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The Political Thought of Patrice Lumumba* 105
and military dependence of the country would come to an end. As we can see, this was a
reasonable solution, but a reformist one such as might be conceived by a statesman who
coolly weighs up the pros and cons and takes calculated risks.
At the same time, the masses were giving revolutionary conclusions to the revolution
that never took place. They took over the Africanization of the cadres and ousted the
Europeans in no time. It began with the Force Publique. The officers and warrant officers
were Belgian; by the end of their careers, the Congolese could only attain the rank of
sergeant. Several months before independence, they made it known that they demanded
an end to this privilege of the whites: after independence, a black should be able,
depending on merit, to be promoted to lieutenant or general. Lumumba did not take the
matter seriously: he doubtless looked at it from the point of view of national utility;
officers would be trained gradually. But he was wrong: this was not a general demand
regarding the conditions of future soldiers, it was these soldiers who wanted to become
sergeants, these sergeants who coveted the rank of captain. In a word, it was a concrete
and immediate demand. A shrewd politician would probably have satisfied it on the first
day and taken control of the revolutionary movement again by carrying out the coup of
dismissing Janssens. That would have won him the Army, the only instrument this
executive without power had at its disposal. The soldiers of the Force Publique in
particular had a worrying turn of mind: during the time of the Belgians, in other words
until 30 June, they had maintained the colonial order. These Congolese had fought
exclusively against Congolese; they put down riots, occupied villages, lived off the
inhabitants. Objectively accomplices of the colonial caste, strongly influenced by their
officers, they seemed by station to be counter-revolutionaries. And without a doubt, that
is what they were to the very core of their being, except that they were furious at being
held back in lower ranks like the commoners in the French Army before 1789. Without
their knowing, their demand summed up the Congo’s aspirations for total sovereignty
since it could only be met by a sovereign decision. At the same time, class conflict was
emerging behind racial conflict: the poor had had enough of the luxury of the rich and
wanted to take their place. By taking the initiative, the government would have made the
forces of law and order accomplices of the Revolution; it would have enlisted their
solidarity. Lumumba hesitated: the pressure of the black army, so he thought, threatened
to push him too soon towards radicalism: perhaps he had a class reflex in spite of himself.
And who, he wondered, would be capable of commanding the Congolese Army today?
He made the mistake of demanding a half measure from Janssens: all blacks would be
promoted to the rank immediately above: second class would be promoted to first class, a
sergeant to staff sergeant. Janssens knew how to make the most of his role as agent
provocateur; he said to the soldiers: ‘You won’t get anything. Not today or ever.’ The
rest is history: the soldiers’ mutiny, the ousting of the officers, Janssens’ escape to
Brazzaville, white with fear. This insurrection could have been positive, but in the event,
it had only negative consequences. The soldiers were rebelling against both Janssens and
Lumumba, who had waited for the revolt to dismiss him; in other words, they were
rebelling against both colonial paternalism and the young Congolese democracy.
Confused, used to imposing order by force, but rebelling against the military privileges of
the Belgians, they adopted for the most part a sort of Bonapartism to assert their new
class and show their contempt for the regime that had betrayed them.