Review of “The Lumumba Plot”

Back in the mid-80s I started a personal project of reading history. I was motivated by the desire to understand the differences between my world view and that of my father’s generation. I started with the Vietnam war. I got a draft card at 18 and my number was pulled when I was 19, but the draft ended before my cohort was called up, so my political awakening was very much shaped by that war.

After reading a couple of histories of the Vietnam war, I realized it was impossible to understand that without understanding the Cold War. The Cold War is impossible to understand without understanding WWII, which is impossible to understand without understanding WWI. And so on. I’ve read well over 100 histories and biographies that cover the 20^th century in America and the west. 

Of course, 20^th century US history is bound up with European history, which is itself bound up with the histories of Africa and Asia. One of the big gaps in my reading has been Africa. With that in mind, I downloaded “The Lumumba Plot: The secret history of the CIA and a Cold War assassination, by Stuart A. Reid.

Having previously read King Leopold’s Ghost, a history of the brutal colonialism in the Belgian Congo, I had some familiarity with the background of this book. Patrice Lumumba was the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo when it became independent in 1960. While the Lumumba Plot necessarily covers the personal biography of Lumumba, most of it is focused on the last ten years of his life—his rise to political power, his struggles to retain it and his ultimate downfall and murder at the hands of his fellow Congolese, engineered by the CIA with the explicit approval of President Eisenhower.

Reid is an executive editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, and the writing displays a deep understanding of the international politics in play at the time. Several African colonies were winning independence at the same time, and their former colonial overlords relinquished control with different degrees of enthusiasm into diverse polities with leaders of uneven abilities. Lumumba was a well-read and highly intelligent leader who rose to power by his energy, persuasive speaking ability and command of key languages. He was, however, quite mercurial and was insufficiently sensitive to the power of the US to manipulate Congo politics through money, favoritism and violence. 

Ultimately, Eisenhower and his CIA—particularly Allen Dulles—saw events in the Congo through the prism of rivalry with the USSR, not realizing that the Soviet leadership was indifferent to the Congo except as a political soapbox. The CIA saw the Congo as a domino in its African domino theory of communist contagion, and Lumumba as an existential threat. Lumumba saw himself as an African and an anti-colonialist. Even though he was popular with broad swathes of the Congo citizens, his political opponents won the financial and military support of the West. While UN general secretary Dag Hammarskjöld was personally sympathetic with Lumumba’s goals, he found Lumumba himself difficult and in the end was unwilling to wield the power of the UN on his behalf.

I found the writing of this book deeply engaging and came away with a better appreciation of mid-20^th century Africa and how international politics shaped the transition from colonialism to independence. I strongly recommend this book.