had put into what is known as the Correction in a Correction Institute because he had done something that was, I think, a collaboration of the Portuguese. And he went into the correction.

When he came out of correction, Cabral appointed him as the chief of his security. People said, Mr. Cabrali was crazy. This guy worked with the Portuguese intelligence against you. And now he said, ah, but we send him into correction. So we must believe in our system of corruption. Well, this is a guy who killed him. One evening, he and his wife are going back home to their apartment from, I think, they went to see a film or a play.

This guy pulled out his revolver and killed him. And Lumombo is the same way. They tell him that Mobutu is a bad guy. He's working with the Belgian intelligence in the USAA. So Lumumba goes to Mobus Hay-Josef. they're telling me you're working on these people, it's true? He said, Patrice, I can't do such a thing, you know. And of course, this is a guy who betrayed him.

This is the Judas Escariot who betrayed him. And the guy who later on, he goes to declare him, the national hero. And so what? And we're supposed to upload all of that when he's a real killer, you know? So Mobutu was basically a person who was there to do whatever, the United States, the Belgians, the French, ask him to do.

And of course, they dumped him. You know, after the end of the Cold War, we didn't have any need for him. And so what we're discussing on Thursday, the eastern Congo, the Rwanda and Uganda, were given the green light by the United States to get rid of him, and we're there. Perhaps we can get a little bit more about what it was like in the Mobutu period. I know that that would be something interesting to discuss. Of course, everyone is also knows, you know,

know, that he renamed the country. He had a very flamboyant kind of like public sort of presence. He was, of course, hosting the rumble in the jungle, you know, which got a lot of attention. But in the West, but meanwhile, he was a very dictatorial figure, it seems, you know, inside Congo. So perhaps you could tell us a little bit about, like, you know, as you're pointing out, he was an agent, really, for the recall in his and continued subordination of Congo by the Western Towers, now led more by the United States, taking over for the Belgians and the French, but really for the United States. But what other kind of important features would you want to talk about or characterize about Congo and continued attempts at political, you know, liberation under Mobuto?

Well, Mobutus was a dictatorship, and he did not allow our people to express themselves. As you know, when he founded his political party, the movement popular de la revolution, the popular movement for revolution. This was, all of us were members of the party, whether you like it or not. and we would be asked to go up in March in honor of Mobutu wearing shirts of his picture on it and so on. And many of us were professors in Lubombalashi and we would be insulting him and laughing while we supposedly get. you know, talking, I mean, honoring him in this march. He was a person who was really in a love of money.

That was the most important thing. And he also created this culture of corruption in our country, but he's still making it very, very difficult for our country to move forward. We don't have political leaders who was able to do what we, supposed to be doing, which is using our wealth to improve our country, to make life better for the people and so on. They have lots of money in their bank accounts around the world, but they don't do anything to fight poverty, to improve schooling, to improve hospitals. but don't even pay the people who work for the country,

like medical doctors and university professors and so. And, of course, our ordinary teachers at secondary and elementary school, all of these people paid very, very meager salaries, which they can't live on, and they have to restore to finding ways to get money, from the students and their parents and all kind of stuff, and which is a horrible system. And because the Mobutu system, which exists until today.

So, of course, your book that I've referenced several times throughout this episode is titled from Lumumba to Kabila. But instead of covering Kabila and Kabila, yes, two Kabilas, today I can announce to the listeners that the supplemental episode on the Congo is also going to be featuring you professor talking about current events that are happening primarily in the eastern part of Congo and starting with Kabilla in that episode might be a good starting point to kind of lay the groundwork for the historical background in what is happening today. So we'll save that part of the conversation for the next conversation that we have. have with you. And instead, we'll move into kind of the closing discussion for this episode with you, which is talking about the successes, the failures, the lessons, really, of this process of decolonization within the Congo. Because as I mentioned in most, if not all of these

episodes within this series, even in unsuccessful movements, there are some things that happen successfully. And we can try to draw some messages out of that. And even within movements that we consider to be quite successful, there are some things that happened during that movement which are very unsuccessful. And again, we can draw lessons from that. So the point is that there's always successes and failures in every movement. And the decolonial process of the DRC is absolutely no exception to that with some successes. They did come out in an independent country, but we have been talking about some of the failures throughout this conversation, and perhaps we can drill down a little bit more on what you would

see as primary successes and failures of this process and some of the lessons that we can draw today from how that process unfolded. Yeah. Well, there are successes. I think that we look at countries like Burkina Faso, Senegal, in spite of the fact that the French still had tremendous influence there. But now we have young people who have taken over and who have now asked the French

to remove their troops by the end of this year. And Burkina Faso has no relationship of France whatsoever. The same of Niger and Mali. I think that these are really good examples of countries that other countries in Africa should follow that we need to really make sure

that we have our sovereignty is very much important for our countries we need also have to have economic independence we have so much

wealth in our country and we don't see that we don't see that way of doing anything for the people? Why should they do that? Why should we have the Chinese taking over all our minerals and sending them to China and they're not leaving anything of value to us

and not doing anything to improve the area where they dig all these minerals and so on? And now we're talking about getting into relationship of the United States I don't think that Trump is really the good person to do anything with. But anyway, the country is in a terrible situation right now, and they are looking for whatever support they can find. But the major problem has been a lack of making necessary

that we have a military that is extremely well-organized. well-trained, well-equipped. Many of our generals are from Rwanda since Doran Kabila came of the Rwandis and the Ugandans in 1996-97. And the Rwandis put in a lot of their soldiers and officers in our army. And some of them claim to be Congolese,

but they are not. And these people cannot really help us. How can they go and fight their one country, Rwanda? And so we haven't done anything to clean up our military. And also we have lots of generals and colonels who are corrupt and who spend all their time getting rich and not doing the work they're supposed to do. So this is really the real.

the failure of our governance. The French version of my book, I said, Fayette de la Guvernance, I said the failure of governance. That's the title of this book in French. And so as long as that continues, we're not going anywhere.

All right. Well, on that note, Ben, professor, Again, our guest today listeners was Professor Georges Zongola and Tajula. And it was an absolutely terrific conversation, as I expected. I highly recommend if you can get your hands on the Congo from Leopold to Kabila, a people's history that you do so. Professor, in closing. I also read my Lumumba book.

Yes, that's right. You have a book from La Mumba out through Ohio State University Press. about, what, 10 years ago or so at this point? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So the listeners should also pick up the Patrice Lumumba book, which is titled Patrice LaMumba. So, Professor, is there anything else that you would like to direct the listeners to or

tell them how to find more of your work? Well, I've done a lot of publications. But I think that these two books, and of course, I strongly recommend Susan Rice's book. This is really the most important book, but we have on a particular member, and I think it's a very important book to read. Yeah, to those listeners, that is one-allis.

Yep, yeah. So add that to your list as well. Yes, and we'll try to get in touch with Susan Williams and see if she would be willing to come on the show and talk about that book. That would be a really good. great supplemental episode as well. But Professor, thank you very much for being generous with your time today, and we're looking forward to that next conversation with you as well, which again,

listeners, is going to be picking up with Cabilla and then talking primarily about what is happening in Eastern Congo today. Adnan, I'm going to turn it to you so you can tell the listeners how they can find you and your new show. Well, you can always follow me on Twitter X. at Adnan-A-H-U-S-A-I-N and, you know, listeners might be interested to follow and watch the other project that I have going on that is on YouTube, so you can find it on YouTube, the Adnan-Husain Show, at Ad-N-H-N-H-N-H-N-H-N-H-E-S-E-E-E-E-E-E-Z-E. As for me, listeners, you can follow me on Twitter at Huck 1995, H-U-C-K-1-9-9-5. I'm very sporadically online these days.

Almost never. So better if you want to keep up with everything that Adnan and I are both doing would be to follow Gorilla History on social media. The show is on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. This is G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-S-Pod. We're on Instagram, Gorilla-U-S-Histery. And you can follow our substack, GorillaHistory.substack.com.

And I'd like to also just remind you listeners, in closing, that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this, both within the African Revolutions and Decolonization series, as well as our other non-series episodes that come out interspersed every week by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And on that note, listeners, and until next time, solid. solidarity. You know what I'm going to do.