Duodu - Score

He expressed his happiness to be in Accra, to seek inspiration from Ghana, the first British colony to achieve independence, and to exchange ideas with other anti-colonial fighters. But I also think that delegates like Lumumba, who came from repressive colonial regimes, were protected from the press as they could be penalized on their return home, if they made any statements th at did not please their colonial masters.

Incidentally, the star of this conference was, no doubt,Tom Mboya of Kenya, who made a great impression with his command of the English language. He was a most ingenious and courageous operator: This was a most dangerous thing to do, because Josef Stalin did not brook opposition. Padmore knew that he could be chased around and murdered — like Leon Trotsky had been. Indeed, the Kremlin tried to smear Padmore, claiming falsely that he had embezzled funds, but he defended himself effectively.

He ended up in London where he set up as a writer of books and campaigner on anti-colonial issues. In London, Padmore became the mentor of many young African students who were later to achieve fame in the independence movements of their countries later. A strong bond of friendship grew between them and together, they organised the most famous Pan-African Conference of all — that at Manchester in October Padmore needed no second invitation: Its purpose was to link the independent African states in Africa, so that they could adopt common positions in world affairs, especially at the United Nations.

The programme started with the local elections mentioned earlier which were held in December Lumumba and some other Congolese leaders saw the Belgian programme as a scheme to install puppets before independence and at first announced a boycott of the elections. The Belgian authorities responded with repression and sought to ban the meetings of Congolese parties. Thirty people were killed.

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All the parties accepted the invitation to go to Brussels. The Belgians had no choice but to release Lumumba — unless they wanted the Brusels conference to be dismissed as a farce. Lumumba outflanked the Belgians by getting the delegates to focus on a date for independence.

Eventually, a date was agreed upon: National elections were to be held in May.

As we have seen, not only did the MNC come first in the country, but also, it reached out to other parties, and Lumumba eventually emerged as Prime Minister. Indeed, some other Congolese politicians who would normally not have given him the time of day, were ushered his way by mutual friends in Accra. The independence constitution was drawn up largely by Belgian academics and officials without too much participation of the Congolese politicians present. The discussions were often abstruse and largely above the heads of the Congolese, none of whom had ever taken part in such an exercise before.

The document that emerged was a very complex text, and yet, it was made even more unwieldy by being released in two parts — one part in January , and the second part in May — just one month before Independence. Belgian incompetence was written all over it: Nevertheless, Belgium, under the delusion that it was magnanimously atoning for the brutality it had unleashed on the Congolese people in the past, was full of self-congratulation. On the day of independence itself, the Belgian monarch, King, Baudoin, dressed in majestic finery, made an insensitive, self-congratulatory speech to the assembly of Congolese politicians and foreign guests assembled in the National Assembly.

But Lumumba got up and spoke all the same: We have known harassing work, exacted in exchange for salaries which did not permit us to eat enough to drive away hunger, or to clothe ourselves, or to house ourselves decently, or to raise our children as creatures dear to us. We have seen that the law was not the same for a white and for a black; accommodating for the first, cruel and inhuman for the other. We have seen in the towns, magnificent houses for the whites and crumbling shanties for the blacks.

A black person was not admitted in the cinema, in the restaurants, in the stores of the Europeans; a black travelling on a boat was relegated to the holds, under the feet of the whites, who stayed up in their luxury cabins. Together, my brothers, my sisters, we are going to begin a new struggle, a sublime struggle, which will lead our country to peace, prosperity, and greatness. When news of the fiery Lumumba speech spread through Leopoldville, a sense of euphoria enveloped the city.

If I die today, I am satisfied enough to do so gladly! The commander of the Force, Gen. Emile Janssens, felt obliged to make a speech to his assembled troops. Thus this insensitive officer shattered, with a few sentences, all the dreams that the Congolese soldiers had woven in their minds about life in an independent Congo.

Within hours, the troops had mutinied.

Gangs of armed, uniformed troops looted shops, and indiscriminately beat and terrorized Europeans in the streets. The mutiny spread to the interior of the country and non-African inhabitants found themselves under siege. Belgium now faced the task of evacuating its nationals under fire. Belgian forces in the Congo quickly swelled from an initial 3, to well over 10, To Prime Minister Lumumba and the Congolese army, this looked more like a colonialist coup than a rescue mission.

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Fire-fights broke out between Belgian units and Congolese soldiers, as Lumumba urged his people to resist all moves by the Belgian troops. Meanwhile, he appealed to independent African countries to send troops to help the Congolese army restore order, so that the Belgian troops could be expelled from the Congo.

The African group at the UN agreed with Nkrumah that Belgium was using the mutiny as an excuse to re-impose colonial rule on the Congo. So they asked the United Nations to order Belgium to withdraw its troops forthwith and replace them with UN troops. The UN procrastinated, as is usual with it. In the mean time, Lumumba asked Nkrumah directly for bilateral assistance. Within one week, Ghana was able to dispatch 1, troops to the Congo equipped with military trucks and tons of stores. In addition, Ghana sent engineers, doctors and nurses, technicians and artisans of all types to the Congo, some of them flying in by Egyptian planes, while others went by Ghana Airways aircraft, piloted by Ghanaians.

The Congolese could hardly believe their eyes: He lacked the imagination — or confidence — to reconstitute the Ghanaian units that went to the Congo so that they would be officered by Ghanaians. The uprising cost at least a thousand lives before it was quelled by the Nigerian security forces. In view of the ultra-sensitivity to militant Islamism that exists in the US, the Americans could easily have used the Boko Haram episode as an excuse to omit Nigeria from Clinton's itinerary.

Clinton also had her own job cut out, persuading Nigerians that no snub was intended by President Barack Obama when he chose neighbouring Ghana as his first port of call in sub-Saharan Africa in July. Many Nigerians believe their country is "the most important" in black Africa, with its oil wealth and huge population, and they resented the fact that Obama "overlooked" it in going to Ghana.

But, of course, the Americans had their own concerns in mind when they chose Ghana. They think good governance matters greatly in Africa, as economic development can only take place if there is political stability. In Ghana's recent election , power was successfully and without incident transferred from one party to the other. This byline is for a different person with the same name as me. This byline is mine, but I want my name removed. By Modern Ghana , Cameron Duodu. Dec 11, Open in Who Shared Wrong byline? Dec 10, Open in Who Shared Wrong byline? Dec 08, Open in Who Shared Wrong byline?

By Cameron Duodu , Charles de Leusse. Dec 01, Open in Who Shared Wrong byline?