The U.S.-Sanctioned Coup in the Congo

With Stuart A. Reid of Foreign Affairs

Last week, the fourth election in the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo took place. Watched closely by foreign countries thirsty for the Congo’s natural resources, the election didn’t go smoothly, and opposition leaders have called for protests and the annulment of the results. As the situation unfolds, I thought I’d share an interview with Stuart A. Reid exploring how the U.S. steered the country towards its tumultuous crossroads today.

Stuart is an executive editor at Foreign Affairs magazine. He’s written for publications like The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Businessweek, Politico Magazine, and Slate. Most recently, he’s the author of The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination.

A condensed transcript edited for clarity is below. You can also listen to the audio of our conversation, which includes further exploration of Patrice Lumumba’s early years and his rise to power, how Belgium intentionally set the Congo up for failure after independence, Dwight Eisenhower’s not-so-friendly views of Africa, and more:

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Ben: Stuart, thank you so much for being here today.

SAR: I’m thrilled to be joining you. 

Ben: Today I’d like to explore the CIA-backed plot to overthrow Patrice Lumumba. 

To begin, can you talk about Belgium, King Leopold, and the colonial context in which Lumumba was born? 

SAR: So in 1885, King Leopold II of Belgium founded the Congo Free State, as he called it, in the Congo River Basin. It was different from other European colonies in that it didn't belong to the Belgian state, but was the personal fiefdom of King Leopold himself. 

At a certain point, his goal switched to economic extraction. There are infamous photographs of Belgians forcing Congolese to mine rubber, and the Congo under King Leopold earned a place in the pantheon of human atrocities. Millions of people died. In 1908, the colony was transferred to the Belgian government itself, where many of the abuses that existed under King Leopold continued. 

Patrice Lumumba was born in 1925, after that transfer of power, in a rural village in the middle of the Belgian Congo. He migrated to a city — the city of Stanleyville, now known as Kisangani — and there began his rise.

Ben: You describe Lumumba as a nomad and that, in moving around the Congo, he “transcended an identity tied to his birthplace or his ethnicity.” 

What do you mean?

SAR: Well, there was no nationalist movement for independence in the Congo until very late. The Belgians had a deliberate policy of no elites, no problems; the thinking being that if they prevented the emergence of a Congolese elite, they’d avoid pesky demands for independence. 

So the Belgians denied Congolese access to higher education, and professional advancement was severely limited. Congolese couldn't become lawyers, but they could become clerks. They couldn't become doctors, but they could be veterinarian assistants, and so on. 

France and Britain, for all their colonial abuses — and there were many — at least allowed for local legislatures, and African politicians were represented in the National Assembly in Paris. In the Belgian Congo, you had none of that.

Ben: Rephrased in Dunder Mifflin terms, France agreed to train the managers of regional offices, whereas Belgium agreed only to train assistants to the regional managers. 

SAR: Ha, that’s right.

Amid that backdrop, Lumumba’s sense of national pride was uncommon. He developed an identity as Congolese at a time when other emerging Congolese politicians argued that the idea of the Congo itself was a fiction: lines drawn on a map by colonial powers in Europe grouping hundreds of different ethnicities, languages, regions, geographies, etc. Lumumba, who began to lead the Congolese National Movement (MNC) in the late ‘50s, was nearly alone in advocating for a strong central government, free of the Belgians, and a unified country.

Ben: In a testament to his charisma and the growing appeal of his national perspective, Lumumba became prime minister in June 1960, after the MNC won the most votes in the first elections following independence.

SAR: Yes. Though the Congo’s independence movement emerged later than other African decolonization efforts, things changed very quickly in the second half of the 1950s. The Belgians, realizing the winds of change were blowing across Africa quickly offloaded their colony. 

But because they had systematically stifled Congolese professional and academic advancement, the Congo had a political class taking power that was as unprepared as possible. There were fewer than 20 Congolese university graduates in the entire world who could help the country find its footing.

Ben: Maybe unsurprisingly then, Lumumba found it hard to govern — immediately.

SAR: Yes, soon there was a massive crisis with multiple aspects: the Congolese army mutinied, the Belgian military intervened without permission, and the mineral-rich province of Katanga seceded.

Lumumba asked the UN for help, which set up a massive peacekeeping operation, but he grew frustrated because the UN wouldn't reintegrate the secessionist province by force. He then knocked on the doors of the Americans and flew to Washington to try to meet with President Dwight Eisenhower. Ike was out of town, so Lumumba instead got a meeting with the State Department, where he asked for direct military help and was rebuffed.

Ben: I suppose it’s time to introduce the American perspective of Lumumba and the Congo. 

SAR: The broader context here of course was the Cold War. As former colonies became independent, America worried that many of them would be inclined toward the Soviets.

Only after asking the UN and then the U.S. for help did Lumumba ask the Soviets for military aid. That was the key moment that shaped American perceptions, even though there was never any good reason to think that Lumumba would've turned the country communist. He had just thrown off the yoke of Belgian colonialism. He wasn't about to let his country be dominated by the Soviets, as he said repeatedly. 

Ben: I’ll remind readers that our old dogmatic pals, the Dulles brothers, headed the CIA and State Department at the time. 

Can you talk about how the U.S. turned to Lumumba’s friend, Joseph Mobutu, for help?

SAR: At the heart of this story is a friendship and a betrayal.