So, I've commenced on a new TL. I have once written a timeline on Congo (Kinshasa), but after reading David van Reybrouck's "Congo" I decided to start a new one based on my expanded knowledge. This one will be longer, more detailed and, I hope, better. It was also inspired by "Glory and Dignity", a TL which unfortunately seems to be on an indefinite hiatus. Bear in mind, when reading this, that I fully intended to wank the Congo since its deserves better than its OTL deplorable fate.
It was the 1950s and for the moment the Belgian Congo, the best developed sub-Saharan European colony, seemed to remain serene and prosperous, anti-colonial and pro-independence sentiments being seemingly absent. In Asia, the story was quite different: the Philippines were granted independence by the United States in 1946, British India became independent from the British Empire in 1947, Burma and Ceylon followed in 1948, the Dutch East Indies officially became independent in 1950, French Indochina freed itself from French rule in 1954, and China expelled foreign, imperialist influence under the leadership of Mao Zedong. In Africa, Libya gained its independence in 1951, Egypt in 1952, Sudan, Tunisia and Morocco in 1956, Ghana in 1957, and Guinea-Conakry in 1958. In Bandung, on Java, a conference of Asian and African countries was organized in 1955 and it referred colonialism to the ash heap of history.
Like most of sub-Saharan Africa, Congo remained under European rule, which didn’t mean that the indigenous population was happy with the colonial regime. In February 1944, the barracks of Luluabourg had seen a major mutiny after a rather bizarre rumour, by Western standards anyway: the soldiers believed that their colonial masters were planning to wipe them out when they came with inoculations, revealing the distrust between the Belgians and their African subjects. Spring 1944 saw a social-religious uprising in the Kivu province near Masisi. In November 1946, roughly 6.000 Congolese working for the railways around Léopoldville began a strike, which spread to the country’s largest port city, Matadi. Telephone lines and railroads were sabotaged until order was restored in 1946 by the ‘Force Publique’, the Congo’s colonial army. Social unrest was caused by World War II: the entire colonial economy was subordinated to the war effort; while the economy grew, living standards dropped during the war years.
The period 1946-1956 was one of an eerie silence that the Belgians interpreted as the success of their work. The Congolese population was politically apathetic, though that was because the Congolese lacked an education and not because they tacitly approved of the colonial administration. That changed in the 1950s because of the fact that, since 1938, the country had seen the gradual introduction of secondary education, creating a semi-educated middle class. From the late 1930s onward a class of ‘evolués’ developed that spoke French fluently, read newspapers and books, went to cinemas, theatres and lectures, ate using cutlery, wore European-style suits with black ties, listened to European music, went to Church on Sunday, and renounced witchcraft and polygamy. They tried to be European in every possible way.
Governor-General Léon Pétillon tried to meet the evolués in the middle by promoting the idea of a Belgian-Congolese community. Rather than bridging the gap, however, the gap between the indigenous population and the white population became bigger than it already was. Belgian newcomers settled in closed-off residential areas with comfortable villas, tennis clubs, bridge clubs and all kinds of public venues like restaurants, bars and grocery stores that were off-limits to blacks, except for the servants that whites brought along. The Congo of the Belgian settler in the first half of the 1950s looked a lot like middle-class suburban California did in the same period, except much more racist.
While the evolués hoped to be rewarded for their efforts at becoming ‘civilized’, the gap between them and the Europeans only increased. The unofficial ‘colour bar’ became even stricter than before with blacks de facto unable to advance up the social ladder. Corporal punishment remained in place for blacks, whether or not they spoke French and Latin fluently, while recognition as equals by the whites remained absent. Racial segregation remained in place and the black elites grew angry with the countless tiny humiliations that were part of every day life in the Belgian Congo. Despite claims to the contrary, the blacks were still seen as and treated like children by the paternalistic structures in place.
In 1948, to address dissatisfaction, the “card of civil merit” was introduced: those who had it lived in separate neighbourhoods and could enter the white districts after six o’clock in the evening. Anyone with a blank criminal record, who had never been banished, who could read, write and do arithmetic, and who had denounced witchcraft and polygamy could get one. It was a meagre reward to those who had done their utmost to live up to European standards of civilization. 1952 therefore saw the introduction of the “immatriculation card”, of which the holders could send their children to European schools. The demands one had to meet to get one, however, were so ridiculous that only 47 people in the entire Congo managed to get one, including future Prime Minister Patrice Emery Lumumba. King Baudouin of Belgium visited his colony in June 1955 and was greeted by enthusiastically cheering crowds who chanted his name and sang the Belgian national hymn, the Brabançonne.
In 1955, in Léopoldville the chairman of an alumni association became head of ABAKO or “Alliance des Bakongo”, which was a tribal cultural organization aimed at defending the interests of the interests of the Bakongo ethnicity in the capital, which was increasingly becoming dominated by the Bangala with their Lingala tongue. He initiated the movement’s transformation into an explicitly political organization, laying the foundations for the politicization of the budding black Congolese middle class. This man was Joseph Kasavubu, born in 1915, a former seminary student who had abandoned the seminary because his calling to become a priest of the Catholic Church had proven wishy-washy. Afterwards, he had been a teacher and a civil servant.
In December of that year in the monthly of the Flemish Catholic workers’ movement there was an article by a certain Jef van Bilsen that spoke of a thirty year plan for Congolese independence. It suggested that Belgium should finally start to form an elite class of engineers, military officers, doctors, civil servants and politicians so that, by 1985, Congo would be able to fend for itself. The French translation appeared in 1956 and was received positively by moderates of the ‘Conscience Africaine’ group headed by Joseph Ileo. It was immediately rejected by Kasavubu and his ABAKO who demanded independence as soon as possible. A rather revolutionary counter-manifesto to that extent, published by ABAKO in August 1956, came as a complete and unpleasant surprise to the European community, which perhaps numbered 100.000 people out of a population of nearly 14 million.
A complete surprise it was not, at least not to those who had bothered to pay attention. Governor-General Léon Pétillon was carrying out a Ten-Year Plan for the infrastructural development of the Belgian Congo. This modernization had not been accompanied by any kind of political representation for the natives since Minister of Colonies Auguste Buisseret had plainly ignored Pétillon’s recommendations on the subject. Their working relationship crumbled as a result. Congo remained behind on other colonies: French colonial subjects could become members of parliament in France and could go to French universities. The Congolese had no such luck.
Pétillon, in the meantime, strengthened his ties with those who were empathetic toward his notions of including the local elites in the administration. Firmin Peigneux had risen from the position of district commissioner all the way to provincial governor by 1948 because of his competence as well as the excellent rapport he had built up with the natives. In 1954, Peigneux was appointed Vice Governor-General [1]. Another such person was André Ryckmans who was the son of Governor-General Pierre Ryckmans (1934-1946), commonly seen as one of the best Governor-Generals the Congo ever had. André Ryckmans spoke Kikongo and Kiyaka fluently and, despite his skin colour, saw himself as Congolese more than Belgian, which earned him a promotion from district commissioner to provincial governor of Bas-Congo. Given that Lingala was replacing Kikongo as the dominant language in Léopoldville, he learnt the basics of that language too. Together with his native Flemish and learnt French he thusly spoke five languages fluently. Pétillon, Peigneux and Ryckmans formed a power bloc in the colonial apparatus and promoted the idea of emancipation of the blacks and a gradual introduction of political participation, bombarding the Ministry of Colonies with memos and quick drafts on the subject. As long as the colony remained calm, however, Brussels disregarded any suggestions of reform.
Boiling tensions finally came to an eruption on June 16th 1957 during a soccer match, which was ironic because soccer had been used as a means to channel frustration and distract from social issues, bread and games to use Caesar’s words. Over 60.000 fans came together in the Stade Roi Baudouin (King Baudouin Stadium) to watch the historical duel between FC Léopoldville and Union Saint-Gilloise, a club from Belgium. Arbitration during the match rested with a Belgian army officer who disqualified two goals made by the Congolese as offside, resulting in a 4-2 victory for their opponents. The crowd was infuriated with what they perceived as a rigged match and riots were the result in which the cars of whites were pelted with rocks. Forty people had been injured and fifty cars had been damaged by the time the police quelled the disturbance.
This was a sight that hadn’t been seen since the birth of the Belgian Congo in 1908 nearly half a century ago! Reluctantly, the government in Brussels took heed of a memorandum sent by Governor-General Pétillon and Vice Governor-General Peigneux proposing local autonomy to soothe malcontent. This came as a major breakthrough after ten years of arguing back and forth on the topic of indigenous political participation. Initially, the government wanted to limit city council elections to three major cities only: Léopoldville, Elisabethville and Jadotville. Pétillon, however, realized all too well that independence wasn’t that far off and that the people of the Congo needed to be crammed through to a position wherein they could take over from the Belgians in only five or ten rather than thirty years or more.
An informal summit concerning the colony’s short and medium term future took place from September 5th to September 7th 1957 in the official residence of socialist Prime Minister Achille van Acker. Pétillon and Peigneux had urged so persistently for such a meeting that Minister of Colonies Buisseret gave in out of exhaustion. The duo compiled a list of the grievances of the indigenous population and read it aloud, expressing their empathy in a way that roused the sympathy of King Baudouin for his African subjects. Prime Minister Van Acker, as a convinced socialist, was also sympathetic, more so since he wasn’t interested in suppressing colonial restiveness.
Pétillon and Peigneux managed to convince Van Acker, Buisseret, King Baudouin and Belgian industrials of the powerful holding Société Générale that Belgian interests were best served if Congo became independent in five to ten years. Continuing on the present course would only aggravate the frustrated bourgeoisie and alienate them which (God forbid) could drive them into the hands of the communists! A friendly, pro-Western Congo was preferable to a hostile communist Congo aligned to Moscow. That much everyone could agree on, especially given the strategic location of the country in the heart of the continent, which made it an ideal base to spread communism to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. That would be a geopolitical and economic nightmare for the West. Congo, at the time, was one of two producers of cobalt (a metal used in the arms industry), the other being the Soviet Union. To prevent chaos after the departure of the 10.000 Belgian civil servants running the country, there had to be Congolese with the education and administrative experience to fill their shoes. Many economic sectors other than the public sector were also dependent on European know-how for lack of academically educated Africans.
City council elections were organized nationwide in December 1957 in which all men aged 21 and older could vote, giving hundreds of Congolese évolués a political mandate for the first time. These city councils were consultative rather than decision-making bodies and a far cry from a ministerial post, but it was a start. Now there were also dozens of black mayors, who in turn acted as advisors to the provincial governors. These mayors made more money than some of the whites living and working in the colonial administration or industry. Among them was Kasavubu, who became mayor of Matadi, the largest port city of the country. Blacks were officially made equal before the law to whites and corporal punishment was abolished.
Besides this, Governor-General Pétillon was given a budget of 10 million francs to vastly expand the academic infrastructure of the University of Lovanium, which was an auxiliary branch of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. It had been founded in 1954 and had started with seven professors and 33 students and the only topics of study were management sciences, science, social sciences, pedagogy and agronomics. This was partially because in 1954 Belgium had still been hostile to this Jesuit initiative aimed at creating an African elite class. In 1957, the government became much more amenable to this initiative and a total of seven faculties were erected, each with multiple departments: arts, humanities, science, law, medicine, engineering, and economics. Because of the promise of an attractive wage of 190.000 francs a year, more than three quarters of what a Belgian member of parliament earned, dozens of professors applied for a position. At the beginning of the 1958-1959 academic year in September 1958, over 1.000 students enrolled, all male since female students weren’t allowed (discriminatory by modern standards, but this development was nonetheless a revolutionary stride forward at the time).
This minor political representation, legal equality and educational opportunities momentarily caused euphoria as everyone was intoxicated with this victory. After all, the whites had now admitted that blacks were equal to them, which was the only thing that many évolués had wanted in the first place! The population was calmed down for the time being, but of course this wouldn’t be sufficient forever. The top administrative positions were still all held by whites and they set policy, and whites also often still earned twice as much for the same type of work (trade unions remained paralyzed because they were under white control). Local grievances were now properly addressed by the colonial government, but it didn’t take long before the people wanted more.
[1] This is the PoD. It leads to a more fore-sighted colonial administration. IOTL, Peigneux left the colony for health reasons in the early 1950s.
Freedom and Brotherhood
Prologue: An Eerie Silence, 1946-1955.
It was the 1950s and for the moment the Belgian Congo, the best developed sub-Saharan European colony, seemed to remain serene and prosperous, anti-colonial and pro-independence sentiments being seemingly absent. In Asia, the story was quite different: the Philippines were granted independence by the United States in 1946, British India became independent from the British Empire in 1947, Burma and Ceylon followed in 1948, the Dutch East Indies officially became independent in 1950, French Indochina freed itself from French rule in 1954, and China expelled foreign, imperialist influence under the leadership of Mao Zedong. In Africa, Libya gained its independence in 1951, Egypt in 1952, Sudan, Tunisia and Morocco in 1956, Ghana in 1957, and Guinea-Conakry in 1958. In Bandung, on Java, a conference of Asian and African countries was organized in 1955 and it referred colonialism to the ash heap of history.
Like most of sub-Saharan Africa, Congo remained under European rule, which didn’t mean that the indigenous population was happy with the colonial regime. In February 1944, the barracks of Luluabourg had seen a major mutiny after a rather bizarre rumour, by Western standards anyway: the soldiers believed that their colonial masters were planning to wipe them out when they came with inoculations, revealing the distrust between the Belgians and their African subjects. Spring 1944 saw a social-religious uprising in the Kivu province near Masisi. In November 1946, roughly 6.000 Congolese working for the railways around Léopoldville began a strike, which spread to the country’s largest port city, Matadi. Telephone lines and railroads were sabotaged until order was restored in 1946 by the ‘Force Publique’, the Congo’s colonial army. Social unrest was caused by World War II: the entire colonial economy was subordinated to the war effort; while the economy grew, living standards dropped during the war years.
The period 1946-1956 was one of an eerie silence that the Belgians interpreted as the success of their work. The Congolese population was politically apathetic, though that was because the Congolese lacked an education and not because they tacitly approved of the colonial administration. That changed in the 1950s because of the fact that, since 1938, the country had seen the gradual introduction of secondary education, creating a semi-educated middle class. From the late 1930s onward a class of ‘evolués’ developed that spoke French fluently, read newspapers and books, went to cinemas, theatres and lectures, ate using cutlery, wore European-style suits with black ties, listened to European music, went to Church on Sunday, and renounced witchcraft and polygamy. They tried to be European in every possible way.
Governor-General Léon Pétillon tried to meet the evolués in the middle by promoting the idea of a Belgian-Congolese community. Rather than bridging the gap, however, the gap between the indigenous population and the white population became bigger than it already was. Belgian newcomers settled in closed-off residential areas with comfortable villas, tennis clubs, bridge clubs and all kinds of public venues like restaurants, bars and grocery stores that were off-limits to blacks, except for the servants that whites brought along. The Congo of the Belgian settler in the first half of the 1950s looked a lot like middle-class suburban California did in the same period, except much more racist.
While the evolués hoped to be rewarded for their efforts at becoming ‘civilized’, the gap between them and the Europeans only increased. The unofficial ‘colour bar’ became even stricter than before with blacks de facto unable to advance up the social ladder. Corporal punishment remained in place for blacks, whether or not they spoke French and Latin fluently, while recognition as equals by the whites remained absent. Racial segregation remained in place and the black elites grew angry with the countless tiny humiliations that were part of every day life in the Belgian Congo. Despite claims to the contrary, the blacks were still seen as and treated like children by the paternalistic structures in place.
In 1948, to address dissatisfaction, the “card of civil merit” was introduced: those who had it lived in separate neighbourhoods and could enter the white districts after six o’clock in the evening. Anyone with a blank criminal record, who had never been banished, who could read, write and do arithmetic, and who had denounced witchcraft and polygamy could get one. It was a meagre reward to those who had done their utmost to live up to European standards of civilization. 1952 therefore saw the introduction of the “immatriculation card”, of which the holders could send their children to European schools. The demands one had to meet to get one, however, were so ridiculous that only 47 people in the entire Congo managed to get one, including future Prime Minister Patrice Emery Lumumba. King Baudouin of Belgium visited his colony in June 1955 and was greeted by enthusiastically cheering crowds who chanted his name and sang the Belgian national hymn, the Brabançonne.
Chapter I: The Évolués Step Forward, 1955-1957.
In 1955, in Léopoldville the chairman of an alumni association became head of ABAKO or “Alliance des Bakongo”, which was a tribal cultural organization aimed at defending the interests of the interests of the Bakongo ethnicity in the capital, which was increasingly becoming dominated by the Bangala with their Lingala tongue. He initiated the movement’s transformation into an explicitly political organization, laying the foundations for the politicization of the budding black Congolese middle class. This man was Joseph Kasavubu, born in 1915, a former seminary student who had abandoned the seminary because his calling to become a priest of the Catholic Church had proven wishy-washy. Afterwards, he had been a teacher and a civil servant.
In December of that year in the monthly of the Flemish Catholic workers’ movement there was an article by a certain Jef van Bilsen that spoke of a thirty year plan for Congolese independence. It suggested that Belgium should finally start to form an elite class of engineers, military officers, doctors, civil servants and politicians so that, by 1985, Congo would be able to fend for itself. The French translation appeared in 1956 and was received positively by moderates of the ‘Conscience Africaine’ group headed by Joseph Ileo. It was immediately rejected by Kasavubu and his ABAKO who demanded independence as soon as possible. A rather revolutionary counter-manifesto to that extent, published by ABAKO in August 1956, came as a complete and unpleasant surprise to the European community, which perhaps numbered 100.000 people out of a population of nearly 14 million.
A complete surprise it was not, at least not to those who had bothered to pay attention. Governor-General Léon Pétillon was carrying out a Ten-Year Plan for the infrastructural development of the Belgian Congo. This modernization had not been accompanied by any kind of political representation for the natives since Minister of Colonies Auguste Buisseret had plainly ignored Pétillon’s recommendations on the subject. Their working relationship crumbled as a result. Congo remained behind on other colonies: French colonial subjects could become members of parliament in France and could go to French universities. The Congolese had no such luck.
Pétillon, in the meantime, strengthened his ties with those who were empathetic toward his notions of including the local elites in the administration. Firmin Peigneux had risen from the position of district commissioner all the way to provincial governor by 1948 because of his competence as well as the excellent rapport he had built up with the natives. In 1954, Peigneux was appointed Vice Governor-General [1]. Another such person was André Ryckmans who was the son of Governor-General Pierre Ryckmans (1934-1946), commonly seen as one of the best Governor-Generals the Congo ever had. André Ryckmans spoke Kikongo and Kiyaka fluently and, despite his skin colour, saw himself as Congolese more than Belgian, which earned him a promotion from district commissioner to provincial governor of Bas-Congo. Given that Lingala was replacing Kikongo as the dominant language in Léopoldville, he learnt the basics of that language too. Together with his native Flemish and learnt French he thusly spoke five languages fluently. Pétillon, Peigneux and Ryckmans formed a power bloc in the colonial apparatus and promoted the idea of emancipation of the blacks and a gradual introduction of political participation, bombarding the Ministry of Colonies with memos and quick drafts on the subject. As long as the colony remained calm, however, Brussels disregarded any suggestions of reform.
Boiling tensions finally came to an eruption on June 16th 1957 during a soccer match, which was ironic because soccer had been used as a means to channel frustration and distract from social issues, bread and games to use Caesar’s words. Over 60.000 fans came together in the Stade Roi Baudouin (King Baudouin Stadium) to watch the historical duel between FC Léopoldville and Union Saint-Gilloise, a club from Belgium. Arbitration during the match rested with a Belgian army officer who disqualified two goals made by the Congolese as offside, resulting in a 4-2 victory for their opponents. The crowd was infuriated with what they perceived as a rigged match and riots were the result in which the cars of whites were pelted with rocks. Forty people had been injured and fifty cars had been damaged by the time the police quelled the disturbance.
This was a sight that hadn’t been seen since the birth of the Belgian Congo in 1908 nearly half a century ago! Reluctantly, the government in Brussels took heed of a memorandum sent by Governor-General Pétillon and Vice Governor-General Peigneux proposing local autonomy to soothe malcontent. This came as a major breakthrough after ten years of arguing back and forth on the topic of indigenous political participation. Initially, the government wanted to limit city council elections to three major cities only: Léopoldville, Elisabethville and Jadotville. Pétillon, however, realized all too well that independence wasn’t that far off and that the people of the Congo needed to be crammed through to a position wherein they could take over from the Belgians in only five or ten rather than thirty years or more.
An informal summit concerning the colony’s short and medium term future took place from September 5th to September 7th 1957 in the official residence of socialist Prime Minister Achille van Acker. Pétillon and Peigneux had urged so persistently for such a meeting that Minister of Colonies Buisseret gave in out of exhaustion. The duo compiled a list of the grievances of the indigenous population and read it aloud, expressing their empathy in a way that roused the sympathy of King Baudouin for his African subjects. Prime Minister Van Acker, as a convinced socialist, was also sympathetic, more so since he wasn’t interested in suppressing colonial restiveness.
Pétillon and Peigneux managed to convince Van Acker, Buisseret, King Baudouin and Belgian industrials of the powerful holding Société Générale that Belgian interests were best served if Congo became independent in five to ten years. Continuing on the present course would only aggravate the frustrated bourgeoisie and alienate them which (God forbid) could drive them into the hands of the communists! A friendly, pro-Western Congo was preferable to a hostile communist Congo aligned to Moscow. That much everyone could agree on, especially given the strategic location of the country in the heart of the continent, which made it an ideal base to spread communism to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. That would be a geopolitical and economic nightmare for the West. Congo, at the time, was one of two producers of cobalt (a metal used in the arms industry), the other being the Soviet Union. To prevent chaos after the departure of the 10.000 Belgian civil servants running the country, there had to be Congolese with the education and administrative experience to fill their shoes. Many economic sectors other than the public sector were also dependent on European know-how for lack of academically educated Africans.
City council elections were organized nationwide in December 1957 in which all men aged 21 and older could vote, giving hundreds of Congolese évolués a political mandate for the first time. These city councils were consultative rather than decision-making bodies and a far cry from a ministerial post, but it was a start. Now there were also dozens of black mayors, who in turn acted as advisors to the provincial governors. These mayors made more money than some of the whites living and working in the colonial administration or industry. Among them was Kasavubu, who became mayor of Matadi, the largest port city of the country. Blacks were officially made equal before the law to whites and corporal punishment was abolished.
Besides this, Governor-General Pétillon was given a budget of 10 million francs to vastly expand the academic infrastructure of the University of Lovanium, which was an auxiliary branch of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. It had been founded in 1954 and had started with seven professors and 33 students and the only topics of study were management sciences, science, social sciences, pedagogy and agronomics. This was partially because in 1954 Belgium had still been hostile to this Jesuit initiative aimed at creating an African elite class. In 1957, the government became much more amenable to this initiative and a total of seven faculties were erected, each with multiple departments: arts, humanities, science, law, medicine, engineering, and economics. Because of the promise of an attractive wage of 190.000 francs a year, more than three quarters of what a Belgian member of parliament earned, dozens of professors applied for a position. At the beginning of the 1958-1959 academic year in September 1958, over 1.000 students enrolled, all male since female students weren’t allowed (discriminatory by modern standards, but this development was nonetheless a revolutionary stride forward at the time).
This minor political representation, legal equality and educational opportunities momentarily caused euphoria as everyone was intoxicated with this victory. After all, the whites had now admitted that blacks were equal to them, which was the only thing that many évolués had wanted in the first place! The population was calmed down for the time being, but of course this wouldn’t be sufficient forever. The top administrative positions were still all held by whites and they set policy, and whites also often still earned twice as much for the same type of work (trade unions remained paralyzed because they were under white control). Local grievances were now properly addressed by the colonial government, but it didn’t take long before the people wanted more.
[1] This is the PoD. It leads to a more fore-sighted colonial administration. IOTL, Peigneux left the colony for health reasons in the early 1950s.
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