Kennedy and Congo: The Battle for Africa Pt. 1

In 1870 Europe controlled about ten percent of Africa, most of it along the coasts. The major colonizers were Portugal, England and France.

 By 1902, 90 percent of Africa was colonized by seven European countries. In addition to the three named above, there was now Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain. In fact, the Chancellor of Germany, Otto Von Bismarck, had called for a conference on the subject in 1884. It was called the Berlin Conference and was attended by 14 nations, including the USA.  Many historians mark this conference as igniting what was called the “scramble for Africa”. For example, most of the Sahara became French, and the Sudan became British. Somalia and Eritrea became Italian.

A special group that attended the conference was called the International Congo Society. This group was put together by Leopold II of Belgium. In fact, Bismarck called the conference at the request of Leopold. The goals of the Society were to take control of the Congo Basin for purposes of uncovering and utilizing its natural resources. The conference approved the International Congo Society as a sovereign entity over the territories it was named after. 

The stockholders in the company were Dutch and British businessmen, plus a Belgian banker serving as a front for Leopold. The president of the company was appointed by Leopold. Once the conference divided Africa into spheres of influence for Europe, this confirmed control of Congo by the group and Leopold took direct control of the Society.   On April 10,1884, the US Senate gave permission to President Chester Arthur to acknowledge and approve this  control. It was the first nation to do so. (NY Times Book Review, 9/20/98, by Jeremy Harding.)

This era is usually referred to as the second Age of Imperialism. Unlike the first, which focused on the Western Hemisphere, the Europeans were now more interested in Africa and Asia e.g. France in Indochina.  But however one refers to it, the takeover of Congo by Leopold unleashed a reign of colonial terror that was so brutal that it became legendary. Ironically, Leopold now named the area, the Congo Free State. It was the second largest in Africa and one of the largest states in the world. Leopold directly controlled Congo from 1885-1908.  It was then annexed as a colony entitled Belgian Congo.

What Leopold wanted most out of the basin was ivory and rubber. These were recovered by use of slave labor and that labor was enforced through physical intimidation: torture and maiming, including severed hands.  Once word got out about this horror, two things happened.  As noted above, Leopold turned over formal control to the Belgian government. Secondly, as Adam Hochschild noted in his book, King Leopold’s Ghost, before this transference, many papers about Leopold’s dominion were incinerated in the furnaces of the royal palace. (NY Times Book Review, 9/1/98, article by Michiko Kakutani) As late as 2005, this subject was a sensitive one in Belgium. (New York Review of Books, 10-26-05, article by Hochschild.)

What made Leopold’s Congo atrocities even more troubling was the fact that Leopold himself was never in the Congo. (op. cit. Harding) Therefore, as Hochschild describes it, what he did there could be compared to what a bomber pilot does in the stratosphere, “who never hears the screams or sees shattered homes or torn flesh.” (Harding) Such would not be the case many years later for both the French and the Americans in Vietnam.

How many perished due to Leopold’s imperial ambitions? The population may have been reduced by as much as fifty percent in fifty years. That is from the 1870’s to 1924. Which would mean about ten million died. (Harding, op .cit.) There were three men who Hochschild named as exposing the horrors that Leopold had unleashed in Congo. These were Edmund Morel, an Irishman who spent years inspecting cargo on ships navigating from the Congo Basin to Europe.  The second was Roger Casement, a British consul in Africa who wrote a blistering report for Parliament in 1904. This turned most of England against Leopold.

The third person who exposed the horror of the Belgian regime was, of course, the great author Joseph Conrad. His novel about the subject, Heart of Darkness, became a classic of English literature, featuring sailor Charles Marlow relating the character of the ivory trader Colonel Kurtz. To this day it is the most widely read book about Leopold’s torturous regime. Hochschild described the novel as “the greatest portrait in fiction of Europeans in the scramble for Africa.” (op. cit. Harding) In fact, Conrad had worked as a steamer on the Congo River and was a temporary captain replacing one who got sick. In his book he satirically refers to the International Congo Society and its true aims.

But let us not forget the role of a fourth famous personage, Henry Morton Stanley in all this. The explorer made the first forays into Congo on Leopold’s behalf. This was in the late 1870’s. Leopold was determined to hide what was really happening as long as possible. So he wanted to create the hoary myth of his mission as piercing the darkened blight around these primitive peoples and also, and ludicrously, as abolishing the slave trade. Leopold put Stanley in charge of this salesmanship by sending him out on tour to address crowded theaters on the topic of civilizing “the neglected millions of the dark continent.” (op. cit. Harding)

Leopold’s diplomatic reach extended into Washington DC, where he employed the chairman of the Senate Relations Committee to promote a resolution backing his claims for the Congo. In fact, that resolution was written by the chairman himself, a man named John Tyler Morgan. Hochschild described Leopold’s American PR campaign as “probably the most sophisticated piece of Washington lobbying on behalf of a foreign ruler in the 19^th century.” (ibid, Harding)

It took World War II and first, the surrender of France to Germany, then the fall of Mussolini, followed by the wreckage of the Third Reich and the Japanese empire to begin to dislodge the second Age of Imperialism. Between 1945 and 1960, three dozen new states in Africa and Asia achieved autonomy from their European masters. In some cases, as in Indochina and Indonesia, the nationalist leaders appealed to the USA for support. For instance, as historian William Appleman Williams noted in his classic, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, Ho Chi Minh wrote letters to President Truman appealing for his help in not allowing France to return to Vietnam. As historian Peter Kuznick wrote, this was a policy that Franklin Roosevelt endorsed, but Truman and his Secretary of State Dean Acheson reversed it. And it eventually led to President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles making an epochal mistake: that is creating a new country named South Vietnam, backed by the CIA, being run by an English speaking leader wearing American suits, Ngo Dinh Diem, practicing the Catholic religion in a nation that was 70% Buddhist.

But prior to the US takeover, Dulles was willing to go to the brink to save Indochina for France. What this meant was Operation Vulture. Vulture was formulated as an air mission to relieve the siege of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. It was designed to include attacking fighter jets to stave off possible Chinese interference, with a smaller force of fighters to strafe General Giap’s positions and finally three tactical atomic weapons to ultimately liquidate the Viet Minh forces and relieve the French garrison. Vice President Nixon, John Foster Dulles and Eisenhower all initially supported Vulture. But Eisenhower insisted that the British go along with the mission as co-supporters.

Nixon had been the point man with congress in organizing support for this bizarre mission.  Nixon idolized Foster Dulles and did not question whether or not Vietnam was worth the risk. 

He had a serious problem in congress though: it was  Senator John Kennedy. When young Kennedy heard about this operation he was startled. He could not comprehend how atomic weapons would factor in what was a guerilla war. (JFK: Ordeal in Africa, by Richard Mahoney, p. 16) In April of 1954, the senator made a strong speech on the topic.  Unlike Nixon, he understood what was really the underlying problem and he said one could not stamp out the desire for independence, or suffocate nationalism.

To pour money, material and men into the jungles of Indochina without at least a remote prospect of victory would be dangerously futile. …No amount of American military assistance in Indochina can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere; an “enemy of the people” which has the sympathy and covert support of the people. (ibid) 

In England, both Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden disagreed with the Dulles/Nixon Vulture proposition.  And Dien Bien Phu fell, which was the end of the French regime in Indochina. But the British agreed to join an alliance called SEATO in Asia. And this was Dulles’ fig leaf for America taking over a doomed mission in Vietnam.

But Kennedy was not through attacking Foster Dulles and Nixon and their backing of colonialism.  With the help of his wife, and after researching the subject for a year, he now decided to split from just about everyone on the subject. In the summer of 1957 he rose in front of an empty senate and made a frontal assault on the American support for the new French colonial war. This time it was on the north coast of Africa in the state of Algeria. And he made no bones about reminding the White House about the same mistake they had just made three years earlier at Dien Bien Phu.

Did that tragic episode not teach us whether France likes it or not, admits it or not, or has our support or not, that their overseas territories are sooner or later, one by one, going to break free and look with suspicion on the Western nations who impeded their steps to independence. Nationalism in Africa cannot be evaluated purely in terms of historical and legal niceties argued by the French and thus far accepted by the State Department.  National self-identification frequently takes place by quick combustion, which the rain of repression simply cannot extinguish. (Mahoney, p. 20)

He concluded the speech by saying that, if America was truly a friend of France, we would be escorting her to the negotiating table to stave off a civil war in Paris. And America’s second aim should be to free Africa.

Three things happened as a result of this speech. Kennedy was attacked, not just by the Republican Party, but also by some Democrats and the majority of the newspapers and magazines. (Mahoney, pp. 20-21) Secondly, he became a hero in most of the Third World because he seemed to understand the problems of colonialism in Africa and elsewhere.   Third, Senator John Kennedy now became the first chair of the Foreign Relations sub-committee on Africa.

In fact, African diplomats now went around the Eisenhower administration and wanted to meet with him directly. As the president of Senegal said to the American ambassador, after that speech there was never any doubt about where Kennedy stood on the subject of Third World nationalism. The effect on young Africans living in Paris was electric. The Algerian guerillas asked American reporters if Kennedy had a chance to be president. Angolan nationalist leader Holden Roberto traveled to Washington specifically to meet with Kennedy, because of the position he expressed in the Algeria speech.  (Mahoney, p. 22)

A steady chain of African diplomats and UN representatives now came and waited outside of Room 362 in the Senate Office Building. As the election approached, and Kennedy started touring the country, there always seemed to be a couple of these men waiting outside his door. In fact, a member of his staff now had to find hotel rooms in segregated Washington to accommodate them all. (Mahoney, p. 23). Kennedy did not let up.  During the campaign for president, he mentioned Africa over 400 times.

But he was unaware of a crisis that was brewing in the Belgian Congo. The men he had attacked were hard at work attempting to eliminate a nationalist leader they suspected he would support. Therefore, they made sure Patrice Lumumba was not around when Kennedy was inaugurated.