ABSTRACT
The events of January 1963 were in many ways a triumph for the United Nations and the proactive role in Africa of the Kennedy administration. The country had been united at very little cost in terms of loss of life or major damage to the economic infrastructure of the copper industry. Yet the victory was in many ways a pyrrhic one, and not simply because it had been achieved at the last gasp of the UN operation. Putting together a vast country that had never been united, except under alien domination, was never likely to be an easy task and the factors which had produced secession were still present and had in some respects been made worse by the protracted conflict to create the political framework of a viable centralised state. The absence of a unified source of authority and the defiance of the central government by the Tshombe regime had added to the inadequacies and deliberately created burdens left by the Belgian colonial state. These now had much more serious consequences than the conflict between Léopoldville and Élisabethville. The growing economic problems of the Congo were linked to the difficulties left by the Belgians which had been exacerbated by numerous political divisions. The direct and indirect costs of secession, and the resources devoted to preventing other manifestations of dissent, had left the country’s finances in an even more parlous state. They were also handicapped by African politicians’ attitudes to the use of money and resources which were inherently connected to political power. And finally the self-interested motives of foreign mercenaries and settlers and those of the owners of capital in European enterprises were another burden for the Congo to bear. When mixed with the cross-border interference from a variety of actors from South Africa and Europe to Northern Rhodesia, Rwanda, Angola and Tanganyika they constituted a heady cocktail of instability, without the intelligent agents of at least four countries. The economic problems could not be separated from the country’s role in the international economy and the original sources of capital and the distribution of its profits from the Congo. This in turn had implications for the domestic viability of the state, the economic and political framework of which had been created by the Belgians. Yet the African aspects of the internal divisions in the Congo, which were of an almost unprecedented complexity, remained significant as the internal and external problems became mutually reinforcing. It would have been
so for any unitary government, let alone one further weakened by the secession of Katanga. Although the Kennedy administration should be credited for struggling within its Cold War mindset to produce a unified Katanga, that Cold War political solution was not going to be easily achieved or attached to a viable national economy or society despite the apparent UN victory. American interventions, however praiseworthy, have rarely been carried out with a proper understanding of the society they were acting in, nor with a coherent and viable plan for that society’s future. The Cold War not only gave a semi-religious fervour to this interventionist mantra but it ensured, largely through American propaganda, that internal problems were often superseded by perceptions of external requirements. The CIA was considering the specific post-secession problems as early as the beginning of January 1963 when the collapse of the regime in Élisabethville was not yet certain. Always present in this key African state for the Kennedy administration, the CIA sounded an early warning but not in the usual Cold War terms. The external consequences for the white settlers and the capitalist organisations of the Western world were, however, given prominence and connected to predicted internal troubles. Tshombe was seen as the ‘only person in Katanga preventing the clash of opposing tribal groups’. The ever-present fear of attacks on European installations was seen as possibly requiring UN administration, yet the UN was not deemed fit to undertake such a task. More specifically the CIA believed that only Tshombe could control dissident elements within his Lunda people, who formed the dominant ethnic group in the commercially profitable South Katanga. Without such ‘moderate’ African influence, extremists opposing any kind of co-operation with the UN (still dominated for most Congo purposes by the US) or with European states or institutions, including the Union Minière, would gain control. These dangerous elements were not primarily defined as radical groups by the CIA but as the far-right forces epitomised in the Katangan Interior Minister Godefroid Munongo, who would allegedly take to the bush and produce an exodus of Europeans. Accompanied by the mercenaries who had made Tshombe’s Katangan gendarmerie into a more disciplined fighting force the result would be pressure for intervention, not from communists but from the European elements in Rhodesia.1 It was a modified version of the US fear of a more general black v. white African conflict. The CIA was also explicit about the extent of the actual Soviet role in the Congo, indicating how Soviet threats were evaluated in the CIA – as opposed to how they have been presented to the world. It was believed that the Soviets (as opposed to left-wing ideologues) realised that they had no effective means of intervening, but that the US had little prospect of stabilising the situation in the Congo. The end of Katangan secession might lead the Soviets to renew their offers of assistance and the policy in Moscow of waiting for opportunities to increase their influence would continue. It was acknowledged that elements in the ANC (Mobutu) might not be receptive to any aid offers but that opportunities for subversion would remain. Even though Moscow might view the situation as potentially favourable they would be dependent on local developments which
they could only indirectly influence. Most significantly the Congo was regarded as not being a central problem for the Kremlin as the Soviet stake was small and involved ‘neither vital interests nor a commitment of prestige’.2 The CIA was of course only one actor in Washington. The State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research was less taken with the CIA idea that Tshombe’s ability to contain conflict at the local Katangan level was necessary to prevent disturbances and ensure order. Avoiding the chaos and instability the CIA predicted was therefore not deemed to depend on Tshombe’s presence, although it was conceded that there was a dearth of alternative indigenous leaders in Katanga. The State Department pointed to the continuing problem with the Baluba community who still formed an important component of the UMHK labour force. In addition the issues of Tshombe’s political skills and his appeal to the Katanganese were not tied to the normal Cold War assumption that disorder, at whatever level, was likely to breed communism, but to a more accurate assessment of what was at stake for the United States. On the one hand the maintenance of order was deemed necessary in South Katanga because of the large white population allegedly required to run the industrial complex, and whose departure, if it occurred in the face of repeated outbreaks of violence, would leave a gap that could not easily be filled. It was also conceded that Tshombe would make it easier for the UN and US to justify past interventions so right-wing outrage in Europe and African settler circles would be reduced. Perhaps most important of all, Tshombe’s retention would please the Belgians whose co-operation and financial commitments were regarded as important for the Congo’s future by the State Department. In other words the Bureau of Intelligence and Research believed Tshombe’s African role would be slightly less significant than the CIA believed. It preferred to emphasise the damage to US international interests that the failure of the UN would entail and the benefits that Tshombe could bring to the maintenance of good American relations with the Europeans.3 Paradoxically, the Soviet role in the situation was emphasised, if not exaggerated, most by the prime US Tshombe detractor Ambassador Gullion. ‘How strong Soviet position actually was can be gauged from the fact that in early weeks of December Adoula government could have been toppled (and inevitably replaced by leftist group)’ he claimed. Gullion was convinced any successor government to Adoula’s would have accepted Soviet military aid ‘with all its trappings including technicians’.4 The international conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States could be simplistically interwoven with local conflicts inside newly decolonised nation states like the Congo. Reacting to the ‘humiliation’ of having to withdraw its Ilyushins in September 1960, Moscow began a campaign ‘to shatter the fabric of UN co-ordinated reconstruction efforts, undermine stability throughout the Congo and cultivate divisive political and military factions’. It was almost as if the problems in the Congo resulting from independence and the actions of the Belgian government, and the representatives of Belgian enterprises and their supporters, had been erased from the historical map. The alleged local consequences were defined only in terms of
subsequent Soviet actions. Despite the relatively small numbers of Soviet representatives, and proportionally, equally small African supporters, the Congo was seen by Cold Warriors such as Gullion, a close contact of the CIA station chief Devlin, as a platform for communist efforts to provide massive aid for Angola, subvert southern Sudan, agitate along the Rwanda and Burundi borders and emasculate the UN.5 Communist strategy was seen as focusing on politicians in parliament, the military, youth groups, and radio and newspaper personnel, in an almost exact replica of what US agencies were actually doing. In parliament the radical Congo representatives would mouth ‘communist stereotypes’ fed to them by embassy staff openly coaching from the sidelines (the CIA found money a more effective trainer). And then there was the castigation of the US, including ‘a seriously intended attack on the American chicken farm programme, obviously derived from low level black propaganda’. Poultry attacks were evidence of a Cold War communist scheme as a similar attack in Egypt in the mid-1950s was deemed to have taken place. After the subversion of chicken farm programmes the communists allegedly invented the myth that Tshombe and European financial interests were being protected by the West! This was the way in which the Cold War international situation was translated into an analysis of local difficulties. Real socio-economic problems and their political consequences, if considered, were only analysed in general terms and the specific causes of these post-colonial problems rarely addressed.6 The preconditions for effective nation building in a unified Congo state, with its vast area and diverse population, were difficult to meet in reality. The uneven economic development with the bulk of production (apart from that needed for local consumption) concentrated problematically in three distinct districts was recognised. Yet its cause and cure were considered only in terms of the lack of, and general need for, an economically viable, politically coherent Congo state with a moderate government. The immediate requirement had been dealing with the secession problem, but the Katangan region had an economic infrastructure built on Western values and should have been suitable for a successful developmental model in the Cold War. Gullion defined Cold War successes more in propaganda than economic terms and proposed that Radio Léopoldville should be used for the transmission of ‘suitable stories and articles as received from Washington’. Accompanying these should be an information officer to place materials in the local press. Film trucks should visit villages to ensure that the US and UN position was explained to the rural people who would now need to understand Katanga as an integrated part of the Republic.7 While this was going on one could become convinced, albeit mistakenly, that the American reaction to the Congo’s difficulties grew out of the Soviet involvement to which the Americans, as ever, were allegedly merely responding. The Americans were right in that the problems of Katangan secession were central, to the troubles experienced by the new state and that most had been made worse by the problems following independence. They were by no means
the only difficulties. The fundamental military problem had arisen out of the conflict in North Katanga between Tshombe’s forces and the ANC. Was a Katanga integrated into the GOC containing two provinces of North and South Katanga preferable to a single province where the dominant political grouping, based on the ethnic Baluba and Lunda people, would be the BALUBAKATCONAKAT coalition? The old chestnut of disparate Congo opposition groups, of which there were plenty in South Katanga, being unable to unite in the face of a common enemy was once again in evidence. It was deemed unlikely by the consul in Élisabethville that Tshombe could be pushed out of office by parliamentary means.8 This was an important consideration for the Americans to face when dealing with Tshombe. In February 1964 it may have been a factor in the eventual replacement of Ambassador Gullion whose antipathy for Tshombe was well known. In a damning telegram, Gullion described Tshombe as someone who had been threatening to blow up Belgian property (the UMHK installations) if action was taken against him and who had contributed to tribal peace by slaughtering thousands of Balubas.9 Gullion saw him as allying with the Gizengists to assist in the maintenance of Katanga’s secession, and thus capable of allowing a communist influenced government to attain power.10 If Tshombe was to remain a powerful force in Katanga, would it be preferable to limit this influence to South Katanga or to bring the north into a unified province and thereby make it likely that his dominant position would be extended even though the opposition would be more extensive? In any case, it was unclear how far Tshombe would sincerely follow the national reconciliation requirement recent events had forced him to swallow.11 When Tshombe returned to Élisabethville at the end of the first week in February, he was both emollient and offering to assist in incorporating more representatives of ethnic minorities into his provincial Cabinet whether Katanga was divided or unified. His argument in favour of unity was that the North Katangan government would be incapable of dealing with tribal minorities in Kongolo and remain in poverty if not balanced by the more affluent South.12
