11RXNdQ

Colonialism and Neocolonialism 104
administer, and the blacks were in power but not yet in command. At this contradictory
moment, Lumumba, however popular he might be, did not draw his authority from past
actions but from authority imported from Europe, and which the Congolese – apart from
the évolués – did not recognize. Of course his courage was admirable (he was known to
have been arrested several times, beaten and thrown into prison), but that was not
enough. In order to hold supreme power in a new state, one must have held it during the
times of oppression as the unquestioned leader of the liberation army, or have possessed
charismatic or religious power for a long time. Unfortunately, it was Kasavubu who
possessed this power in Léopoldville. It must be understood that on 1 July 1960,
Lumumba – leader of a majority coalition and head of the government – was isolated,
without power, betrayed by everyone and already lost.
As I have said, when peoples free themselves by force, they throw out or massacre the
former cadres who are simply their most visible oppressors. They have to be quickly
replaced; as everyone is equally incompetent, the choice is guided according to
revolutionary zeal rather than ability. The result is terrible confusion, criminal errors, and
entire sectors of the economy are placed in grave jeopardy. But a victorious revolution
has yet to collapse because there was no elite. Though painful convulsions were the price
they had to pay, newcomers in the USSR, China, Vietnam and Cuba took up controlling
positions, governing, inspecting and making decisions during the day, learning and
reading at night. Thus the replacement of reactionary experts by inexpert revolutionaries
is a normal and positive fact in the development of a revolution. And if this substitution is
not carried out by force, it becomes necessary owing to the massive emigration of the
specialists.
Moreover, this leap into the unknown has to be made spontaneously, and emerge as an
inevitable moment of praxis. Who would dare systematically to replace knowledge with
ignorance at all levels of the social hierarchy, if not in the storm of revolution? Lumumba
was a revolutionary without a revolution. His inflexible Jacobinism brought him into
radical conflict with the hypocritical improvements to colonialism which the Belgian
government was attempting without dexterity to make, but this rigorous position was
only a theoretical rejection, precisely because the popular war had not taken place. By
dispensing with it, the Belgians had also deprived the Congolese of it. The leader of the
MNC therefore found himself on the far side, as it were, of an insurrection that had not
taken place. He could not envisage the cadres as he would have done at the height of the
action. As an évolué, educated by the whites, accustomed to acknowledging their
technical superiority, he was concerned, as we have seen, about the small number of
évolués and the ignorance of the masses.
Without any doubt the cadres had to be Africanized: he had always wanted it, and now
that he often felt paralysed by the ill-will of the administration, he wanted it even more.
The Congo would not enjoy full independence as long as key posts remained in the hands
of the whites. But in the absence of pressing urgency, he envisaged a gradual
transformation. It is striking that he often talked in his speeches of higher education, but
almost never about primary education. We should not see a class preoccupation in this.
He simply had a sharp awareness of the problem. The Congo would send students to
Europe as soon as it could; they would return to the country and each one would take the
place of a Belgian. The more of them there were, the sooner the technical, administrative