{UAH} Why 'tribal wars' always follow African wealth - Opinion - nation.co.ke
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Why 'tribal wars' always follow African wealth - Opinion
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Africa is the devil's kitchen where neo-imperialists, mercenaries, buccaneers, large-scale thieves, and murderers often come to work their witchcraft.
The recent descent of South Sudan into genocidal bloodletting only two years after independence is explained away as a tribal conflict between the Dinka and the Nuer, just another little bit of slaughter by those Africans. But nothing is ever what it appears to be, I am beginning to think.
South Sudan is going the way of that other wealthy African country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Whenever you see African wealth, trouble cannot be too far off.
A friend, a neo-imperialist of the first water, thoughtfully bought me a book titled How To Kill: The Definitive History of the Assassin, with a little inscription, "Time for a change of career". Written by British journalist and best-selling author, Kris Hollington, I found it fascinating.
The part about Patrice Lumumba, the 35-year-old postal clerk who was the first, and perhaps only, truly democratically elected leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is not only troubling but it exposes the real game being played in Africa.
Lumumba, a charismatic and arrogant man, had an ungoverned tongue. He sealed his own fate by announcing that he would nationalise the country's copper mines, the biggest in the world and controlled, of course, by the Belgians. He was one African trying to pull out of the colonial mouth the fat tit that fed this little European country.
At independence, he had turned to Belgian King Baudouin and said: "From today, we are no longer your monkeys." Earlier in New York, he had told American businessmen: "The exploitation of the mineral riches of the Congo should be primarily for the profit of our own impoverished people and other Africans." America's top commercial dynasties were heavily invested in the Congolese mining industry.
No wonder, as Hollington writes, US President Dwight Eisenhower told the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, that it would be most convenient if Lumumba "fell into a river full of crocodiles". It is debated whether Eisenhower gave a direct order to the CIA to kill Lumumba but that is how CIA director Allen Dulles understood it.
He gave his man in Congo, CIA station chief Larry Devlin, instructions to bump off Lumumba as quickly as possible.
Shortly after making public his intention to nationalise the mines, Katanga, under the stooge Moise Tshombe, seceded and threatened war. The Belgians quickly sent back their army and Lumumba could only beg for UN protection.
Joseph Kasavubu, the president and another stooge, presumed to sack Lumumba. In typical fashion, Lumumba sacked him back. But the army, under stooge-in-chief Joseph Mobutu, backed Kasavubu and put Lumumba under house arrest. Lumumba was running away from this house arrest when he was run down by Mobutu's men. Again, he begged the UN for protection.
Under orders from their New York headquarters, UN troops would not give it. The Belgian minister for African Affairs, Count d'Aspremont Lynden, had ordered the "definite elimination" of Lumumba. So when he was arrested, he was flown to Katanga, handed to Tshombe and, after torture, put in front of a firing squad along with some of his ministers.
On hand to kill him was a squad of nine local rifle men and Belgians Captain Julien Gat, Lt Gabriel Michels, Commissioner Frans Vercheure, and Sergeant François Son.
Writes Hollington: "Finally, the firing squad turned to watch as Vercheure escorted Lumumba past his grave to the tree, now scarred with bullet holes. Lumumba was shaking, but with tears in his eyes, he pulled himself together and stared the firing squad down. The soldiers raised their weapons, took aim and unleashed a tremendous fusillade, emptying every last clip. After the execution, the Belgians picked up half a kilo of spent bullet casings."
The police commander, Gerard Soete, was later ordered to destroy the bodies. He and his brother exhumed them, hacked them into small pieces, and dissolved them in sulphuric acid. "When they ran out of acid, they made a fire for the last remains. They kept a couple of teeth for souvenirs," writes Hollington.
Patrice Lumumba had been in power all of 67 days. Tribal war? Please.
mmutuma@ke.nationmedia.com
http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Why--tribal-wars--always-follow-African-wealth-/-/440808/2200520/-/vu391x/-/index.html
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