Duodu - Score
Contents:
In Lumumba became regional president of an all-Congolese trade union of government employees. This union, unlike other unions in the country, was not affiliated to any Belgian trade union. He also became active in the Belgian Liberal Party in the Congo. In , Lumumba was invited with others to make a study tour of Belgium under the auspices of the Minister of the Colonies.
It was on his return he was arrested on a charge of embezzlement from the post office. It was shortly after Lumumba got out of prison that he became really active in politics. I was working in the newsroom of Radio Ghana at the time, and was posted to Accra airport, to meet delegates to the conference, who were arriving at all sorts of odd hours. I remember Lumumba because of his goatee beard and his glasses, which gave him the look of an intellectual. My French was not up to scratch, but with the help of an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I was able to talk to him for a while before he was whisked away by an official car.
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.
Make African football safe
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.
- Stregata dalla passione (Italian Edition);
- Articles by Cameron Duodu | Modern Ghana Journalist | Muck Rack;
- CONGO!…CONGO! by CAMERON DUODU.
- Frank Arhin;
- Keystone Bay.
- !
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. 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.
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. Later, the lower House of Parliament also supported Lumumba with a vote of confidence. To them, all the whites they knew — Belgians — were racist devils, and they could not understand that in Ghana, whites took orders from a black government. Lumumba attended a Protestant mission school, after which he went to work in Kindu-Port-Empain, about km from Kisangani. 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. The plot was abandoned, the lethal potion dumped in the Congo River.
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.
David Duncan pays tribute to the late Osam Duodu - Ghanasoccernet News
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.
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.
Nigeria: Clinton's challenge
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 Congolese could not quite get their heads round the fact that if they were fighting against white Belgians, Ghana should come to their assistance with troops led by white officers. Belgian propaganda claimed that the white officers were Russian Communist. To them, all the whites they knew — Belgians — were racist devils, and they could not understand that in Ghana, whites took orders from a black government. Thus misunderstanding was costly to Ghana — in one incident at Port Francqui, Ghanaian troops came under a surprise attack by Congolese soldiers and over two score lost their lives.
As a news editor at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, I was following all these events carefully and trying to understand what was going on in the Congo, so as to broadcast bulletins to the people of Ghana that would make them understand the situation. Very soon, we got another flash: Lumumba took the precaution of immediately asking the Congolese Senate to give him a vote of confidence over what he had done.
Later, the lower House of Parliament also supported Lumumba with a vote of confidence. Meanwhile, the newspapers of the world, unable to decipher Congolese constitutional matters and distinguish between who had acted legally and who had acted illegally, had a field day running this mocking headline: The speech was probably the last one he made in public that was fully recorded. Our monitoring station transcribed it for us and I ran the transcript of it almost in full in our news bulletins.
As you well know, he has no majority in this Parliament. He tried to form a government and failed. Yet, out of our desire for national unity, we generously offered him the highest office in the land — the presidency — instead of giving it to someone from our own side, the majority side. And now he turns round to say that he has sacked, me, the leader of the majority!
It was by my hand — this hand — that he was appointed President. It is an insult to our people, who voted us into this Parliament. How can a person who commands a minority of votes in this House sack the one who has the majority?
It is not done anywhere that there is a parliamentary system. In her talks with Nigerian leaders, it is expected that Clinton will emphasise that Nigeria's influence in the world will grow — if it gets its act together and embarks on a serious programme to eliminate corruption from public life. In particular, Nigeria's inability to hold elections in which the results are accepted by the losing side as free and fair will be a thorny issue that the sectretary of state will no doubt mention.
Election processes in Nigeria are largely perceived as being corrupted by money and intimidation, usually on the part of incumbent governments, which employ security forces to achieve the desired result. Even the judiciary is suspected of corruption, at election time in Nigeria , and Clinton will probably hear a first-hand account of some of the malpractices that occurred in the last election, held in May , when she meets, among other opposition figures, General Muhammed Buhari, a retired former military head of state, who fought the election against the current president, Umaru Yar'Adua.
Find out more
Buhari and his followers have never fully accepted the legitimacy of the result that brought Yar'Adua to power. In view of all this, Clinton will score a major personal triumph if she leaves the country with relations between the US and Nigeria better than when she arrived. It will be no easy task. Topics Hillary Clinton Opinion. Order by newest oldest recommendations. Show 25 25 50 All.
Threads collapsed expanded unthreaded.