Abstract
Reviewed by: Robert Waters, Ohio Northern University, rawatersjr@yahoo.com or r-waters@onu.edu
Patrice Lumumba’s assassination has been the subject of many studies. Economic determinism has been their authors’ preferred analytical approach; morality tale has provided their tone. Death in the Congo is not more of the same. It is a model of scholarship, featuring subtle portraiture, historical empathy, and skilled use of social science. Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick are also outstanding historical detectives. They mine Belgian materials, along with the recent Foreign Relations of the United States volume on the Congo, and do an impressive job squeezing the last ounce of information out of the US Senate investigation of CIA plots to assassinate foreign leaders. Their meticulous research enables them to track sometimes minute events that broaden and deepen the story of Lumumba’s precipitous rise and fall. Of particular note is the authors’ focus on the international dimension of domestic politics in Belgium, the United States, and the Congo, as well as the goals and pretensions of United Nations leaders. The result is a persuasive account including many surprising revisionist conclusions.
For example, Gerard and Kuklick lay the groundwork for a strong case that Joseph Mobutu (Mobutu Sese Seko) was—briefly—the first of sub-Saharan Africa’s reformer military men. They show that he did not begin life as a corrupt Machiavellian on America’s payroll. His first coup came at a time of radical political dysfunction, which he sought to repair by creating a “College of Commissioners”: young university students and graduates to whom he gave real power. In this first iteration, Mobutu vacillated and hedged, often terrified by his alternatives, even at times seeming to lean toward Lumumba.
In like fashion, the authors show that Katanga’s Moïse Tshombe and other secessionist leaders were not colonialist lackeys; they represented peoples who sought a decentralized state under local control based on tribe and tradition, maintaining close Belgian ties to prevent political and economic collapse. Here, the authors would have done well to consult and possibly confront the work of journalists Arnaud de Borchgrave and Smith Hempstone. De Borchgrave, Newsweek magazine’s chief foreign reporter and the American immigrant son of Belgian aristocracy, was the most connected foreign journalist of his time, especially in the Congo. Hempstone’s Rebels, Mercenaries and Dividends: The Katanga Story (New York: Praeger, 1962) argued that Katanga was the sort of multi-racial, capitalist, and comparatively free society that the West purported to support for Africa. Hempstone also covered the US role played by influential senator Thomas Dodd and America’s “Katanga Lobby,” neither of which the authors mention.
Gerard and Kuklick also demolish former CIA station chief Larry Devlin’s effort to portray himself as the moral exemplar who prevented the United States from killing Lumumba. In a situation where nobody in Washington knew much about the Congo, Devlin’s shrill warnings energized the US government against Lumumba. That the United States did not kill Lumumba, the authors surprisingly suggest, was thanks to CIA director Allen Dulles, whom they suggest opposed assassination as US government policy. The authors argue that by 1960 Dulles was a loud but complacent empire builder primarily interested in expanding his bureaucratic power and the CIA’s budget. They make a strong case that Dulles amplified Devlin’s cries of wolf within the Eisenhower administration, then was surprised by Eisenhower’s order to kill Lumumba. Thenceforth Dulles used his bureaucratic skills to slow walk the order so that the Congolese and Belgians—not the Americans—killed Lumumba.
President Dwight Eisenhower receives sympathetic but tough treatment. Gerard and Kuklick are almost conclusive in showing that he ordered the CIA to kill Lumumba and helped create an atmosphere that made his assassination more likely, but the United States did not play a part in his killing. In this context, they discuss Eisenhower’s preference for preemptive covert operations, up to and including assassination, as a way to avoid military intervention. Such an approach may save lives, they point out, but it remains evil; it must come only after the most careful consideration in the most dangerous of situations. Eisenhower’s decision to kill Lumumba did not meet these criteria. The authors suggest Eisenhower’s moral resolve had weakened after he grew tired and inured to killing by the Second World War, 15 years of Cold War, and Devlin’s hysterical reports. More important, the authors suggest, at a time of heightened Soviet aggressiveness, Belgium seemed ready to bolt from NATO over the Congo.
The Congo provided Belgium with great wealth and prestige, and the violence and disorder following independence threatened Belgian lives and economic interests; hence, Belgium’s intervention and support for secessionist states and outrage over subsequent worldwide condemnation. Belgium itself suffered from weak governments, unclear and overlapping lines of authority in Congolese affairs, ethnic conflict between Flemish and French speakers, labour strife, and local officials who cut out Brussels from decisions on the ground. In addition, King Baudouin, who disdained politicians, was almost delusional in his belief that the Belgian crown shared a nearly mystical bond with the Congolese people whom it had Christianized and uplifted. Gerard and Kuklick argue that Baudouin was one of several Belgian leaders who gave a go-ahead for the killing, although the evidence here is less convincing. It was in this atmosphere that Belgian leaders threatened to leave NATO. Gerard and Kuklick suggest that NATO’s leader, Belgium’s Paul-Henri Spaak, won Eisenhower’s assent by comparing Belgium’s Congolese intervention with US actions against Castro’s Cuba. Eisenhower was sympathetic, and the authors posit that the Congo may have been seen as a test run for a Cuban intervention.
The authors also show that, despite Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld’s sincere pretentions to international neutrality, he and his assistants worked closely with the United States. Hammarskjöld and his staff had come to despise Lumumba and concluded that the Congo could have a stable and truly independent future only if they “clipped Lumumba’s wings” or intervened to replace him. The authors mention that UN officials’ hatred stemmed from Lumumba’s erratic behaviour, and they note Lumumba’s rumoured penchant for the Congolese equivalent of marijuana, but they overlook contemporary reports of just how prodigious his imbibing was and the possible role it played in his instability.
Small details aside, this is an impressive piece of research, investigation, and analysis. It should change the way scholars view a tragic moment in postcolonial history and cause many to rethink assumptions regarding the intentions and motivations of actors on all sides of the conflicts intimately related to decolonization.