Six years after the Berlin Congress in 1878, the great powers met again in the capital of the German Empire to divide the spheres of interest on the African continent and begin to exploit mineral and other resources without mutual conflicts. The main topic is the Congo River Basin, an underexplored territory in the heart of Africa, which was believed to be rich in rare metals.
In order to avoid mutual conflict, Great Britain, France and Germany assigned these territories to the Belgian king Leopold II as his personal possession, under the extremely hypocritical name "Congo Free State". Extremely efficient and inhumane exploitation of people and natural resources began, and fists were cut off for failure to meet the norms, even entire villages were burned and massacred if they did not provide a quota of slave labor.
After the Second World War, the process of often apparent decolonization began in the world and on June 30, 1960, the Republic of Congo declared its independence, with Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba at the helm. Clashes led by local warlords immediately broke out and the prime minister asked the Soviet Union for help. It was a signal to America that it must not tolerate the intrusion of another Cold War superpower into its sphere of interest and Lumumba was deposed, arrested and after a while sent to a regional lord named Moise Tshombe in the province of Katanga, which was under Belgian control with the help of regular Belgian troops and various groups of mining company mercenaries – all replaced by traditional colonial powers. On January 17, 1961, Lumumba was shot with two of his associates and their bodies were desecrated and eventually dissolved in acid. This crime was successfully hidden for ten days when the world media finally published the news of the execution.
WHAT ALL THE TRANSPARENTS SAY
In those years, Yugoslavia was actively working on the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement and the lifelong president Josip Broz Tito was preparing for a tour of African countries that had already gained independence. In the tightly controlled media, the crisis in the Congo was the main news for some time, so "Politika" and "Borba" sent special reporters to Leopoldville (the capital of the Congo) and the first two pages of the leading daily newspapers were, as a rule, reserved for their reports, even the "unprecedented successes" in building a socialist society receded towards the middle of the then most popular media format.
At the same time as the news about Tito's tour of February 10th came out, agency reports about how it is suspected that Patrice Lumumba was killed. Four days later, confirmation of that news arrives and protest rallies begin in a large number of cities of the former Yugoslavia. The same is the case with large state-owned enterprises. The workers of the "Rade Končar" factory from Zagreb are holding a protest meeting from which they are sending a letter to the UN Security Council, while the collective of the wood-industry company "Lim" from Ivangrad (today's Berana) is expressing full support and solidarity for the Pan-African Conference in Accra by telegram.
One should not be naive and think that these gatherings were not organized with the full support of the public and secret security services, which in this way channeled popular dissatisfaction and tried to "improve" the diplomatic position of Tito, who had already boarded the ship "Galeb" in Split on the way to Accra (the capital of Ghana).
Since the early morning of February 14, 1961, student dormitories and businesses throughout Belgrade have been busily preparing banners for the upcoming rally. Based on the available photo-documentation, the difference between "spontaneous" and "suggested from above" transparencies is clearly visible. Based on decades of experience of the authors of these lines, the overall appearance (format, way of making and the message it carries) of the banners is the best indicator of the spontaneity, and by God, the fairness of the protests on which it is displayed.
The first meeting is held in the main square of Zemun, where, among others, student Ahmed Kamara from Sierra Leone speaks, and the most persistent ones, led by a group of students from African countries, continue to Marx and Engels Square. At the former railway station, low-ranking leaders of the city and the republic are speaking on an improvised lectern, and from the "Ivo Lola Ribar" Student Dormitory, the largest group of students is leaving, carrying messages such as "Glory to Lumumba - death to colonialism", "Lumumba, criminals, you are also afraid of death", as well as derogatory caricatures of Chombe and others who were believed to be involved in this political murder.
At 15:150.000 p.m., the central meeting began on today's Nikola Pašić Square. Dušan Mitević, the then president of the Belgrade University Students' Union, Dušan Petrović Šane on behalf of the Socialist Working People's Union of Serbia and Daku Tete, a student of the Faculty of Mining originally from Togo, spoke from the roof of a bus specially brought in for the occasion, whose speech "in a very good Serbian-Croatian language" received the greatest applause. Newspaper reports say that there were more than XNUMX people at the rally, which is certainly an extremely excessive number, considering the photo-documentation and the population of the capital at the time. Cynics would conclude that if the newsrooms at that time had "point software" at their disposal, this exaggeration would never have happened.
photo: private archive...
STUDENTS AND POLICE
The people's militia prepared for this gathering, although without experience in conflicts with "people's events". During the day, the approach to the Belgian embassy was blocked, the corner of Ulica 1. Maja (present-day Resavska) and Proleterski brigada (present-day Krunska) was blocked by trucks, and fire trucks were parked nearby. Already at 17 p.m., large groups of demonstrators, mostly students, approached the embassy, broke through the cordon of the law enforcement authorities and, after provocations by the Belgian embassy staff, attacked the very building of the diplomatic mission.
The police use snorts in order not to buy time for the cavalry unit to arrive on the scene and disperse the protesters, who are already burning the cars of the Belgian embassy and hanging a picture of Lumumba on the facade of the building. Some premises of the embassy were even broken into, from which the furniture was thrown out and set on fire on the spot. Only with the arrival of new reinforcements did the forces of order establish control over the disturbances in which more than 80 people were lightly and seriously injured. Then a group of demonstrators headed towards Knez Mihajlova Street, where at that time there were reading rooms (today's cultural centers) of Great Britain, France and the USA.
The state leadership then realized that "the devil took the joke", and that demolishing the representative offices of far more powerful countries than Belgium would not do anyone any good, so they hired the military police to block all approaches to the city's central street. As darkness fell, everything calmed down and already the next day one could only notice slogans written on buses and trolleybuses of city transport: "Death to Chombe" and "Belgians, march from the Congo". It should be noted that the name of the regional lord of the southeastern Congolese province of Katanga, Moise Chombe, became a popular nickname for a villain in public speech and popular culture from then until the 1990s in this area. Recently, that name was brought back to the air by the authors of the comedy series Government job.
LEGACY
From February 16, "damage control" began in the state (then only) media, and there was no mention of demonstrations and riots. The newspaper columns were filled with texts about the solar eclipse, which was best seen from the island of Hvar, Budva as the future supplier of carnations, roses and mimosas to Belgrade, as well as how the newly established pay grades will affect the advancement of civil servants.
It should be emphasized that all public student manifestations of the sixties of the 20th century had one common detail. Foreign students were regularly carried on the shoulders of their "local" colleagues, and it is very pleasant to note that this spirit has been maintained to this day. I get the impression that this society is slowly but surely distancing itself from the hysterical messages of disparagement and even hatred, in which the entertainment worker is leading the way, who is apparently increasingly afraid of being left without stable sources.
