57 years of Lumumba and Fanon’s ghosts
THE 18th of January marks 57 years of Lumumba’s love declaration for Africa before his execution by colonisers of his mother country, Congo in 1961.
To this day, Congo remains a prototype of Europe’s uttermost commitment to dehumanising Africa as pronounced by King Leopold II of Belgium in his letter to Missionaries in 1831 on how they were to execute the tearing apart of Congo. King Leopold’s letter sets out the terms of how the Congo dismembering project was to be initiated through religion and the then colonial political structure.
Patrice Lumumba was one of the few who rose to challenge the foundation of this system, thus leading to his murder in the hands of the Belgian imperialists. Before his gruesome killing he wrote the following to his wife Pauline: My Dear Wife, I am writing these words not knowing whether they will reach you, when they will reach you, and whether I shall still be alive when you read them.
All through my struggle for the independence of my country, I have never doubted for a single instant the final triumph of the sacred cause to which my companions and I have devoted all our lives.
But what we wished for our country, its right to an honourable life, to unstained dignity, to independence without restrictions, was never desired by the Belgian imperialists and their Western allies who found direct and indirect support, both deliberate and unintentional among certain high officials of the United Nations, that organisation in which we placed all our trust when we called on its assistance.
They have corrupted some of our compatriots and bribed others. They have helped to distort the truth and bring our independence into dishonour. How could I speak otherwise?
Dead or alive, free or in prison by order of the imperialists, it is not I myself who count. It is the Congo; it is our poor people for whom independence has been transformed into a cage from beyond whose confines the outside world looks on us, sometimes with kindly sympathy but at other times with joy and pleasure.
But my faith will remain unshakeable. I know and feel in my heart that sooner or later my people will rid themselves of all their enemies, both internal and external, and that they will rise as one man to say no to the degradation and shame of colonialism, and regain their dignity in the dear light of the sun.
As to my children whom I leave and whom I may never see again, I should like them to be told that it is for every Congolese, to accomplish the sacred task of reconstructing our independence and our sovereignty for without justice there is no liberty, without justice there is no dignity, and without independence there are no free men.
Neither brutality, nor cruelty, nor torture will ever bring me to ask for mercy, for I prefer to die with my head unbowed, my faith unshakeable and with profound trust in the destiny of my country, rather than live under subjection and disregarding sacred principles.
History will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that is taught in Brussels, Paris, Washington or at the United Nations, but the history which will be taught in the countries freed from imperialism and its puppets. Africa will write its own history, and to the north and south of the Sahara, it will be a glorious and dignified history.
Do not weep for me, my dear wife. I know that my country, which is suffering so much, will know how to defend its independence and its liberty. Long Live Congo, Long Live Africa Patrice.
Patrice Lumumba’s annunciation for love to Africa in his farewell letter still makes sense to this day as we probe the relevance of nationalism, pan-Africanism and all the redemptive diagnostic concepts to Africa’s self-determination. In Fanon’s terms this comes against a background of “pitfalls of national consciousness.” Love for Africa and the founding nationalist values of our countries have been bartered for parochial political leanings as well as mass subscription to neo-liberal leanings largely depicting Africa wilderness of ignorance with no knowledge of democracy and good governance.
Lumumba’s love remarks for Congo and Africa at large provide the benchmarks with which today’s generation can evaluate all post-independence developments in Africa. The post-independence political dispensation we celebrate today was hinged on multiple aspirations namely the attainment of majority rule, liberty, freedom and equality, liberation, independence, democracy, power to the people, equitable distribution of wealth and opportunities, non-racism and non-sexism, among many other tenets of the African dream.
In 1961 on December the 6th, Africa lost another revolutionary intellectual in the person of Frantz Fanon. His contribution to the decolonisation debate was largely grounded on the failure of the potential post-colonial state in eradicating the institutionalisation of the colonial power structure. Fanon’s condescension for the national bourgeoisie ascends from his consciousness of how their primary goal of decolonisation is not essentially transforming the political system and improving the situation of the majority.
Their prime wish is to gain access to the wealth and social status that had previously been requisitioned by the colonists. They wish to drain the povo and natural resources for their selfish benefit just as the colonisers did.
They simply have no heart for the povo and their immiseration which they are responsible for as a result of duplicating the character of the erstwhile oppressor.
Fanon further problematises the supposedly decolonial national bourgeoisie, defined by its Eurocentric education and culture, credited with founding the political parties, which give rise to the country’s future leaders and those that negotiate the terms of decolonisation with the colonist country. However, the societal and financial well-being of the national bourgeoisie prevents them from supporting a violent insurgence (which might dismantle their self-serving status).
In fact, “once a party has achieved national unanimity and has arose as the outstanding negotiator, the colonialist begins his manoeuvring and delays negotiations as long as possible” in order to “whittle away” the party’s demands. Consequently, the party must eliminate itself of extremists who make the granting of liberation charters problematic.
The result of such a path to decolonisation is simply a cloaked form of the former colonialism. Prior to decolonisation, the “mother country” realises the inevitability of “freedom,” and thus drains most of the “capital and technicians and encircling the young nation with an apparatus of economic pressure”. The young, supposedly independent nation, therefore, is forced to preserve the economic conduits recognised by the colonial regime.
The national bourgeoisie, in their incomplete and lifeless state, do not have the means to provide either capital or classy and refined economic leadership to the new republic, and must therefore have faith in colonial bankers’ loans and counsel, which all aim at forcing the new nation to remain hooked on its former coloniser just as it was during the colonial period.
The desire to end this dependence on the colonial powers leads the new country to attempt the impossible and rapidly develop an idealistic, organic, nationalist form of capitalism that is thoroughly diversified for the purpose of economic and political stability.
Additionally, Fanon projects that after colonisation the national bourgeoisie occupy the posts once reserved for colonists from within their party ranks.
Thus, the party becomes a “screen between the masses and the leadership”, and party die-hard revolutionaries are neglected as the “party itself becomes an administration and the militants fall back into line and adopt the hollow title of citizen”.
Therefore, it is only through a violent insurrection aimed at destroying everything touched by colonialism that a new species of new (decolonial) beings will be produced. On the other hand, Fanon prescribes the need to obliterate the religious and tribal divisions aggravated by the colonists.
The depreciation of these divisive attitudes will facilitate urgency of harmony to be realised by the masses. The individualism espoused by the colonists will succumb to the quest of the colonised for Pan-Africanism and revisiting the legacy of nationalism.
Africa has a magnanimous reformation path to define herself outside the terms set out by the colonialists. Africa must secure a space for her rebirth out of poverty, corruption, nepotism, crime, war and tribalism.
What a great time will that be when we reflect on the warnings of Lumumba and Fanon as memory leaflets of a past buried in peace, unity and prosperity. What a day will that be when we all love Africa just as Lumumba and Fanon did!
Mayibuye!