Death in the Congo: Murdering Patrice Lumumba, by Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick

Abstract

Reviewed by: Robert Waters, Ohio Northern University, rawatersjr@yahoo.com or r-waters@onu.eduPatrice Lumumba's assassination has been the subject of many studies. Economic determinism has been their authors' preferred analytical approach; morality tale has provided their tone. Death in the Congo is not more of the same. It is a model of scholarship, featuring subtle portraiture, historical empathy, and skilled use of social science. Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick are also outstanding historical detectives. They mine Belgian materials, along with the recent Foreign Relations of the United States volume on the Congo, and do an impressive job squeezing the last ounce of information out of the US Senate investigation of CIA plots to assassinate foreign leaders. Their meticulous research enables them to track sometimes minute events that broaden and deepen the story of Lumumba's precipitous rise and fall. Of particular note is the authors' focus on the international dimension of domestic politics in Belgium, the United States, and the Congo, as well as the goals and pretensions of United Nations leaders. The result is a persuasive account including many surprising revisionist conclusions.For example, Gerard and Kuklick lay the groundwork for a strong case that Joseph Mobutu (Mobutu Sese Seko) was--briefly--the first of sub-Saharan Africa's reformer military men. They show that he did not begin life as a corrupt Machiavellian on America's payroll. His first coup came at a time of radical political dysfunction, which he sought to repair by creating a College of Commissioners: young university students and graduates to whom he gave real power. In this first iteration, Mobutu vacillated and hedged, often terrified by his alternatives, even at times seeming to lean toward Lumumba.In like fashion, the authors show that Katanga's Moise Tshombe and other secessionist leaders were not colonialist lackeys; they represented peoples who sought a decentralized state under local control based on tribe and tradition, maintaining close Belgian ties to prevent political and economic collapse. Here, the authors would have done well to consult and possibly confront the work of journalists Arnaud de Borchgrave and Smith Hempstone. De Borchgrave, Newsweek magazine's chief foreign reporter and the American immigrant son of Belgian aristocracy, was the most connected foreign journalist of his time, especially in the Congo. Hempstone's Rebels, Mercenaries and Dividends: The Story (New York: Praeger, 1962) argued that was the sort of multi-racial, capitalist, and comparatively free society that the West purported to support for Africa. Hempstone also covered the US role played by influential senator Thomas Dodd and America's Katanga Lobby, neither of which the authors mention.Gerard and Kuklick also demolish former CIA station chief Larry Devlin's effort to portray himself as the moral exemplar who prevented the United States from killing Lumumba. In a situation where nobody in Washington knew much about the Congo, Devlin's shrill warnings energized the US government against Lumumba. That the United States did not kill Lumumba, the authors surprisingly suggest, was thanks to CIA director Allen Dulles, whom they suggest opposed assassination as US government policy. The authors argue that by 1960 Dulles was a loud but complacent empire builder primarily interested in expanding his bureaucratic power and the CIA's budget. They make a strong case that Dulles amplified Devlin's cries of wolf within the Eisenhower administration, then was surprised by Eisenhower's order to kill Lumumba. …