A Hard and Bitter Peace: A Global History of the Cold War, Third Edition by Edward H. Judge & John W. Langdon

Author:Edward H. Judge & John W. Langdon [Judge, Edward H. & Langdon, John W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2017-07-25T04:00:00+00:00

The Congo Crisis

As the British and French possessions in Africa moved toward independence, the Belgian Congo, which had not been prepared for self-government, stood out as an apparent bastion of colonialism. In 1958, Charles de Gaulle visited the French Congo, which bordered the Belgian colony, to campaign for votes in favor of autonomy and further association with France in the upcoming referendum on his proposed constitution. His wartime prestige had been strong in Central Africa, and his visit inspired a Congolese cultural association known as ABAKO to transform itself into a political party.

ABAKO was led by Joseph Kasa Vubu, deputy of the Congolese prophet Simon Kimbangu, who had died in a Belgian prison in 1951 after thirty years of captivity and who was rumored to be advising Kasa Vubu from beyond the grave. Kasa Vubu, a member of the Kongo ethnic group,‡‡‡‡ wanted to restore the fifteenth-century Kingdom of Kongo in the region of the lower Congo River. He thought and acted in tribal rather than nationalistic terms, as did other Congolese politicians who would soon rise to prominence: Moïse Tshombe of the Lunda people; Albert Kalonji, a chief of the Luba tribe; and Joseph Mobutu of the Ngbandi ethnic group. The exception to this pattern was Patrice Lumumba, a young postal worker from the small, relatively powerless Tetela tribe who attended the All-African Peoples’ Conference in Ghana in December 1958 and returned preaching pan-African solidarity in the struggle against imperialism. Lumumba assumed leadership of the Congolese National Movement (MNC), which was the only political party in the Congo with nationwide appeal. This tribalist fragmentation would handicap the Congo severely once independence was gained.

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