The New Yorker Books:

The Belgians wanted to protect their mining money. The Americans feared a Soviet foothold. A new book sorts through the fate of the leader of the fight for Congolese independence.

By Isaac Chotiner 

“It is now up to you, gentlemen, to show that we were right to trust you.” So King Baudouin, of Belgium, declared in the Congolese capital of Léopoldville (present-day Kinshasa) on June 30, 1960. It was a handover ceremony: the Belgian Congo would henceforth belong to the Congolese people. Decades later, Baudouin’s condescension remains startling. His great-great-uncle Leopold II had overseen what was then called the Congo Free State as his personal fiefdom—and established a system of exploitation that was monstrous even by colonial standards. But by 1960 the Belgian government could no longer ignore the wave of anti-imperialist movements that had swept much of the continent. Now the twenty-nine-year-old monarch told the crowd—made up of new Congolese citizens, Belgian officials, and dignitaries from around the world—that independence would be “achieved not through the immediate satisfaction of simple pleasures but through work.”

Baudouin was followed in the speaking order by Joseph Kasavubu—independent Congo’s President, a relatively ceremonial role—though nobody really remembers what he said. It was Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s Prime Minister, who left an impression when he rose to speak next. A slim, enigmatic man, Lumumba was the most important politician in the country, and the one whom the Belgians were most concerned about. Lumumba’s remarks were clearly a direct reply to Baudouin’s. He ticked through the daily humiliations of life for Black Africans in the Belgian Congo, and recalled the violence visited upon his people. And then, his voice rising, he told his countrymen, “We who suffered in our bodies and hearts from colonialist oppression, we say to you out loud: from now on, all that is over.”

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