Behind closed doors

I went to our community cinema with a friend to see Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, a really interesting documentary created by Johan Grimonprez entirely out of original footage about the independence movement in Congo around 1960. Its focus was the world's - especially the USA's and the UN's - response to the rapidly changing world order and USA fears about access to the minerals in Congo's Katanga province (where the uranium dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from).

I wish the film hadn't been marketed (and conceived?) as 'revealing how the USA state department sent jazz ambassador, Louis Armstrong ... to divert attention from a CIA-backed coup to topple democratically elected leader, Patrice Lumumba'. The breathtaking exploitation of black American musicians denied human rights at home was a fascinating example of how completely amoral the USA government was in furthering its own ends, but being driven by the soundtrack that the director obviously wanted made the core narrative lumpy, confusing and sometimes rushed, despite the film being 2½ hours long. Sorry, but I'd have cut quite a bit of the footage of musicians playing. Not Miriam Makeba nor Nina Simone, through!

Since I started to know a little about African history, I have wondered whether, if the CIA hadn't murdered Lumumba, Congo's first democratic prime minister, he'd have managed to stay committed to his principles or whether he'd have gone the same self-serving, power-grabbing, American-pocket way of so many other African heads of state who started out radical and liberationist. I like to think not but...

Footage of Khrushchev in the UN, Dag Hammaskjöld there and elsewhere, and Fidel Castro roving, was a revelation. I admired Khrushchev more than I expected to, Dag Hammaskjöld very much less while Castro's principled independence always makes me smile. I knew nothing of Andrée Blouin, African feminist and Lumumba's adviser and speechwriter. She deserves a 2½ hour film of her own. Nor did I know that 60 activists, including Maya Angelou, invaded the UN in 1961 to protest at Lumumba's murder. The film made me aware of how very little I know about a crucial time when the world power balance was shifting so fast.

Question: Would the CIA have even 'needed' to murder Lumumba, and overturn so many other governments, if they'd had more power in the UN? It amazes me that the USA didn't manage to prevent newly independent nations in the UN having one vote per country, making every nation in the world equal to the USA. A huge own goal.


Fact, alluded to but not discussed in the documentary: (Democratic Republic of) Congo has been unstable and violent since independence and a large part of that is because of global interests in its mineral deposits. Your mobile phone and mine, your laptop and mine, contain coltan. Approximately 80% of the world's supply of coltan is found in the Democratic Republic of Congo where it is mined by hand, sometimes by children. Coltan mining is destroying ecosystems and displacing animals from their natural habitat. The chemicals used in washing coltan are polluting water and are harmful to people and animals. Those in charge savagely defend their own profits, with the backing of governments who want to protect their own interests.