#tshombe

[tshombegreat]

💋

[iweb-rdc001]

RDC-histoire : Le 13 octobre 1965, le jour où Joseph Kasavabu a crée un incident qui précipitera sa chute en faveur de Mobutu

Le 13 octobre 1965, devant les 2 Chambres réunies, le Président Kasa Vubu révoque son Premier ministre, Moise Tshombe. Comme en sept 1960, Kasa Vubu venait de créer un deuxième incident qui poussera le Général Joseph Désiré Mobutu à faire son deuxième coup d’Etat un mois plus tard (novembre 1965), fatigué, dira-t-il, d’assister aux querelles des politiciens. Ce jour du 13 octobre, le Président…

[archivio-disattivato]

Patrice Lumumba was the first elected Prime Minister of the Congo. He ascended to power in the Congo on June 30, 1960, the date of Congo’ s independence from Belgium. Within ten weeks of being elected, Lumumba’s government was deposed in a coup. He was subsequently imprisoned and assassinated on January 17, 1961 by Western powers (United States, Belgium, France, England and the United Nations) in cahoots with local leaders such as Moise Tshombe and Joseph Desire Mobutu.

Lumumba is a member of the Tetela ethnic group. He was born on July 2, 1925, in Katako-Kombe in the Sunkuru district of the Kasai Province. Growing up, Lumumba attended a Protestant Missionary school as well as a Catholic missionary school and became a part of the educated elite called évolués. Lumumba contributed to the Congolese press through poems and other writings. His occupations included a postal clerk in Kinshasa and an accountant in Kisangani. Lumumba’s organizational involvement were varied. He served as head of a trade union of government employees, he was active in the Belgian Liberal Party and in 1958, Lumumba founded the Congolese National Movement (MNC in French). Also in 1958, he was invited to the first All-African People’s Conference in Accra, Ghana, organized by Kwame Nkrumah. He met nationalists and pan-africanists from various African countries and became a member of the permanent organization set up by the conference.

Lumumba’s party won national elections in May of 1960 which led to his ascendancy to Prime Minister on June 30, 1960. Read more on Lumumba>>

Lumumba’s Independence Day Speech Lumumba’s Last Letter to his Wife

Reading List Congo My Country by Patrice Lumumba Patrice Lumumba: Fighter for Africa’s Freedom by Patrice Lumumba The Assassination of Lumumba by Ludo De Witte Rise and Fall of Patrice Lumumba by Thomas Kanza Lumumba Speaks: The Speeches and Writings of Patrice Lumumba, 1958-1961 Translated by Helen R. Lane. Ed. Jean Van Lierde

[i-will-talk-fish]

love long existed before us or the night sky ever felt its fire before men worshiped the sun it is the breath of all things

—Tshombe Sekou 

[simseo]

The Congo Crisis: A Tale of Western Intervention.

Patrice Lumumba, Joseph Kasavubu, and Moïse Tshombe marked the independence for the Democratic Republic of Congo by the powerful yet conflicting visions. Their divergent goals and subsequent clashes laid a fragile and tumultuous foundation for the newly independent state. This fragile foundation was further destabilized by the actions of Joseph Mobutu, whose rise to power was built on the…

[lboogie1906]

Prime Minister Patrice Émery Lumumba (alternatively styled Patrice Hemery Lumumba; July 2, 1925 – January 17, 1961) was a Congolese politician and independence leader who served as the first Prime Minister of the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo from June until September 1960. He played a significant role in the transformation of the Congo from a colony of Belgium into an independent republic. Ideologically an African nationalist and Pan-Africanist, he led the Congolese National Movement party from 1958 until his assassination.

Shortly after Congolese independence in 1960, a mutiny broke out in the army, marking the beginning of the Congo Crisis. He appealed to the US and the UN for help to suppress the Belgian-supported Katangan secessionists led by Moise Tshombe. Both refused, so he turned to the Soviet Union for support. This led to growing differences between President Joseph Kasa-Vubu and chief-of-staff Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, as well as with the US and Belgium, who opposed the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

He was imprisoned by state authorities under Mobutu and executed by a firing squad under the command of Katangan authorities. Following his assassination, he was seen as a martyr for the wider Pan-African movement. In 2002, Belgium formally apologized for its role in the assassination. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[boricuacherry-blog]

In 1949, after a year of study, he returned home and joined the Force Publique, the colonial army. He rose to the rank of sergeant major, the highest available to a Congolese. In 1956, he returned to journalism and politics, working on news0apers and magazines in Leopoldville, now Kinshasa.

In 1958, he joined the Mouvement Nationale Congolais, a political party founded by Patrice Lumumba, a left-leaning nationalist; the party's program was independence for the Congo. A year later, rioting broke out in the colony, and the Brussels government abruptly decided to grant independence. Little had been done to prepare for it - out of a population of about 15 million at the time there were only 16 university graduates.

In January 1960, a conference was held in Brussels. The question of independence had been decided, but the details had to be worked out to determine whether they wanted a strong central government or broad regional autonomy. Lumumba favored the former; representatives of the copper-rich province of Katanga, now called Shaba, favored the latter.

Having been jailed for agitation, Lumumba could not attend the meeting. Mobutu went as his chief representative and successfully argued for a centralized regime. On June 20, 1960, Belgium transferred power to a coalition government in which Joseph Kasavubu was president, Lumumba premier and Mobutu defense minister.

Eight days later, the army revolted and turned on its Belgian officers. On July 11, Katanga seceded under the leadership of Moise Tshombe. Subsequently, secessionist movements arose in Kasai and Orientale provinces, and the Congo was plunged into a crisis that seemed to confirm the worst fears of Africa's friends about the continent's ability to govern itself.

For Mobutu, the situation provided a road to power. He gained it by exploiting disputes among his rivals. His first opportunity came less than three months after independence and involved Kasavubu and Lumumba. Lumumba was a member of the Tetela ethnic group and growing up he was a part of the educated elite, called evolues.

Over the president's (Kasavubu) objections, the premier (Lumumba) appealed to the United States for help in ending the Katangan revolt; when he was refused, he turned to the Soviet Union. Moscow responded with arms and money.

Meanwhile, the CIA station chief in Leopoldville cabled Washington that the Congo was "experiencing a classic communist effort to takeover the government. Whether or not Lumumba is actually a commie or pretending to be one to assist in solidifying power, anti-West forces are rapidly beginning to increase power in the Congo and there may be little time left in which to take action and avoid another Cuba." He was authorized to take steps to protect U.S. interests.

In August 1960, the United Nations sent a military force to the Congo. European mercenaries assisted Katanga and Tshombe, while the Congolese army, brought under control by Mobutu after its mutiny in June, made up yet another force. As the summer wore on, Lumumba prepared to oust Kasavubu; on Sept. 14, before he could act, Mobutu staged a coup and announced that all politicians had been "neutralized." Lumumba fled the capital. Two months later, he was caught and turned over to Tshombe in Katanga, and, in February 1961, he was killed. In the communist world, he was revered as a martyr; Mobutu and the CIA were implicated in his death. With Lumumba out of the way, Mobutu turned the government over to Kasavubu, who installed Cyrille Adoula as premier. The succession in Katanga lasted until 1963 and ended only after a war between U.N. and Katangese forces during which Tshombe fled to Spain.

In 1964, however, Kasavubu fired Adoula and persuaded Tshombe to return to the Congo and take the premiership. The former leader of Katangese independence now became a champion of the central government with the responsibility of ending revolts in the eastern Congo. But he soon found himself at odds with Kasavubu and was dismissed in 1965.

On November 25, 1965, Mobutu intervened again and led the bloodless coup that put him in power for nearly the rest of his life in the country he renamed Zaire.

[shrutins]

The Brave Peacekeepers of Jadotville

CrystalPlanet: The Brave Peacekeepers of Jadotville

The battle known as the Siege of Jadotville, is an almost unbelievable story of grit, leadership, of unwavering loyalty and courage, of calm, and of extraordinary strategy and tactics; especially in the face of deceit, death, incompetence and betrayal.   If you haven’t watched the 2016 movie by the same name, you should.   Prior to 1959, Belgium held control of the Congo, with exclusive rights on…

[silentambassadors]

For a brief time in the early 1960s, the Province of Katanga declared its independence from the (also newly independent) Republic of Congo (Congo-Léopoldville, what was Belgian Congo and what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and called itself the State of Katanga.  It was never recognized internationally, and even internally was wracked with instability and dissension.  The UN eventually stepped in in 1963 and Katanga remains a part of the DRC.

Stamp details: Stamps on top: Issued on: March 1, 1961 From: Élisabethville, State of Katanga MC #52, 57, 64

Issued on: July 8, 1961 From: Élisabethville, State of Katanga MC #66

Recognized as a sovereign state by the UN: No Claimed by: Democratic Republic of Congo Member of the Universal Postal Union: No

[zvaigzdelasas]

A member of the Lunda ethnic group, Tshombe was born near Musumba, Belgian Congo, the son of a successful businessman The Tshombe family were Lunda royalty .[...] He received his education from an American missionary school and later trained as an accountant. In the 1950s, he took over a chain of stores in Katanga Province, which failed.[2] Tshombe ran a number of businesses, which all failed, requiring his wealthy family to bail him out.[2] Tshombe later involved in politics.[2]

Katanga was different from the other provinces of the Belgian Congo, being rich in copper, tin and uranium, all of which were mined by the Union Minière company.[2] The wealth generated by its minerals led to 32, 000 Belgians settling in Katanga by the 1950s, which had more white settlers than any other province of the Belgian Congo.[2] The mining industry provided, by the standards of Africa, well paying jobs, and as such Katanga province attracted "immigrants" from the other provinces of the Belgian Congo.[3] Tshombe, like many members of the Lunda royalty, was close to the settler elite, and felt threatened by the flood of Kasai Baluba moving into Katanga.[4] In the late 1950s, the Belgians allowed a limited degree of democracy in the Belgian Congo and in the first municipal elections in 1957, the majority of the mayors elected were Baluba, which sparked fears that the Lunda would be a marginalized group in their own province.[4] Tshombe's political involvement started in 1957 in response to the perceived threat of Baluba domination.[4][...]

Along with Godefroid Munongo, he founded the Confédération des associations tribales du Katanga (CONAKAT) party. CONAKAT promoted a federal Congo independent of the Belgian colonial empire.[5] CONAKAT was founded in October 1958 to address the perceived problems of "immigration" into Katanga from the other provinces of the Belgian Congo, and its platform called for upholding the rights of the "indigenous" peoples of Katanga by ending the "immigration".[4] The majority of the CONAKAT supporters were Lunda, Batabwa, Tshowke and Bayeke, most of whom lived in southern Katanga.[4][...]CONAKAT formed an electoral alliance with the Union Katangaise party that represented the white Belgian settlers of Katanga.[6] Both CONAKAT and the Union Katangaise wanted very broad autonomy for Katanga within an independent Congo in order to keep the wealth generated by the mining industry within Katanga.[6] In contrast to CONAKAT with its calls for autonomy and curbs on "immigration", the "immigrants" in Katanga tended to favor the parties that called for a more centralized state.[...]

CONAKAT won control of the Katanga provincial legislature in the May 1960 general elections. One month later, the Congo became an independent republic. Tshombe became President of the autonomous province of Katanga.[7] Patrice Lumumba was tasked with forming a national government. Members of his party, the Mouvement National Congolais, were given charge of the portfolios of national defence and interior, despite Tshombe's objections.[8] The portfolio for economic affairs was awarded to a CONAKAT member, but this was undercut by the positioning of nationalists in control of the Ministry and Secretariat for Economic Coordination. Mines and land affairs were placed under separate portfolios. Tshombe declared that this diluting of CONAKAT's influence rendered his agreement to support the government "null and void".[9]

On the evening of 11 July, Tshombe, accusing the central government of communist leanings and dictatorial rule, announced that Katanga was seceding from the Congo.[10] Tshombe had the full support of both Belgium and the Union Minière in proclaiming Katanga independent.[11] One American diplomat described Katanga as a sham, reporting to Washington that the State of Katanga was "designed mainly for the protection of European lives and property".[11] Favoring continued ties with Belgium, Tshombe asked the Belgian government to send military officers to recruit and train a Katangese army. Tshombe's Belgian military adviser, Major Guy Weber, on 13 July 1960 appointed Major Jean-Marie Crèvecouer to train an army for Katanga.[12] To disguise its lack of a military, the force being raised and trained was called the Katangese gendarmerie, but the name was highly misleading as the gendarmerie was in fact an army.[13] The majority of the officers training the gendarmerie were Belgian.[13] [...]

Tshombe was [claimed to be] basically a weak person who was always being manipulated by others-the Union Minière, right-wing politicians in Europe and the United States, mercenaries, arms dealers and other adventurers who were after his money."[15]

France, wishing to take advantage of Katangese minerals, sent to Tshombe the reinforcement of the mercenary Bob Denard and his men. It was supported by the networks of Jacques Foccart, the "Mr. Africa" of the French government.[16]

Lumumba's government was dissolved, and Lumumba taken prisoner by Mobutu and detained at Camp Hardy in Thysville. Harold Charles d'Aspremont Lynden (Belgian minister for African Affairs) sent a highly confidential telegram on 16 January 1961 to the government in Léopoldville (President Joseph Kasa-Vubu and Mobutu) to send Lumumba to Katanga. That would have stemmed from Lumumba's increasing popularity among soldiers, who might release him. Meanwhile, soldier mutinies and unrest increased by the day[...]

Whilst being flown in a Sabena Douglas DC-4 plane to Katanga, Lumumba was beaten by the Congolese soldiers escorting him. In custody in Katanga, Lumumba was visited by Katangese notables and Belgian officers, who included Tshombe

Tshombe demanded United Nations recognition for independent Katanga, and he announced that any intervention by UN troops would be met with force.[14] Nonetheless, Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and his successor, Cyrille Adoula, successfully requested intervention from UN forces.[...] Lumumba's execution, on 17 January, was carried out by a firing squad led by a Belgian mercenary, Julien Gat.[17]

In September 1961, the United Nations launched Operation Morthor with the aim of reintegrating Katanga into the Congo, causing Tshombe to flee into Northern Rhodesia for a time.[18]

Tshombe become an iconic figure for American conservatives [even up to William F Buckley] in the 1960s who saw him as an acceptable African leader.[19] The American historian Kyle Burke wrote: "To them [American conservatives], Tshombe represented a comfortable kind of decolonization, in which elite Africans would manage the transition from colony to nation without altering the existing racial, political and economic order, thereby ensuring that communists would not gain a foothold in these countries".[20] American conservatives presented the Belgian Congo as a place of racial harmony, which Tshombe had tried to preserve.[21] The principle lobbying group for Tshombe was the American Committee for Aid to Katangan Freedom Fighters that portrayed the United Nations as a communist-dominated organization that was seeking to crush Katanga to achieve Soviet foreign policy goals in Africa.[11] The support for Tshombe was at least in part related to American domestic politics as the Kennedy administration supported the United Nations against Katanga and the support for Tshombe in the United States came mostly from conservative Republicans and Democrats, who used Kennedy's opposition to Tshombe to argue that he was "soft on communism".[11] By contrast, Afro-Americans loathed Tshombe [...]

In 1963, UN forces succeeded in suppressing Katanga, driving Tshombe into exile in Northern Rhodesia and then [Francoist] Spain. Tshombe took with him into exile 890 suitcases full of one million gold pieces, which he placed into various European banks, allowing him to live in comfort and luxury.[23] At the same time, the UN forces found that the Katangese treasury had been stripped bare as the entire vault contained only £10 British pounds together with one dead rat.[23] [...]

In early 1964, the Simba rebellion broke out and the Congolese state rapidly lost control of the entire eastern half of the Congo. At the same time, Tshombe started to correspond with several of his former enemies such as the justice minister, Justin-Marie Bomboko; the police chief, Victor Nendaka; and most importantly, the commander of the army, General Joseph-Désiré Mobutu.[23] As the Armée Nationale Congolaise could not handle the Simbas, Mobutu argued that the Congo needed Western help.[24] Mobutu had been the king-maker of Conglese politics ever since he staged his first coup in 1960 and he pressured President Joseph Kasa-Vubu to appoint Tshombe premier under the grounds that he was the Congolese politician most likely to secure Western support.[25]

Additionally, most of the economic concessions in the Belgian Congo were [...] invested its own funds alongside those of European capitalists in developing the concessions.[24] When Belgium granted independence to the Congo in 1960, the Belgians refused to transfer their shares in the concessions to the Congolese state under the grounds that the Congo refused to assume the debts that the Belgians had incurred when developing the concessions, which deprived the Congolese state of much needed revenue.[24] In March 1964, the Belgian Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak visited Leopoldville and agreed to transfer the Belgian shares of the concessions.[24] During the same visit, Spaak seems to have made appointing Tshombe premier the precondition of the share transfer.[24] Finally, the administration of John F. Kennedy was very hostile towards Tshombe, but on 22 November 1963 Kennedy was assassinated. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson was more supportive of Tshombe, viewing him as a firmly pro-Western politician..[26] [...]

In July 1964, he returned to the Congo to serve as prime minister in a new coalition government. His cabinet was sworn in on 10 July.[27] Tshombe's national support was derived from the backing of provincial political bosses, customary chiefs, and foreign financial interests.[28] Among his first acts in office were the lifting of a curfew in Léopoldville, the release of 600 political prisoners [...] and the ordering of Katangese gendarmes to return from their exile in [the Portuguese Colony of] Angola to the Congo and join the national army.[27] Tshombe had made extensive use of white mercenaries to fight for Katanga, and as the Congolese premier, he hired the same mercenaries to fight for the Congo.[24] The return of Tshombe to power was met with criticism. Malcolm X detested Tshombe as an "Uncle Tom", and in a 1964 speech in New York called him "the worse African ever born" and "the man who in cold blood, cold blood, committed an international crime-murdered Patrice Lumumba".[29]

In a New Year's message at the beginning of 1965, Tshombe rejected conciliation with the Simba rebels and called for their total defeat.[30][...]Tshombe was dismissed from his position as Prime Minister in October 1965 by President Kasa-Vubu and replaced by Évariste Kimba. In November, General Joseph Mobutu, who had just staged a successful coup against Kasa-Vubu, brought charges of treason against Tshombe, who again fled the country and settled in Francoist Spain. [...]

On 30 June 1967, he was in a [jet] that was hijacked [by an agent] of the French SDECE. According to the Congolese government, Tshombe was travelling to Africa.[32] He was taken to Algeria, jailed, and placed under house arrest. At his trial, he was represented by French lawyer René Floriot.[33] The pilots of the plane [...] were released and returned to the United Kingdom. The Congolese government demanded his extradition to Congo and his Western supporters agitated for his release.[32] The Algerians resisted both demands. A part of his supporters gathered to form the Tshombe Emergency Committee in the U.S., including Marvin Liebman and William F. Buckley, to press for his release and move to [Francoist] Spain.[19] The Tshombe Emergency Committee filed a number of legal challenges to force the Algerians to release Tshombe to no avail.[19] Long-time aide Michel Struelens travelled to different European cities to lobby for Tshombe, eventually to no avail.[34][...]

Tshombe died in Algeria in 1969. [...]

Owing to his role in the death of Lumumba and his association with Western interests, Tshombe's name became synonymous with "sellout" to black African nationalists. [A derivative of Tshombe's name, chombe, was incorporated into the Shona language as a word for "sellout". Kuchomba is the verb form.[42]]

[He had been awarded the] Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the [Belgian] Crown.

[tshombegreat]

[iweb-rdc001]

RDC-histoire : Le 13 octobre 1965, le jour où Joseph Kasavabu a crée un incident qui précipitera sa chute en faveur de Mobutu

Le 13 octobre 1965, devant les 2 Chambres réunies, le Président Kasa Vubu révoque son Premier ministre, Moise Tshombe. Comme en sept 1960, Kasa Vubu venait de créer un deuxième incident qui poussera le Général Joseph Désiré Mobutu à faire son deuxième coup d’Etat un mois plus tard (novembre 1965), fatigué, dira-t-il, d’assister aux querelles des politiciens. Ce jour du 13 octobre, le Président…

[johnny-moredread]

[T]he philosophy of plunder has not only not been ended, it is stronger than ever. And that is why those who used the name of the United Nations to commit the murder of Lumumba are today, in the name of the defense of the white race, murdering thousands of Congolese. How can we forget the betrayal of the hope that Patrice Lumumba placed in the United Nations? How can we forget the machinations and maneuvers that followed in the wake of the occupation of that country by UN troops, under whose auspices the assassins of this great African patriot acted with impunity? How can we forget, distinguished delegates, that the one who flouted the authority of the UN in the Congo — and not exactly for patriotic reasons, but rather by virtue of conflicts between imperialists — was Moise Tshombe, who initiated the secession of Katanga with Belgian support? And how can one justify, how can one explain, that at the end of all the United Nations' activities there, Tshombe, dislodged from Katanga, should return as lord and master of the Congo? Who can deny the sad role that the imperialists compelled the United Nations to play?

Che Guevara, At the United Nations, 1964

[brightmoonwhiteclouds]

“Our greatest freedom rest in our ability to expressively create in response to our reality through poem, prayer, portrait, and all that gives us the potential to release that which rest in the silence of our soul.”

—Tshombe Sekou

[milkboydotnet]

Kwame Nkrumah on the methods of neo-colonialism (from Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism):

Some of these methods used by neo-colonialists to slip past our guard must now be examined. The first is retention by the departing colonialists of various kinds of privileges which infringe on our sovereignty: that of setting up military bases or stationing troops in former colonies and the supplying of ‘advisers’ of one sort or another. Sometimes a number of ‘rights’ are demanded: land concessions, prospecting rights for minerals and/or oil; the ‘right’ to collect customs, to carry out administration, to issue paper money; to be exempt from customs duties and/or taxes for expatriate enterprises; and, above all, the ‘right’ to provide ‘aid’. Also demanded and granted are privileges in the cultural field; that Western information services be exclusive; and that those from socialist countries be excluded.

Even the cinema stories of fabulous Hollywood are loaded. One has only to listen to the cheers of an African audience as Hollywood’s heroes slaughter red Indians or Asiatics to understand the effectiveness of this weapon. For, in the developing continents, where the colonialist heritage has left a vast majority still illiterate, even the smallest child gets the message contained in the blood and thunder stories emanating from California. And along with murder and the Wild West goes an incessant barrage of anti-socialist propaganda, in which the trade union man, the revolutionary, or the man of dark skin is generally cast as the villain, while the policeman, the gum-shoe, the Federal agent — in a word, the CIA — type spy is ever the hero. Here, truly, is the ideological under-belly of those political murders which so often use local people as their instruments.

While Hollywood takes care of fiction, the enormous monopoly press, together with the outflow of slick, clever, expensive magazines, attends to what it chooses to call ‘news. Within separate countries, one or two news agencies control the news handouts, so that a deadly uniformity is achieved, regardless of the number of separate newspapers or magazines; while internationally, the financial preponderance of the United States is felt more and more through its foreign correspondents and offices abroad, as well as through its influence over inter-national capitalist journalism. Under this guise, a flood of anti-liberation propaganda emanates from the capital cities of the West, directed against China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Ghana and all countries which hack out their own independent path to freedom. Prejudice is rife. For example, wherever there is armed struggle against the forces of reaction, the nationalists are referred to as rebels, terrorists, or frequently ‘communist terrorists'!

Perhaps one of the most insidious methods of the neo-colonialists is evangelism. Following the liberation movement there has been a veritable riptide of religious sects, the overwhelming majority of them American. Typical of these are Jehovah’s Witnesses who recently created trouble in certain developing countries by busily teaching their citizens not to salute the new national flags. ‘Religion’ was too thin to smother the outcry that arose against this activity, and a temporary lull followed. But the number of evangelists continues to grow.

Yet even evangelism and the cinema are only two twigs on a much bigger tree. Dating from the end of 1961, the U.S. has actively developed a huge ideological plan for invading the so-called Third World, utilising all its facilities from press and radio to Peace Corps.

During 1962 and 1963 a number of international conferences to this end were held in several places, such as Nicosia in Cyprus, San Jose in Costa Rica, and Lagos in Nigeria. Participants included the CIA, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the Pentagon, the International Development Agency, the Peace Corps and others. Programmes were drawn up which included the systematic use of U.S. citizens abroad in virtual intelligence activities and propaganda work. Methods of recruiting political agents and of forcing ‘alliances’ with the U.S.A. were worked out. At the centre of its programmes lay the demand for an absolute U.S. monopoly in the field of propaganda, as well as for counteracting any independent efforts by developing states in the realm of information.

The United States sought, and still seeks, with considerable success, to co-ordinate on the basis of its own strategy the propaganda activities of all Western countries. In October 1961, a conference of NATO countries was held in Rome to discuss problems of psychological warfare. It appealed for the organisation of combined ideological operations in Afro-Asian countries by all participants.

In May and June 1962 a seminar was convened by the U.S. in Vienna on ideological warfare. It adopted a secret decision to engage in a propaganda offensive against the developing countries along lines laid down by the U.S.A. It was agreed that NATO propaganda agencies would, in practice if not in the public eye, keep in close contact with U.S. Embassies in their respective countries.

Among instruments of such Western psychological warfare are numbered the intelligence agencies of Western countries headed by those of the United States ‘Invisible Government’. But most significant among them all are Moral Re-Armament QARA), the Peace Corps and the United States Information Agency (USIA).

Moral Re-Armament is an organisation founded in 1938 by the American, Frank Buchman. In the last days before the second world war, it advocated the appeasement of Hitler, often extolling Himmler, the Gestapo chief. In Africa, MRA incursions began at the end of World War II. Against the big anti-colonial upsurge that followed victory in 1945, MRA spent millions advocating collaboration between the forces oppressing the African peoples and those same peoples. It is not without significance that Moise Tshombe and Joseph Kasavubu of Congo (Leopoldville) are both MRA supporters. George Seldes, in his book One Thousand Americans, characterised MRA as a fascist organisation ‘subsidised by . . . Fascists, and with a long record of collaboration with Fascists the world over. . . .’ This description is supported by the active participation in MRA of people like General Carpentier, former commander of NATO land forces, and General Ho Ying-chin, one of Chiang Kai-shek’s top generals. To cap this, several newspapers, some of them in the Western ;vorld, have claimed that MRA is actually subsidised by the CIA.

When MRA’s influence began to fail, some new instrument to cover the ideological arena was desired. It came in the establishment of the American Peace Corps in 1961 by President John Kennedy, with Sargent Shriver, Jr., his brother-in-law, in charge. Shriver, a millionaire who made his pile in land speculation in Chicago, was also known as the friend, confidant and co-worker of the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles. These two had worked together in both the Office of Strategic Services, U.S. war-time intelligence agency, and in the CIA.

Shriver’s record makes a mockery of President Kennedy’s alleged instruction to Shriver to ‘keep the CIA out of the Peace Corps’. So does the fact that, although the Peace Corps is advertised as a voluntary organisation, all its members are carefully screened by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Since its creation in 1961, members of the Peace Corps have been exposed and expelled from many African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries for acts of subversion or prejudice. Indonesia, Tanzania, the Philippines, and even pro-West countries like Turkey and Iran, have complained of its activities.

However, perhaps the chief executor of U.S. psychological warfare is the United States Information Agency (USIA). Even for the wealthiest nation on earth, the U.S. lavishes an unusual amount of men, materials and money on this vehicle for its neo-colonial aims.

The USIA is staffed by some 12,000 persons to the tune of more than $130 million a year. It has more than seventy editorial staffs working on publications abroad. Of its network comprising 110 radio stations, 60 are outside the U.S. Programmes are broadcast for Africa by American stations in Morocco, Eritrea, Liberia, Crete, and Barcelona, Spain, as well as from off-shore stations on American ships. In Africa alone, the USIA transmits about thirty territorial and national radio programmes whose content glorifies the U.S. while attempting to discredit countries with an independent foreign policy.

The USIA boasts more than 120 branches in about 100 countries, 50 of which are in Africa alone. It has 250 centres in foreign countries, each of which is usually associated with a library. It employs about 200 cinemas and 8,000 projectors which draw upon its nearly 300 film libraries.

This agency is directed by a central body which operates in the name of the U.S. President, planning and coordinating its activities in close touch with the Pentagon, CIA and other Cold War agencies, including even armed forces intelligence centres.

In developing countries, the USIA actively tries to prevent expansion of national media of information so as itself to capture the market-place of ideas. It spends huge sums for publication and distribution of about sixty newspapers and magazines in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The American government backs the USIA through direct pressures on developing nations. To ensure its agency a complete monopoly in propaganda, for instance, many agreements for economic co-operation offered by the U.S. include a demand that Americans be granted preferential rights to disseminate information. At the same time, in trying to close the new nations to other sources of information, it employs other pressures. For instance, after agreeing to set up USIA information centres in their countries, both Togo and Congo (Leopoldville) originally hoped to follow a non-aligned path and permit Russian information centres as a balance. But Washington threatened to stop all aid, thereby forcing these two countries to renounce their plan.

Unbiased studies of the USIA by such authorities as Dr R. Holt of Princeton University, Retired Colonel R. Van de Velde, former intelligence agents Murril Dayer, Wilson Dizard and others, have all called attention to the close ties between this agency and U.S. Intelligence. For example, Deputy Director Donald M. Wilson was a political intelligence agent in the U.S. Army. Assistant Director for Europe, Joseph Philips, was a successful espionage agent in several Eastern European countries.

Some USIA duties further expose its nature as a top intelligence arm of the U.S. imperialists. In the first place, it is expected to analyse the situation in each country, making recommendations to its Embassy, thereby to its Government, about changes that can tip the local balance in U.S. favour. Secondly, it organises networks of monitors for radio broadcasts and telephone conversations, while recruiting informers from government offices. It also hires people to distribute U.S. propaganda. Thirdly, it collects secret information with special reference to defence and economy, as a means of eliminating its international military and economic competitors. Fourthly, it buys its way into local publications to influence their policies, of which Latin America furnishes numerous examples. It has been active in bribing public figures, for example in Kenya and Tunisia. Finally, it finances, directs and often supplies with arms all anti-neutralist forces in the developing countries, witness Tshombe in Congo (Leopoldville) and Pak Hung Ji in South Korea. In a word, with virtually unlimited finances, there seems no bounds to its inventiveness in subversion.

One of the most recent developments in neo-colonialist strategy is the suggested establishment of a Businessmen Corps which will, like the Peace Corps, act in developing countries. In an article on ‘U.S. Intelligence and the Monopolies’ in International Affairs (Moscow, January 1965), V. Chernyavsky writes: ‘There can hardly be any doubt that this Corps is a new U.S. intelligence organisation created on the initiative of the American monopolies to use Big Business for espionage. It is by no means unusual for U.S. Intelligence to set up its own business firms which are merely thinly disguised espionage centres. For example, according to Chernyavsky, the C.I.A. has set up a firm in Taiwan known as Western Enterprises Inc. Under this cover it sends spies and saboteurs to South China. The New Asia Trading Company, a CIA firm in India, has also helped to camouflage U.S. intelligence agents operating in South-east Asia.

Such is the catalogue of neo-colonialism’s activities and methods in our time. Upon reading it, the faint-hearted might come to feel that they must give up in despair before such an array of apparent power and seemingly inexhaustible resources.

Fortunately, however, history furnishes innumerable proofs of one of its own major laws; that the budding future is always stronger than the withering past. This has been amply demonstrated during every major revolution throughout history.

[lboogie1906]

Moïse Kapend Tshombe (Tshombé) (November 10, 1919 – June 29, 1969) was a Congolese businessman and politician. He served as the president of the secessionist State of Katanga from 1960 to 1963 and as prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1964 to 1965. CONAKAT won control of the Katanga provincial legislature in the May 1960 general elections. One month later the Congo became an independent republic. He became President of the autonomous province of Katanga. Patrice Lumumba was tasked with forming a national government. Members of his party, the Mouvement National Congolais, were given charge of the portfolios of national defense and interior, despite his objections. The portfolio for economic affairs was awarded to a CONAKAT member, but this was undercut by the positioning of nationalists in control of the Ministry and Secretariat for Economic Coordination. Mines and land affairs were placed under separate portfolios. He declared that this diluting of CONAKAT's influence rendered his agreement to support the government "null and void". #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence https://www.instagram.com/p/Ckx2ffarq09/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=