White Malice by Susan Williams

Author:Susan Williams [Williams, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

GIVEN THE THICK BAND of ANC troops around his official residence, Lumumba could not have left without the connivance of at least some of them. The aggressive nature of the troops is apparent from an episode that had occurred just over a week earlier, on 15 November, when Lovelace P C Mensah, a second secretary of the Ghanaian embassy in Leopoldville, had entered the residence and been seized by Mobutu’s troops. Mensah, a resident of Leopoldville for the previous fifteen years, was a trusted friend both of Prime Minister Lumumba and of President Nkrumah—and a safe intermediary between them.

A memoir by Mensah’s son gives an account of the episode; it explains that Mensah went through all the security checks and finally arrived in the section of the residence where Lumumba lived. He had brought with him a two-page handwritten letter from Nkrumah, with a rescue plan. Before his arrival, Mensah had wrapped it in rubber and ‘hidden it in a secure part of his body’. Then, after briefing Lumumba, he ‘carefully took out the letter from President Nkrumah and handed it over for him to read’.

But suddenly, there were loud shouts and a ‘mad rush of feet’, as soldiers loyal to Mobutu ran towards them. Mensah ‘snatched the two-page document from Lumumba, chewed it, and had just swallowed it when he found himself in the grip of macho soldiers and security guards, all armed with guns and truncheons’. They shoved their fingers down Mensah’s throat and slapped him hard, in an effort to get hold of the chewed-up letter. But it was too late.

Mensah had been ‘prepared to die rather than give away a handwritten letter of such political significance to the “enemy”’. He paid for this severely. He was arrested on allegations that he was carrying plans for an invasion of Katanga and money for Lumumba. He was placed in the Leopoldville army camp, where his arms and legs were tied to his chair and he was blindfolded. He was tortured for two days, and the torment, according to his son, ‘was so gruesome that it could not be repeated in print’. But Mensah gave no information to his captors.15

Mobutu, Justin Bomboko and Victor Nendaka were furious when they heard of Mensah’s visit to Lumumba. They were already angry at the Ghanaian embassy: they believed that the Ghanaian chargé d’affaires, Nathaniel Welbeck, who had replaced Ambassador Djin (and was waiting for his diplomatic credentials to be formally signed by Kasavubu), was spreading pro-Lumumba propaganda in the cité. Welbeck spoke fluent French and was now serving, noted the New York Times, as ‘Ghana’s Man in Leopoldville’.16

It occurred to Mobutu that the incident involving Mensah offered an ideal opportunity to throw Ghana’s diplomatic representative out of the Congo. He immediately issued an expulsion order to Welbeck—which was disregarded. He then turned to Devlin for advice, who was also eager to see the departure of the troublesome Ghanaian. Devlin suggested they send a formal letter from Kasavubu to President Nkrumah, asking him to recall his ambassador.

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