Lumumba

I've just been watching the film "Lumumba" on DVD. It's very well done, and quite tragic. There's a scene where the young king of Belgium is giving a speech to the new Congolese delegates on their day of independence. He actually spouts nonsense about the founder of the Belgian Congo, the mega-thief and monster, King Leopold II, saying that he did not come as a conqueror, but as a bringer of civilization.

Leopold's depredations are well documented in Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost (which, we're to imagine, has actually been on bush II's reading list, when the man admits that he can't even be bothered to read the daily newspaper).

It is estimated that Leopold killed 10 million Congolese in the process of bringing civilization to them. Hochschild writes that intrepid human rights activists orchestrated the massive public protests that compelled Leopold to give up his gigantic personal plantation, but I recall reading somewhere that what really affected the old man was the declining profitability of the rubber industry as more and more workers died from starvation and disease and rubber became scarcer and scarcer.

The movie depicts the brief career of the Congo's first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba. Against Belgium and her NATO allies who wanted him to fail, against rival politicians from the powerful Katanga province who wanted to monopolize their state's mineral wealth themselves, and against the cunning, opportunist Mobutu, Lumumba tried to steer an independent course for the entire nation.

Instead, he was killed by his enemies, and his body (driven around Kinshasa by a CIA agent for awhile) was never found.

This is an important and well done film.