Testimony of Mr André de Maere d’Artrycke, Region Administrator in Belgian Congo

From origins to the Congo Free State

The area which today bears the name of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been populated for at least about 200,000 years according to discoveries of cut stones at the sites of Mulundwa (Katanga), Katanda and Senga (Kivu). Archaeological remains of homo sapiens (bones, harpoon points, quartz tools) have been discovered in Ishango in Virunga National Park and dated between 25,000 and 20,000 years ago. Bantu peoples from an area between eastern Nigeria and the Grassfields of Cameroon came to settle as early as 2600 BC.

Great kingdoms Luba, Lunda, Kongo were formed between the first centuries after Jesus Christ and before the 15th century when the first Portuguese arrived on the Atlantic coast. These kingdoms have an elaborate hierarchical structure, with a rich musical culture and well-rooted traditions. In addition, many populations lived together in more or less self-sufficient chiefdoms. From this time, we see these kingdoms burst under the impetus of the slave trade and the emergence of new power relationships that will lead to colonization. Portuguese Jesuits Christianize the kings and peoples of Kongo. Maize and cassava crops imported from America are spreading. The first European map of the region is due to the Venetian explorer Alvise Cadamosto in the service of Portugal (16th century).

Between 1874 and 1877, Henry Morton Stanley, British explorer, penetrated equatorial Africa, hitherto ‘terra incognita’ for Europeans. On his pirogue, he descends the Congo River, the main route of entry, and maps the area.

Between 1879 and 1884, the explorer made a second trip through the Congo, but this time up the river. Its mission is to create posts on behalf of the African International Association (AIA), which is chaired by King Leopold II. The Association declares to pursue a scientific and philanthropic objective: it is to continue to map the region and to fight against slavery, in particular by buying slaves from Afro-Arab merchants in order to free them. It also concludes treaties with the local chiefs who are met. In 1884-1885, during the Berlin Conference, the great European powers recognized the International Association of Congo (AIC successor to the AIA). Behind it, it was its President, King Leopold II, who was given authority over a gigantic territory in Central Africa. This territory, carved out by Stanley and still largely unexplored by the Western world, became the “Independent State of the Congo” (1885).

The Independent State of the Congo (1885-1908)

It’s a unique story, that of all the Belgians who, together with the Congolese, created the Congo from scratch and developed this immense country, eighty times the size of Belgium!

It all started with Leopold II, King-Sovereign of the Independent State of the Congo, an extraordinary personality who is the founding father, as the Congolese themselves readily admit. Like the other colonial powers, he worked to develop its natural resources. However, unlike the latter, he wanted to add a humanitarian dimension to his intervention from the outset, by putting an end to the tribal wars and slave raids that were draining the country of its lifeblood.

It was also under his leadership that the first schools and hospitals were created and that programs to eradicate yellow fever, sleeping sickness and malaria were launched. At the same time, he gradually established the rule of law and an independent judiciary. He took particular care to provide the country with the infrastructure essential to its economic development, and had the first railway built to give access to the Atlantic coast, without which “the Congo would not be worth a penny”.

During the period of the Congo Independent State (EIC), uncontrolled agents, believing themselves immune from prosecution when isolated, far away and producing ‘results’, indulged in abuses and even heinous crimes against the indigenous population. When these crimes were documented, Leopold II took the initiative in 1904 of setting up an independent international commission to verify on the spot the validity of the accusations of abuse levelled against the regime in place and to make any recommendations to prevent further abuses, remedy shortcomings and improve the lot and rights of the indigenous population. The Commission of Inquiry, acknowledged achievements in particularly laudatory terms, as follows :

“When travelling in the Congo, one compares the ancient state, which one knows from the accounts and descriptions of the explorers, with the present state, the impression one gets is one of admiration and wonder… Today security reigns everywhere in this immense territory… One wonders by what magic power or what powerful will, supported by heroic efforts, it has been possible to transform the face of the earth in this way, in a few short years…”. But nonetheless it also stigmatised in detail the undeniable abuses and many actual shortcomings.

Despite the harsh conclusions of this report, Leopold II did not hesitate to have it published – in extenso – in the Official Journal of the Independent State of Congo. He ensured that the perpetrators of the abuses were prosecuted and immediately took a series of radical measures, enacting no fewer than 24 decrees to this effect. The results were swift and commensurate with the measures taken: sanctions, intensification of control measures and strengthening of the rights of the Congolese people. As the Congolese people were considered to be entitled to protection and to participate fully in their own development, all the texts of the decrees were imbued with this desire, and all the reforms were aimed in this direction.

To illustrate the above, we have this tasty letter, addressed in 1907 by Chief Manangame of Avakubi to an officer of the Public Force, where he said to him: “In the time when the Arabs were the chiefs, they took our women and children and sold them as slaves. They ruthlessly looted the country and burned the villages. The White man never burns villages and if we go to his house with chickens and bananas, he always pays us for everything. He pays well also for the Mupira (rubber). The White man has eliminated the slave trade. But we black men still want the whites to leave, because they force us to keep the roads in repair and we can no longer wage war against our neighbours and we can no longer even eat the prisoners, because if we eat them we’ll be hanged!…”.

The lively controversies, both national and international, that marred the practices in force in the Independent State of Congo, notwithstanding a body of legislation that cared for the Congolese, and which were candidly exposed in the report of the international commission of enquiry, finally persuaded King Leopold II to cede his State to Belgium. On 13 December 1906, the Sovereign asked the Belgian Government to submit to the House of Representatives a Convention for the takeover of the EIC by Belgium. It was not until 20 August 1908 that the Chamber passed the law transferring the EIC to Belgium, after long and tumultuous debates, by 83 votes to 54 with 9 abstentions. The Senate in turn approved the law by 63 votes to 24, with 11 abstentions. The EIC became the Belgian Congo on 15 November 1908.

The Belgian Congo (1908-1960)

Thanks to the intensive and effective commitment of the Belgians working with the Congolese from the time Belgium took over the Congo in 1908 until its independence was proclaimed on 30 June 1960, the Belgian Congo enjoyed 52 years of spectacular progress in the well-being of its indigenous population. The “pax belgica” maintained thanks to a very light security apparatus based on a consensus with the Congolese notables and the progression of shared prosperity into real development, almost complete free schooling at primary level, widespread free schooling at secondary level and the creation of two universities, completely free medical care provided even in the most remote parts of the country, the development of agriculture with the introduction of new crops, the industrial exploitation of mining products, a balance of trade surplus, monetary stability, etc. are all reasons to be proud of this country. These are all reasons to be proud of what the collaboration between Belgians and Congolese has achieved in such a short space of time, with an optimal and sustained investment in people and resources!

And all this was achieved thanks to the daily efforts of all those who devoted themselves body and soul to it, despite the severe economic crisis of the 1930s and the two world wars that marked that period. We should point out with pride that the very first two victories won by the Allies during these conflicts were achieved by the valiant officers and soldiers of the Belgian Congo Public Force, in 1916 at Tabora (Tanganyika) and in 1941 at Saio (Abyssinia).

Immediately after the Second World War, very strong international anti-colonialist pressure, reinforced by the Bandoeng and Accra conferences and by the combined hegemonic rivalries of the two Cold War superpowers, the USA and the USSR, became widespread in the countries under colonial rule.

The colonial system provided only for a very gradual transfer of responsibilities and sovereignty to the Congolese people. (See the 1955 ‘Van Bilsen Plan’, which provided for the political emancipation of the Belgian Congo at the end of a thirty-year period). But the new Congolese leaders, elected on the basis of glittering promises and eager for immediate independence despite their notorious unpreparedness, wanted, like their peers elsewhere in Africa, to obtain sovereignty for their country without further delay. This firm insistence marked the controversial way in which the fate of the Congo was settled at the Brussels Round Table Conference in 1959.

The independence granted in June 1960 allowed Belgium and the Congo to avoid a guerrilla war that could only have been disastrous for all parties, as evidenced by the historical cases of the Netherlands in Indonesia, of France in Indochina and Algeria, the United Kingdom in Rhodesia and Kenya, Portugal in all its colonies…

Despite the vicissitudes of the post-independence period, the continued presence of Belgians still working in the Congo and the beneficial presence of a dynamic Congolese diaspora in Belgium are a source of hope. Whether it’s the missionaries who have chosen to stay, against all odds, or the teachers, doctors, agronomists, advisers, technicians in public or private companies, as soldiers responsible for training an elite battalion within the FARDC, or as development workers in successful NGOs genuinely concerned with improving the living conditions of the inhabitants of this magnificent country, whether it’s the new Belgians and Congolese of the diaspora in Belgium, who have contributed their know-how and dynamism in virtually every sector of our society, they are all helping this way to keep alive the ties that have united us Belgians and Congolese for so many years!