Post-Independence Politics in the Congo

Abstract

On July 5th, 1960, only five days after independence, the Commanding General of the new Congolese National Army, Emile Janssens, called a meeting of the Congolese non-commissioned officers of the Leopoldville garrison, to discuss certain signs of indiscipline which he detected. Janssens was a blunt and outspoken man, unaccustomed to diluting his words with tact or diplomacy-indeed, a most bizarre commanding general for an army whose mission was now to preserve order for the new radical African nationalist government of Patrice Lumumba. Since his retirement, Janssens has placed his leadership talents at the service of miscellaneous neo-fascist organisations in Belgium. And on that particular day, the General strode into the room, with a couple of hundred Congolese non-coms standing stiffly at attention, strode to the black-board, and wrote AFTER INDEPENDENCE = BEFORE INDEPENDENCE. Later that same afternoon, the first outright instances of disobedience to the European officers began. And that evening, when a column of reinforcements summoned from the nearby garrison at Thysville refused to march, and arrested its European officers instead, the mutiny was on-and the Congo had entered the dreary cycle of breakdown-a downward spiral which reached its nadir at the end of the year.