TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF WAR AND PLUNDER ALL IN THE NAME OF 'PEACE CONFLICT IN THE CONGO

COMPULSORY cultivation in the Congo was extended in 1935. It enabled Belgian business men to buy cheaply, so that at a time when world markets were depressed they • could continue to make their profits.

Forced labour practices were further intensified during the war, when under the Anglo-Belgian Agreement of 1940, the Congo became (particularly after the loss of S E Asia) an important source of raw materials to the Allies.

Continued

After the war, reporting on the situation at the end 1946, the Belgian authority Father J. Van Wing, speaking from experience in Leopoldville and Equateur provinces, wrote that 'in general compulsory labour continues as in the past'.

Another Belgian writer, Malengreau, quotes a magistrate telling him in 1947:

'What makes the life of the natives in the bush unhappy is above all the corvées, the multiple and diverse burdens which are imposed upon them and which leave them no respite; the innumerable prescribed obligations" and prohibitions, with a severe penalty always attached, which I wear Carrillo's dangerous SANTIAGO CARRILLO travels around Europe peddling his charlatan Communism and now he presents himself to the public advocating a close alliaance with fascist Spanish capitalism.

We don't think that this language, whose basic mission is to serve the Spanish working class on a silver plate to Moscow, will succeed in conANTIAGO ADVANCE NOTICE them out, the bullying, the pestering by every kind of authority-European as well as traditional and their subordinatés, moniteurs or policemen, before whom they are defenceless; the excessive punishments inflicted without discernment by the European agent, the juge de police, and also by the tribunal indigené.

"These improper annoyances, which in large measure have their origin in our policy of production, inevitably result in the discouragement of the native, in making him live in an atmosphere of insecurity and uneasiness; they bring him to hate his environment and to flee from it, breaking thereby the bonds, customary and social, which bind him to it and which our civilization has already rendered fragile.' 'To flee from it' ... to the towns and the mining areas, to become an industrial working class.

Production in the Congo expanded considerably between the wars. Katanga retained the position, attained in 1923, of the world's third largest supplier of copper.

The Kilo-Mito mines | in Orientale province became a major gold source. Diamond output grew from 318,979 carats in 1920 to 2,518,258 carats in 1930.

In common with the rest of the capitalist world, the Congo was hit by the Depression in 1932, some 72,000 African workers were sacked, and beLETTER reformism solidating his fraud, although in order to achieve this he tries to sweeten the itter pill of betrayal of the Spanish workers with the word FEBI ALEXANDRA PALACE Wood Green London, N22 BOOK THIS DATE NOW! BOOK series tween 1929 and 1933, in N Katanga, there was a 70 per cent drop in the number of wage earners.

However, with the recovery in world trade, production began to expand again, and in 1937, exports stood at £16,976,075—three times their value in 1932.

The Second World War provided a further impetus to production, and a new importance to the Congo as a source of materials. Uranium from the Congo was used in the first atomic bomb.

In 1923, over 8 per cent of the African population were living in mining camps and towns. In 1940, the percentage of able-bodied adult males who were working for wages was 19.23 per cent. By 1956 it had grown to 38.95 percent.

A survey in 1956, carried out in Luluabourg, showed that for a family of four, an income of between £7 17s and £8 Ils a month would be the minimum desirable to maintain a reasonable standard of living.

The actual minimum wage, together with allowances at that time, amounted to only £4 14s a month.

An inquiry showed that during the 1950s, between 30 per cent and. 50 per cent (varying according to town), ot wage earners received only the minimum wages.

Between 1950 and 1957 there was a 60 per cent increase in national production; but African buying power, during the same period, declined by 13 per cent.

There could be opment of an middle class in Business was kept The attitude of Spanish workers must be one of firm and decided opposition to reform in Spain.

If it does not do so it would, with certainty, find itself trapped in the stinking rotten Spanish capitalist environment. It would be forced to collaborate in the capitalist development which has spread in such an insidious way amongst the Spanish people.

Reform in Spain is aimed at prolonging the capitalist regime, to ensure its survival.

In order to save its real position, in order to stabilize and to consolidate its power this is the last trump which capitalism presents in the game and the slogan which it propagates: Reform of the Spanish state.

Through the reform, through some economic if not political concessions it intends to brainwash the minds of the Spanish workers, to eliminate from his lungs all the breadth which animates the Social Revolution; to destroy, together with the revolutionary consciousness, all possibility of the materialization of socialism.

Francoism has been defeated; its system has fallen into pieces and its immediate accomplice-capitalism-is on its last legs.

Those who Spanish liberal . Young Socialists and Il Trades Unions Allia GREAT NATIONAL RALLY AGAINST TORYISM little develindigenous the Congo.

almost enrepresent bourgeoisie tirely in European hands. The Tshombe family, which made its money in trade, was an exception. Generally speaking, insofar as an African political élite developed, its membership was drawn from among the salaried civil servants, the Army, the political and trade union organizations.

Although educated Africans were supposed to be better treated than the masses under Belgian rule, they still experienced racial discrimination, oppression and humiliation.

An African technician would receive lower pay than a European who was doing the same, or even a less-skilled job.

Until the last few years of Belgian rule, Africans in the civil service were confined to the lower grades, even if they qualified for higher positions.

According to Lumumba, in his book "Congo, my Country', flogging was still inflicted on educated Africans who got in trouble with the law, although legally they were supposed to be exempt from such forms of punishment.

Africans were not allowed in a number of establishments frequented by Europeans. Both Mobutu and Lumumba had personal experience of racial insults from the whites.

The evolution of the Congothose who the reform.

They feel responsible for the chaotic political and social situation of Spain. They are the same class who for more than 30 years have collaborated directly in the extermination of the advanced human values of the Spanish proletariat.

They actively participated in the execution of more than a million murders.

They now improvise and present themselves to us as liberators of the people through the reform. They seek for a reform in accordance with and directly linked to the fundamental principles of the Francoist-capitalist - Falangistclerical movement, a movement which dissected the democratic body of the Republic which had been established by the people as a strong ground for socialism.

Those who know they are guilty do not ignore the imminent and necessary purifying action of the people for the nation and try to submerge this action by conditioning the workers and peasants to acquiesce to the word reform.

If the Spanish people allow their aspirations to be caught up in the trap laid out by capitalism, if the people in their desire for liberty unconsciously participate in this fraudulent manoeuvre, then we can be certain that the struggle for the road which leads to victory against the capitalist class has been abandoned.

This is a struggle without which the victory of socialism, we affirm, will never be possible.

The rotten capitalist system intends through the reform to place its representatives in the highest administrative and commanding posts of the Francoite dictatorship. lese people's struggle against Belgian colonialism at first took the form of popular religious movements of a prophetic and Messianic character, which had their appeal to the most oppressed • workers and poor peasants.

In the post-war years, the Belgian trade unions extended their activity to the Congo, initially to the privileged European workers, but later coming to influence some of the African working class.

As reformist organizations, tied to imperialism, these unions could not meet the needs of the oppressed Congolese masses; and the Congolese trade union movement to which they gave rise remained comparatively small.

But it was the training ground of a number of Congolese political leaders, such as Cyrille Adoula.

In the late 1950s, after becoming disillusioned with the Belgian parties with which they had been associated, a number of educated Congolese began organizing their own political parties.

The Belgian authorities always tried to retard the development of the Congolese people, and brought in repressive measures to keep them down. ' In 1937, was introThis will be achieved if there is any sign of weakness in the Spanish people. On the other hand if the working class understand that the decisive moment has now arrived for intensifying the struggle to behead the regime, to sweep out all its rubbish, then the overthrow of Francoite capitalism will have been accelerated.

Santiago Carrillo, Moscow, Francoism, the dictatorship of Nixon and together with them the whole capitalist world must be made to realize that, today, in Spain everything depends on the working class which has nothing to gain by means of talks and meetings. To rely on these methods would be to lose all.

It is no longer possible to wait, because the people have the right and the obligation to solve the problem even by force, if that is what it is compelled to resort to.

Long live socialism!

Strategy and Tactics In the Imperialist Epoch streets where they were show- the Congo as a state; whereas ing increasing readiness to be the election also showed the MOISE TSHOMBE mobilized in a popular movement, the Belgian government began to discuss independence for the Congo.

Elections were held in May 1960, resulting in the success of Patrice Lumumba's Movement Nationale Congolaise, nationalist, anti-tribalist, anti-colonialist, and a reasonable showing also for the Parti Solidaire Africaine, led by strength of regionalist and tribalist tendencies. Lumumba was pressed by the Belgians to make a compromise with the ABAKO party - a federalist party which originated from an ethnic association of the Bakongos — under which its leader, Kasavubu, became Head of State, while Lumumba himself became premier.

June 30, 1960, the been suspicious as to just what the Belgians' real intentions It all seemed just too easy— what was the snag?

What did the colonialists have 'up their sleeve'?

Observers abroad were surprised at the rapidity with which the Belgian government had moved-two years atter the Leopoldville clashes, the country was to be independent.

Belgian colonialism appeared to be giving up without a struggle at all, let alone the prolonged one that might have been expected.

In fact, the real struggle was to come after 'independence' after the African nationalists had found themselves in office.

Only then would Belgian colonialism show its hand, and the struggle that was to develop would make the Congo a battlefield, in which not only Belgian imperialism would be engaged.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

The Leopold II period: 'Imperialism and World Politics'.Moon.

'The Black Man's Burden'. -E. D. Morel.

Belgian rule: 'King Leopold's Legacy'. — Roger Anstey.

"Neo-Colonialism'.-Nkrumah.

PAGE FOUR Friday, January 1, 1971