vaguely of the kind of middle-class homes you find in Crouch End or Muswell Hill. Soldiers and police mill around the closed iron gate. They turn to stare as we pass.
“Lumumba’s house,” Stipe explains. “He was one of the first blacks to be allowed to live in the European quarter. There are still very few. The Belgians will arrest him the minute he shows up. I got word to him to go to my driver’s house. He’ll be safe there for a while.”
“How many were killed today?” I ask.
“Could be tens, could be hundreds. African death has a habit of defying accurate quantification.”
“What exactly happened?”
“The MNC held their rally. Patrice’s speech was pretty high, as you can imagine, and inspirational.” He gives me a grin. “It inspired the young hotheads to some stone-throwing and shop-breaking. After last night’s little display, the Belgians were in no mood to give them a free hand, so they sent in a platoon of regular Belgian soldiers and the Force Publique. The rest you know.”
“What’s the Force Publique?”
“It’s not really an army—even though contingents served with the Allies during the last war: they were involved in the Abyssinian campaign and I think I heard they sent a field hospital unit to the India-Burma front—but really it’s more like an internal security force. Twenty-four thousand men—sort of part-soldiers, part-gendarmerie—with just over a thousand Belgian officers.”
From somewhere in the distance there is the sound of an explosion.
“That’s not what I think it is?” I say.
We listen. The sound we are waiting for comes thirty or forty seconds later. A second explosion. Like the first, the sound is muffled rather than sharp or reverberating.
“That’s a mortar, isn’t it?” I say.
“What a mess,” he says, shaking his head. “What a godawful mess.”
We have turned off the boulevard and are approaching a checkpoint at the cité’s boundary. A black sergeant waves us down. Stipe reaches into his jacket and takes out his papers, and also a second document to which he draws the soldier’s attention. The soldier goes to consult a white officer, who, after inspection of the documents, comes over. There is another exchange. The officer withdraws.
Stipe, gazing after the soldiers, says, “The highest ranking Congolese in the Force Publique are NCOs. As you can imagine, they’re not entirely happy about the setup. Not that it bothers the commander, General Janssens. He’s an officer of the old school. A bonehead, and not exactly what you would call forward-thinking on the race issue.”
He hooks his arm through the open window and drums his fingers on the metal.
“This may take a little time,” he says. “The Sûreté have given me permission to move about, but the soldiers will want to do their own checking.”
He offers me a cigarette. There is a third explosion, followed about a minute later by a fourth. What are they bombing? I try to picture the soldiers and their mortars and the missiles lobbed incomprehensibly into the vast dark slums of the cité. What were they firing at? What did they expect to happen?
“How long would you say the Belgians can hold on here?” Stipe asks idly.
“They seem to be doing pretty well.”
“I don’t agree,” he says evenly. “The shooting this afternoon, the mortars—it’s their last gasp. The Belgians are about to give in.”
“Give in to what?” I ask.
“Independence.”
“Yes, in ten or twenty years.”
“More like six months.”
He draws slowly on his cigarette. He knows he has my attention.
“That’s not the official position,” I remind him.
The official position, which Inès damns in every angry article, was set out in the
Déclaration Gouvernementale
in Brussels earlier in the year. The Belgians had decided that since the colony would not be ready for self-government for a long time to come, the Congolese people would have to be led to independence
graduellement et
“Lumumba’s house,” Stipe explains. “He was one of the first blacks to be allowed to live in the European quarter. There are still very few. The Belgians will arrest him the minute he shows up. I got word to him to go to my driver’s house. He’ll be safe there for a while.”
“How many were killed today?” I ask.
“Could be tens, could be hundreds. African death has a habit of defying accurate quantification.”
“What exactly happened?”
“The MNC held their rally. Patrice’s speech was pretty high, as you can imagine, and inspirational.” He gives me a grin. “It inspired the young hotheads to some stone-throwing and shop-breaking. After last night’s little display, the Belgians were in no mood to give them a free hand, so they sent in a platoon of regular Belgian soldiers and the Force Publique. The rest you know.”
“What’s the Force Publique?”
“It’s not really an army—even though contingents served with the Allies during the last war: they were involved in the Abyssinian campaign and I think I heard they sent a field hospital unit to the India-Burma front—but really it’s more like an internal security force. Twenty-four thousand men—sort of part-soldiers, part-gendarmerie—with just over a thousand Belgian officers.”
From somewhere in the distance there is the sound of an explosion.
“That’s not what I think it is?” I say.
We listen. The sound we are waiting for comes thirty or forty seconds later. A second explosion. Like the first, the sound is muffled rather than sharp or reverberating.
“That’s a mortar, isn’t it?” I say.
“What a mess,” he says, shaking his head. “What a godawful mess.”
We have turned off the boulevard and are approaching a checkpoint at the cité’s boundary. A black sergeant waves us down. Stipe reaches into his jacket and takes out his papers, and also a second document to which he draws the soldier’s attention. The soldier goes to consult a white officer, who, after inspection of the documents, comes over. There is another exchange. The officer withdraws.
Stipe, gazing after the soldiers, says, “The highest ranking Congolese in the Force Publique are NCOs. As you can imagine, they’re not entirely happy about the setup. Not that it bothers the commander, General Janssens. He’s an officer of the old school. A bonehead, and not exactly what you would call forward-thinking on the race issue.”
He hooks his arm through the open window and drums his fingers on the metal.
“This may take a little time,” he says. “The Sûreté have given me permission to move about, but the soldiers will want to do their own checking.”
He offers me a cigarette. There is a third explosion, followed about a minute later by a fourth. What are they bombing? I try to picture the soldiers and their mortars and the missiles lobbed incomprehensibly into the vast dark slums of the cité. What were they firing at? What did they expect to happen?
“How long would you say the Belgians can hold on here?” Stipe asks idly.
“They seem to be doing pretty well.”
“I don’t agree,” he says evenly. “The shooting this afternoon, the mortars—it’s their last gasp. The Belgians are about to give in.”
“Give in to what?” I ask.
“Independence.”
“Yes, in ten or twenty years.”
“More like six months.”
He draws slowly on his cigarette. He knows he has my attention.
“That’s not the official position,” I remind him.
The official position, which Inès damns in every angry article, was set out in the
Déclaration Gouvernementale
in Brussels earlier in the year. The Belgians had decided that since the colony would not be ready for self-government for a long time to come, the Congolese people would have to be led to independence
graduellement et
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