Notes - Empty Hands, Open Arms - page 191

Congo: Prioritizing the Local in Conservation Practice,” in Indigenous Peoples and Conservation:
From Rights to Resource Management , ed. Kristen Walker Painemilla et al. (Arlington: Conserva-
tion International, 2010), 311-26.

Albert Lotana Lokasola

85 A Belgian served as a godfather note 1: In the 1920s and 1930s, Belgium had already begun
experimenting with the class of évolués , demanding that such people conform to Belgian values
and ways of living. But only in the years after World War II did education become dramatically
more available and a substantial middle class of évolués begin to form. Tödt writes: “In the 1920s
and 1930s the term évolués already appeared in Belgian Congo to describe a highly heterogenic
group of (mostly literate) Congolese that differed in occupational, regional and linguistic aspects
but shared education and/or employment in colonial institutions and the urban lifeworld” (7).
note 2: With worldwide colonies increasingly achieving independence, Congolese rioted for
their own. In 1955, Belgian professor Antoine van Bilsen published his Thirty Year Plan for
the Political Emancipation of Belgian Africa , a treatise setting forth gradual emancipation in
step with the creation of an educated elite. Whereas the Belgian government was skeptical of
the plan, not willing to give up its lucrative colony, many Congolese évolués thought that thirty
years was too long. When Ghana achieved autonomy in 1957 and de Gaulle, a year later, prom-
ised all French colonies that they could decide their futures, Congolese independence move-
ments quickly gained support. Already established in 1956, the Mouvement National Congolais
rallied the people, Patrice Lumumba among its founders. He became its president and attended
the All-African Peoples' Conference, hosted by President Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana. Here, Lu-
mumba became inspired to look beyond the paternalistic vision of the Congo's future that Belgi-
um was proposing. Daniel Tödt, “Les Noirs Perfectionnés: Cultural Embourgeoisement in Belgi-
an Congo During the 1940s and 1950s,” Working Papers des Sonderforschungsbereiches 640 no.
4 (2012), http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/series/sfb-640-papers/2012-4/PDF/4.pdf . See also Turner, The
Congo Wars , 70.
86 Only with riots in Léopoldville Thomas Turner and Sandra W. Meditz, “Introduction,” in Med-
itz and Merrill, Zaire: A Country Study , xxxix.
87 an ardent and idealistic fight Quoted in Suzanne McIntire, Speeches in World History (New
York: Infobase Publishing, 2009), 438.
87 The discontent exploded Turner and Meditz, “Introduction,” in Meditz and Merrill, Zaire: A

Country Study , xxxix.
87 Janssens, refusing to allow Ch. Didier Gondola, The History of Congo (Westport: Greenwood,
2002), 118; Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2011), 102.
87 The outraged soldiers began Stanley Meisler, United Nations: The First Fifty Years (New York:

Atlantic Monthly, 1997), 117.
87 But the chaos intensified As Thomas Turner writes in The Congo Wars , “Belgium's neo-colo-
nial strategy had centered on Katanga, richest of the six provinces of Congo and the one where
much of its investment was centered. That was not a viable long-term strategy, since Belgian firms
had major interests in the other five provinces. The Belgian government and major companies ap-
parently intended to reconstitute a loose federal structure, within which Katanga would continue
to enjoy substantial autonomy. Lumumba, seen as the principle obstacle to Belgium's neo-colonial
plan, was demonized” (32). This situation is also described in Turner and Meditz, “Introduction,”
in Meditz and Merrill, Zaire: A Country Study , xxxix.
87 These were the provinces Turner, The Congo Wars , 44.