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Colonialism and Neocolonialism 112
complex. From this abstract equality might have come forth light, he might have at last
understood what was called ‘Africa’s socialist vocation’, which can be reduced more
succinctly to the dilemma of neocolonialism versus collectivization. He might: I use this
word not to evoke an abstract possibility, but to explain the fear which, even in chains, he
inspired in his enemies. Imperialism is lucid: if it shows its cards to the excolonized, if
they can perceive its intention to conceal the maintenance of an economy based on overexploitation
behind a political farce, it knows perfectly well that the masses will unite
against the politicians, its accomplices. Confusion in the Congo was extreme, but the
Congolese would have understood quickly if someone had explained to them that they
were serving the enemy: Lumumba had learned in a very short time that Belgium was
going back on its promise, that the Union Minière was fomenting and supporting the
secessions against the Government of the former mother country, that UN soldiers, sent
to maintain order, had protected the separatist Kasavubu and left the centralist prime
minister at the mercy of his enemies: even a petty bourgeois who claimed to know
nothing about the economy would not need long to draw disturbing conclusions. In short,
what the large companies and the évolués feared above all was the radicalization of
Lumumba by the masses and the unification of the masses by Lumumba. His
assassination can be said to have sealed the recent alliance of imperialism and the black
petty bourgeoisie: henceforth there would be a corpse between them.
But the prestige of the Congolese minister extended far beyond the borders of his
country. He demonstrated the necessity of a united Africa, not in the manner of
conquering states for whom unity means hegemony; but on the contrary by the weakness
of the government, by that inflexible courage and that fatal but undeserved impotence
which imposed on all black countries the duty to aid him. And this strict and urgent
obligation was not a matter of generosity, nor of some idealistic solidarity. In fact,
African nations were discovering their own destiny, the destiny of Africa in that of the
Congo; neocolonial countries were deciphering the mystification which had released
them from all their chains except over-exploitation. The others, those which had narrowly
escaped ‘Congolization’, were discovering the mechanism, the role played by internal
divisions in this collapse; they thought that nothing was saved yet, that separatism had to
be fought across the whole continent, or else Africa would not escape Balkanization. In
this sense, Lumumba’s failure was that of pan-Africanism. Nkrumah experienced the
most bitter disappointment: in July he had sent Ghanaian troops to the Congo under the
authority of the United Nations who used them against Patrice Lumumba, despite
Ghana’s protests; the experience taught him that the UN was not an impartial
organization giving strictly objective rulings on Third World conflicts, but a system
rigorously constructed to defend imperialism everywhere in the West, even if people’s
republics and Afro-Asian nations were allowed to join. But the whole of Africa,
humiliated by its inability to save the man of Accra, also learnt the fate reserved for
‘neutralists’. In a moment of exasperation, indignant at Hammarskjöld’s attitude,
Lumumba had appealed to the USSR which had sent him some warplanes. On this
occasion he had applied the strictest principles of neutrality: engage in commerce with all
countries regardless of their political system, accept or request effective aid in an
emergency, on condition that it is disinterested. That was all it took: the Missions were
quick to baptize him a communist. Imperialism did not fail to do so either. The most