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

As we have seen, not only did the MNC come first in the country, but also,
it reached out to other parties, and Lumumba eventually emerged as
Prime Minister. Lumumba was able to hold his own against the maneuvers
of the Belgians at this time, because although Padmore had passed away in
September 1959, he was receiving constant counselling from Dr Kwame
Nkrumah in Accra. Indeed, some other Congolese politicians who would
normally not have given him the time of day, were ushered his way by
mutual friends in Accra.
But when independence dawned in the Congo on 30 June 1960 it was
doomed from the start. The independence constitution was drawn up
largely by Belgian academics and officials without too much participation
of the Congolese politicians present. The discussions were often abstruse
and largely above the heads of the Congolese, none of whom had ever
taken part in such an exercise before. So one-sided was the exercise that
six Congolese students in Brussels held a demonstration in protest against
‘a constitution being written for Congo without Congolese participation.’
The Belgians dismissed them as trouble-makers.
The document that emerged was a very complex text, and yet, it was
made even more unwieldy by being released in two parts - one part in
January 1960, and the second part in May 1960 - just one month before
Independence. Belgian incompetence was written all over it: in some
parts, the Congo was regarded as a centralised unitary state; in others, it
was treated as a federal entity. These provisions were veritable boobytraps
that were later fought over to determine who would wield ultimate
control over the country’s finances and natural resources. The confusion in
the document provided the kernel of the idea that the CONAKAT leader,
Moise Tshombé, later developed - with Belgian advice - into the full-scale
secession of his home province of Katanga shortly after independence.
Nevertheless, Belgium, under the delusion that it was magnanimously
atoning for the brutality it had unleashed on the Congolese people in the
past, was full of self-congratulation. On the day of independence itself,
the Belgian monarch, King, Baudoin, dressed in majestic finery, made an
insensitive, self-congratulatory speech to the assembly of Congolese
politicians and foreign guests assembled in the National Assembly.
The Belgians in charge of the ceremony had not made any provision for the
Prime Minister and leader of the country, Patrice Lumumba, to address the
gathering. But Lumumba got up and spoke all the same:
‘Men and women of the Congo,
Victorious fighters for independence who are today victorious, I greet you
in the name of the Congolese Government. All of you, my friends, who
have fought tirelessly at our sides, I ask you to make this June 30, 1960, an
illustrious date that you will keep indelibly engraved in your hearts, a date
of significance of which you will teach to your children, so that they will
make known to their sons and to their grandchildren, the glorious history
of our fight for liberty…
‘No Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that it was
by fighting that our independence has been won; [applause], it was not
given to us, but won in a day-to-day fight, an ardent and idealistic fight, a
fight in which we were spared neither privation nor suffering, and for
which we gave our strength and our blood.
‘We are proud of this struggle of tears, of fire, and of blood, to the depths
of our being, for it was a noble and just struggle, and indispensable to put