In Death in the Congo, Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick trace the international history of the Congo's politics in 1960–1, which integrates ‘the perspectives of four competitors: the Congo's inexperienced politicians; a righteous but flawed United Nations; an arrogant and destructive United States; and an entrenched Belgian bureaucracy determined to maintain imperial prerogatives’ (3). It is a remarkable book from a historiographical point of view. The authors found very interesting material in a huge amount of studies on the Cold War, comparative analysis of culture, the history of the Congo, the Congo's politicians, Belgian policy, American policy, the United Nations, Soviet Policy, the CIA and the Murder of Lumumba. But they also discovered myriad unpublished documents in different archives in the United States and Belgium.
In the first chapter, ‘The Congo of the Belgians’, the authors evoke briefly the history of Leopold's Congo, Belgian Congo, and the social change realized after the Second World War, the question of African nationalism, and the Belgian Yield. No doubt, this part is based on very interesting secondary sources, but it is a pity that it is not set up in another historical theoretical frame of the collaboration of some Congolese and the resistance of other.
The riots of January 1959 were absolutely not the first violent eruption of dissatisfaction of the colonized Congolese. Before, different mutinies of the Force publique broke out: Luluabourg in 1895; Shinkakasa in 1900; and, the Congolese resistance in the Lower Uele where the warlords had only just been defeated on the eve of the First World War. Add to that the blossoming of numerous political-religious movements such as the Kimbanguism and the Kitawala. And last but not least, there are the revolts of the Budja at the beginning of the twentieth century and of the Pende (Kwango-region, 1931), which were cruelly oppressed.
The second chapter, ‘Independence’, is mainly about 30 June and the following days. The orations of president Kasa-Vubu, King Baudouin, and Prime Minister Lumumba are interpreted and contextualized. Let us mention here that Ludo De Witte, who seriously increased interest in the history of Lumumba's assassination with his book, The Assassination of Lumumba, recently discovered the unique copy of the famous speech of Lumumba (De Standaard, Brussels, 27–8 June 2015, 27–9). The evolution Lumumba underwent at the end of the colonial era could be elaborated more substantially. When Lumumba visited Belgium, from 25 April until 23 May 1956, he kept a notebook wherein he did not disguise his sympathy for Leopold II. The day after the arrival, the group visited in Brussels the monument of ‘our great king Leopold II, founder of the Congo and precursor of the African civilization’, he wrote. Also, when they visited the Royal Museum for Central Africa, he was convinced that King Leopold II had opened the Congo to civilization. (Zana Etambala, ‘Lumumba en Belgique, du 25 avril au 23 mai 1956’ in: Congo-Meuse, 2002, 191–229).
‘The Empire Strikes Back’, the third chapter, makes clear how Belgium was undermining Lumumba. Belgium intervened militarily without the approval of the Lumumba-government; the Union Minière and the Société Générale supported the breakaway regime of Katanga; and King Baudouin implicitly condemned Lumumba, praised Tshombe, and did not agree with the practice of the Eyskens-government, which he wanted to see replaced by a government of national union.
The analysis of the Chapters Four and Five offer a very good understanding of the geopolitical context of the Cold War in which the Congo crisis occurred and of the role played by Dag Hammarskjöld and the UN. Here the authors finely show the ‘external’ or ‘foreign’ dynamics that did not lead to an improvement of the situation in Congo. This is confirmed in Chapter Six, which deals with ‘The Government Falls’.
In the following chapters, the ‘internal’ or ‘African-Congolese’ dynamics are put forward. The seventh chapter, ‘Mobutu’, covers the emergence of Colonel Mobutu who tried to neutralize Prime Minister Lumumba and President Kasa-Vubu in September 1960 and paid great attention to his different mentors: the Moroccan UN general Ben Hammou Kettani, Larry Devlin of the CIA in Leopoldville, and the Belgian Colonel Louis Marlière, with whom Mobutu had strong personal and even family ties. In the eighth chapter, ‘Africans against Lumumba’, the authors explain the complex networks of friends and enemies of Patrice Lumumba. There was opposition against him in Leopoldville and in Katanga and Kasai as well. But he also had reliable allies in these regions. Some African nationalist leaders supported him, while others did not trust him. The president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, who wrote the book Challenge of the Congo: A Case study of Foreign Pressures in an Independent State (1967), is absent in this chapter. It is not the most substantive chapter of the book.
The full attention for the exogenous dynamics is back in Chapters Nine, ‘The Central Intelligence Agency’, and Ten, ‘The Return of the Belgians’. The final chapters, ‘Lumumba Imperiled’ and, above all, ‘Killing Lumumba’ reveal some surprises. The role played by Benoit Verhaegen in overthrowing Lumumba is unimaginable. But other Belgians, such as Catholic priests who used Cardinal Malula and other Congolese prelates to corrupt and set Congolese politicians against Lumumba, remain totally undiscussed.
The epilogue places ‘this traveling carnival of death’ in, of course, a postcolonial historical perspective and shows clearly the ‘complex considerations’ arising ‘in defining responsibility’. But in the end, in spite of some minor criticism, the whole work of Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick is undeniably the most outstanding publication on the conspiracy against and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.
