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The Belgians had encouraged tribal animosity amongst the Congolese. Now they were to reap its bitter fruits. Ans his appointment was greeted with excitement throughout the Congo and Africa. And a Western Europe in which political parties are legalised only one year before vital elections and are expected to campaign country-wide, despite language and cultural differences, and of course, the lack of money to fund political parties, due to the low wages paid to workers.

At the time of the local government elections, few observers could have foretold their importance. But these were mere whispers. The conference was called when Lumumba was in prison. 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.

Had the Belgian secret service been monitoring his attitudes and decided that the earlier his political future was blighted, the better? The charge on which Lumumba he went to prison the second time was more in line with colonial practice.

Those who know African history can immediately see the parallels with what happened in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi: They gave the MNC — without Lumumba — no less than 90 per cent of their votes. Lumumba was still in jail when, in January , the Belgian government invited all Congolese parties to a round-table conference in Brussels to discuss political change and write a new constitution for the country.

The Belgian government had no choice but to release Lumumba from prison and fly him to Brussels. Lumumba managed to get the Belgians to set a date for independence — 30 June ! Lumumba returned from Brussels to contest the national elections which were held in May It was as if the Belgians were deliberately tempting fate and for all I know, they might have done!

Here is how the larger of the 50 parties that took part in the May general election performed: It won nearly a quarter of the seats in the lower house of the Congolese Parliament 33 out of — thus garnering the highest number of seats for any single party. MNC-L came second there. But as pointed out above, i t was not Lumumba who, based upon his performance at the elections, was first called upon by the Belgians to try to form a government.

But he failed, and it was only then that Lumumba was asked to form a government. He clobbered together a coalition whose members were: It was at this stage that Lumumba demonstrated how far-sighted he was. He convinced his coalition partners that the opposition parties should not be ignored and he proposed that they should elect Joseph Kasavubu, the ABAKO leader, as President of the Republic. But unfortunately, Lumumba signed his own death warrant in appointing Kasavubu out of the best of intentions.

In doing so, he implanted a poisonous Belgian wasp into his bosom.

They now renewed their long-cultivated relationship with Kasavubu, filling his head with sweet words about how Lumumba was young and inexperienced, whereas Kasavubu was experienced and sagacious, as recognised by the royal family and the Government in Brussels. And they backed their flattery with massive sums of money. Even more important, the Belgians planted into the office of the Prime Minister Lumumba as his principal aide, a former army sergeant called Joseph Mobutu.

This was obviously a cover for training in intelligence: When Lumumba arrived in Belgium, straight from prison and most probably euphoric, to attend the constitutional conference, Mobutu befriended him and offered to guide him around the conference and the town — no doubt on Belgian instructions. His ethnic group, the Batetela, was small in comparison to such bigger groups in Kasai as the Baluba and the Bakongo. He was also cosmopolitan by nature, and therefore found it easier to attract would-be political partners from other ethnic groups.

Lumumba attended a Protestant mission school, after which he went to work in Kindu-Port-Empain, about km from Kisangani. In Lumumba became regional president of an all-Congolese trade union of government employees. This union, unlike other unions in the country, was not affiliated to any Belgian trade union.

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He also became active in the Belgian Liberal Party in the Congo. In , Lumumba was invited with others to make a study tour of Belgium under the auspices of the Minister of the Colonies. It was on his return he was arrested on a charge of embezzlement from the post office. It was shortly after Lumumba got out of prison that he became really active in politics. I was working in the newsroom of Radio Ghana at the time, and was posted to Accra airport, to meet delegates to the conference, who were arriving at all sorts of odd hours.

I remember Lumumba because of his goatee beard and his glasses, which gave him the look of an intellectual. My French was not up to scratch, but with the help of an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I was able to talk to him for a while before he was whisked away by an official car.

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He expressed his happiness to be in Accra, to seek inspiration from Ghana, the first British colony to achieve independence, and to exchange ideas with other anti-colonial fighters. But I also think that delegates like Lumumba, who came from repressive colonial regimes, were protected from the press as they could be penalized on their return home, if they made any statements th at did not please their colonial masters. Incidentally, the star of this conference was, no doubt,Tom Mboya of Kenya, who made a great impression with his command of the English language.

He was a most ingenious and courageous operator: This was a most dangerous thing to do, because Josef Stalin did not brook opposition. Padmore knew that he could be chased around and murdered — like Leon Trotsky had been. Indeed, the Kremlin tried to smear Padmore, claiming falsely that he had embezzled funds, but he defended himself effectively. He ended up in London where he set up as a writer of books and campaigner on anti-colonial issues. In London, Padmore became the mentor of many young African students who were later to achieve fame in the independence movements of their countries later.

A strong bond of friendship grew between them and together, they organised the most famous Pan-African Conference of all — that at Manchester in October Padmore needed no second invitation: Its purpose was to link the independent African states in Africa, so that they could adopt common positions in world affairs, especially at the United Nations.

The programme started with the local elections mentioned earlier which were held in December Lumumba and some other Congolese leaders saw the Belgian programme as a scheme to install puppets before independence and at first announced a boycott of the elections.

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The Belgian authorities responded with repression and sought to ban the meetings of Congolese parties. Thirty people were killed. All the parties accepted the invitation to go to Brussels. The Belgians had no choice but to release Lumumba — unless they wanted the Brusels conference to be dismissed as a farce.

CONGO!…CONGO! by CAMERON DUODU

Lumumba outflanked the Belgians by getting the delegates to focus on a date for independence. Eventually, a date was agreed upon: National elections were to be held in May. 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. 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.

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.

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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 , and the second part in May — just one month before Independence. Belgian incompetence was written all over it: 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. But Lumumba got up and spoke all the same: We have known harassing work, exacted in exchange for salaries which did not permit us to eat enough to drive away hunger, or to clothe ourselves, or to house ourselves decently, or to raise our children as creatures dear to us.

Articles by Cameron Duodu | Modern Ghana Journalist | Muck Rack

We have seen that the law was not the same for a white and for a black; accommodating for the first, cruel and inhuman for the other. We have seen in the towns, magnificent houses for the whites and crumbling shanties for the blacks. A black person was not admitted in the cinema, in the restaurants, in the stores of the Europeans; a black travelling on a boat was relegated to the holds, under the feet of the whites, who stayed up in their luxury cabins. Together, my brothers, my sisters, we are going to begin a new struggle, a sublime struggle, which will lead our country to peace, prosperity, and greatness.

When news of the fiery Lumumba speech spread through Leopoldville, a sense of euphoria enveloped the city. If I die today, I am satisfied enough to do so gladly! The commander of the Force, Gen. Emile Janssens, felt obliged to make a speech to his assembled troops. The trouble was instigated by a militant Islamic sect known locally as Boko Haram —which translates as western, or non-Islamic, education is forbidden. The uprising cost at least a thousand lives before it was quelled by the Nigerian security forces. In view of the ultra-sensitivity to militant Islamism that exists in the US, the Americans could easily have used the Boko Haram episode as an excuse to omit Nigeria from Clinton's itinerary.

Clinton also had her own job cut out, persuading Nigerians that no snub was intended by President Barack Obama when he chose neighbouring Ghana as his first port of call in sub-Saharan Africa in July. Many Nigerians believe their country is "the most important" in black Africa, with its oil wealth and huge population, and they resented the fact that Obama "overlooked" it in going to Ghana.

But, of course, the Americans had their own concerns in mind when they chose Ghana. They think good governance matters greatly in Africa, as economic development can only take place if there is political stability. In Ghana's recent election , power was successfully and without incident transferred from one party to the other. Nigerian elections, on the other hand, almost always end in acrimony.

In her talks with Nigerian leaders, it is expected that Clinton will emphasise that Nigeria's influence in the world will grow — if it gets its act together and embarks on a serious programme to eliminate corruption from public life. In particular, Nigeria's inability to hold elections in which the results are accepted by the losing side as free and fair will be a thorny issue that the sectretary of state will no doubt mention.