April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

Parliament.
When Lumumba was appointed prime minister by the Belgians, many of
the Belgians in the Congo and in Belgium itself thought the heavens had
fallen in. For he was not the Belgians’ first choice. They tried other
Congolese ‘leaders’ (such as Joseph Kasavubu) and it was only when these
failed to garner adequate support that they unwillingly called on
Lumumba.
The magnitude of the achievement of the MNC in organising itself as a
nationwide party, and managing to hatch viable alliances, is not often
appreciated, because few people realise that the Congo is as big in size as
all the countries of Western Europe put together.
(As for Belgium itself, it is outrageous that it should have wanted to run
the Congo in the first place - the Congo is 905,563 square miles in size,
compared to Belgium’s puny 11,780 sq. miles. In other words, Belgium
arrogated to itself the task of ruling a country more than eight times its
size.)
Not only is Congo huge, but think of a country the size of Western Europe
that does not have good roads, railway systems, telecommunications
facilities or modern airports. And a Western Europe in which political
parties are legalised only one year before vital elections.
The only thing to add is that in the Congo, the first nationwide local
elections held in 1959, which saw the emergence of the MNC, were even
more crucial, for it was those elections that were to assess the strength of
the various ‘parties’ (in effect, ethnic movements) that would take part in
deciding the future constitutional arrangements under which the country
would be governed. Who knew, perhaps the independence that Ghana
(1957) and Guinea (1958) had achieved, might even come Congo’s way and
those elected might become ministers, who would form the first
government of a new, independent Congo, after nearly 100 years of the
most brutal colonial rule inflicted on an African country by a European
ruler.
By the time the Belgians felt the need to call a constitutional conference
in Brussels to decide how the new Congo was to be ruled, Lumumba was in
prison. Again. (He had earlier been imprisoned on a charge of
embezzlement while he was a postal clerk. It needs to be pointed out that
the charge was brought against him while he was away in Brussels, touring
the country at the invitation of the Belgian government. Was someone
trying to blight a future political career?
The charge on which he went to prison a second time was more in line
with colonial practice. What was that charge? ‘Inciting a riot.’ Where have
we heard that before? Those who know African history can immediately
see the parallels with what happened in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi: it was
precisely the same colonial criminal code that had put Kwame Nkrumah in
prison in Ghana in 1950, and in a slightly more tortuous manner, Jomo
Kenyatta in Kenya in 1953 and Kamuzu Banda in Nyasaland in 1959.
Again, like Nkrumah in Ghana, Lumumba’s party, the MNC, contested local
(provincial) council elections in 1959, while its leader was still in jail, and
surprise, surprise, it too won a sweeping victory, as the electorate made
no mistake in recognising why the leader had been jailed. In its main
stronghold of Stanleyville, Lumumba’s party obtained no less than 90 per
cent of the votes.