According to the BBC News of June 30th 2020, King Phillippe of Belgium made the remark that Belgium “Expresses deepest regrets” for DR Congo colonial abuses.
The Belgian King was credited with the remarks found in a letter he sent to President Felix Tshikedi on the 60th anniversary of DR Congo independence. Again in June 2022, the Belgian authorities led by King Phillippe returned a tooth belonging to Patrice Lumumba to his children.
The tooth is the only relic that remains of the first President of the Republic of Congo now called Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
To reinforce the record; Lumumba was an icon of the struggle against colonization in Africa and was murdered by Separatists led by Joseph Mobutu in a brutal coup organized by Belgium and USA’s CIA on June 17, 1961. After burying him, he was exhumed on the advice of the CIA and his remains were dissolved in acid, and some of the perpetrators kept his un-dissolved teeth as macabre mementos.
While it is not yet clear who released the one gold capped tooth to the Belgian authorities, the “mementos” was handed over to a group of family members packed in a light blue case at the Egmont palace in Brussels in the full view of world press. In the same vein, the Belgian Prime Minister recognized Belgium’s “moral responsibility” for Lumumba’s killing.
Said he, “This is a painful disagreeable truth, but must be spoken, a man was murdered for his political convictions, his words, and for his ideals”.
Earlier on, the King Philippe of Belgium visited DR Congo for undisclosed reasons that may not be unconnected with the Chinese and Russian incursion into probably the richest country in the world, with mineral and natural resources like gold diamond rear-earth, copper, cassiterite,(Chief source of metallic tin), manganese, coal, silver, palladium, uranium, platinum, timber forest and rivers of water.
There and then King Phillippe expressed “deepest regrets for the wounds of the past”.
Furthermore, he the regime imposed on Congo was of unequal relations, unjustifiable in itself, marked by paternalism and racism… that led to violent acts and humiliations”.
So why is Belgium making all these apologies and travel activities?
A cursory look into the past will suffice. Immediately after the Berlin Conference of 1884 where Africa was partitioned and given to mainly European powers they moved in swiftly with great force and began seizing large swathes of Africa for colonial exploitation. Precisely on the 5th of February 1885, the then Belgian King Leopold 11 established the Congo Free State and began a campaign like ‘never-before-seen’ brutality taking and seizing farms and the entire land mass of the country naming it as Belgian ‘colony’.
Apart from taking their freedom, he forced them to work for ungodly hours without payment and any health care.
Resultantly, more than 10 million were thought to have “died of disease, colonial abuses, death by amputation and being shot with gun, while working on plantations for the king.
Hands were chopped off the limbs of the enslaved people when they did not meet quotas set by the authorities in charge of the plantations on the orders of the erstwhile King.
So, when other countries began to push for immediate stoppage of the barbaric acts, a hurriedly put together plan saw to it that the political authorities in Belgium formally annexed the country from the ‘personal estates of King Leopold’, renaming it the Belgian Congo 1n 1908.
Meanwhile, after 168 years, precisely In February 2022, Princess Esméralda of Belgium furthered the sentiment of her half-nephew’s letter in an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP), calling for the nation of Belgium to apologize to the people of Congo.
It is interesting to note that while some people were setting fire on the statue of Leopold, many Europeans who are ‘dye in the wool racists’ began sending hate mails to Princess Esméralda criticizing her stance. She then clarified her position, stating: “We are not responsible for our ancestors,” but “we have a responsibility to talk about it.”
Writing in the Harvard Review in the US, Dara Adamolekun said; “Perhaps Princess Esméralda and King Phillipe have the clearest incentive to make this distinction.
They are both direct descendants of King Leopold II, who, in the name of “civilization” enacted what became known as one of the world’s first major genocides.
When worldwide demand for rubber increased, Leopold found an opportunity to make a profit and embark on a vanity project.
After receiving permission from European leaders at the 1885 Berlin Conference, Leopold turned the land of Congo into his own personal colony, naming it the Congo Free State (CFS).
This “free” state became the framework of a savage system of exploitation, resulting in the deaths of over 10 million Congolese people while generating Leopold 220 million francs (or US$1.9 billion in today’s dollars) in profits, though many historians view these as conservative estimates.
Journalist and historian, Tim Stanle vividly depicts the hellish colonial reality that Leopold created, writing:
“Villages were set quotas of rubber and the gendarmerie were sent in to collect it – a process that was sped up by looting, arson and rape. If a village failed to reach its quota hostages would be taken and shot to ensure that the gendarmerie didn’t waste their bullets hunting for food, they were required to produce the severed hands of victims.
As a consequence a trade in severed hands developed among the villagers and those police that couldn’t reach their quotas.”
The transition from the brutal exploitation by Leopold in 1885 to 1908 when the Belgian Authorities took over from him was not too different up until the bitter fight for independence led by good souls like Lumumba were concluded in victory which eventually turned out to be pyrrhic.
By 1960 another transition occurred when the Congo transited from being a Belgian colony to an independent country due both to independent struggles and the larger decolonization movement in Africa.
Don’t forget also that the erstwhile Soviet Union aided the struggle movement in Africa as it was the period of the “Cold War” between the two major world powers and their respective allies.
Meanwhile, it is pertinent to shed some light on how Lumumba was targeted for the kill. First and foremost, Lumumba being a leader in the struggle for independence was marked down as an ally of the then Soviet Union by Belgium, nay Europeans and USA.
So, when he advocated for a strong central government, they ‘smelled rat’ and decided that even as the Prime Minister, they can’t afford to leave the government in his hands.
Therefore they ‘influenced’ a hot debate knowing the government was formed on compromises between Lumumba and Joseph Kasavubu.
The opposition soon fielded a proposal for a less central government with greater autonomy for Congo provinces. As the seed of discord had been sowed, the hullabaloo soon led to an army mutiny led by Joseph Mobutu (a.k.a Mobutu Sese seko).
The mutiny was immediately followed by the secession of the strategic mineral-rich province of Katanga led by Moise Tchombe who was also a close ally of Belgium.
On the pretext of providing protection for white Belgian nationals In the Congo, the so called troops landed principally in the mineral-rich Katanga to provide a military covering for Tshombe and sustained his secessionist regime.
The government led by Lumumba immediately appealed to the United Nations (UN) for assistance.
Ironically, the UN sent what they called ‘Peace Keeping Force’ but they refused totally to intervene or ‘keep peace’ in the mineral-rich Katanga.
When all efforts failed to show UN that the main issue in the then Congo was the secessionist violence, yet nothing was done to bring normalcy; Lumumba then asked the erstwhile Soviet Union for assistance.
As soon as the Soviet Union began to provide “Technical Assistance” to the government, the United States and its western allies rose to counter the moves by backing Kasavubu to summarily dismiss the elected government of Lumumba.
On September 5th 1960, Kasavubu publicly announced the dismissal of Lumumba as the first Prime Minister of Congo.
Lumumba, in a swift response, also deposed Kasavubu secessionist government and thus parallel governments emerged in Congo.
Again, on September 14, Joseph Mobutu (later known as Sese Seko), a Colonel in the Congolese army, and an ally of the US and who supported Kasavubu openly; arrested and put Lumumba under house arrest.
Lumumba managed to escape and as he was crossing the vast country to reach areas where he could get assistance, he was again captured by the Mobutu’s forces with the help of the CIA in early December. He was detained at a military camp in Thysville, and by January 17, 1961, Lumumba and two associates, Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo were transferred by airplane to Katanga, mercilessly beaten on the flight.
A series of interviews were conducted under severe torture in a private villa by the Belgian police, Congolese army and the CIA. So, before the close of the day on January 17, 1961, the battered bodies of Patrice Lumunba and his associates were “executed by a Katanga firing squard” supervised by the Belgian officials.
Although they were first put in a shallow grave, it was alleged that when the media exposure and noise all over the world began to reach the crescendo, the CIA advised that they be exhumed.
A Belgian Police officer then led a group of Mobutu’s people that dug up the bodies, hacked them into small pieces and dissolved them in Sulphuric Acid.
Has anything changed over the years? Yes, for worse.
Just four years ago, a delegation sent to Belgium by the United Nations named the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent concluded that there still remain Afrophobia, Racism, Discrimination and xenophobia in Belgium.
The Summary contained in A/HRC/42/59/Add says: “The Working Group describes the situation, highlights good practices and the main challenges identified, and makes concrete recommendations.”
Indeed, many scholars are intently querying the usefulness of the United Nations as an effective world organization and as more countries are presently looking for a new world order, it is important to interrogate the effect of diminishing returns on the UN.
The 78th General Assembly is about to open, and It is significant and very telling that at a critical bend in the world history, of the 193 U.N member countries, 145 nations are sending their heads of states or heads of governments, meanwhile of five founding, permanent Security Council members who are the only ones allowed to wield veto power; comprising US, France, UK, Russia and China, only the US led by President Biden is the only one attending.
Has it got to do with the on-going competition between them on who controlls the so-called ‘Global South’? Obviously!
As the Yoruba proverb succinctly put it, “Agbara ojo ko lohun o nile wo, onile ni o ni gbafun” (The intention of the flood is to destroy your house, it is you who must protect your abode).
Again, hear the words of Patrice Lumumba…” Dead, living, free, or in prison on the orders of the colonialists, it is not I who counts. It is the Congo, it is our people for whom independence has been transformed into a cage where we are regarded from the outside… History will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that Brussels, Paris, Washington, or the United Nations will teach, but that which they will teach in the countries emancipated from colonialism and its puppets… a history of glory and dignity.”
