A few weeks ago, I had my class watch a film on Patrice Lumumba, the first African prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who was assassinated two months into his term. History has revealed that the CIA backed his murder; they wanted an African leader who was pro-Western, pro-imperialism. Their wish revealed itself in the form of Joseph Mobutu, who was so pro-capitalism that he spent the next thirty-some years siphoning the wealth from his country and funneling it to his private Swiss bank accounts.
Raoul Peck directed the film (Lumumba), his second about Patrice Lumumba. Although Lumumba is more interesting to watch in terms of story and history, the documentary (Lumumba: Death of a Prophet) is a better psychological exploration of Peck himself, Lumumba, and the country that Lumumba served and in which he died. Why was Lumumba killed? And more to the point, why does Peck obsess over this particular question?
The documentary splices scenes from Lumumba's brief period of leadership, interviews with journalists and Belgian leaders, and Peck's own childhood in the Congo. His family emigrated there from Haiti, after independence. The Belgians were notorious for exploiting labor and extracting wealth from the Congo, giving little back, even in the form of education. So the Congo recruited French-speaking blacks from other countries to come fill positions that required education and/or experience; in this way and for that reason, Peck and his family arrived in the Congo. His mother worked as secretary to the mayor of Leopoldville. One day, when she was asked to type up a list that clued her in to the next planned assassinations, she decided it was time for the family to leave. She knew too much.
Much of the film shows Europe, rather than the Congo. This is because Peck and his crew had trouble getting into then Zaire. When they planned to go, they received a message from the Zairian secret service that they had heard about the film and would like to meet Peck on his arrival. But these images of Europe and Europeans provide a reverse-psychological backdrop: we are reminded of exactly how bizarre the entire colonial experience proved to be, for both colonizer and colonized.
One of the most brilliant moments in this film is subtle, almost random, a scene where Peck shows us his first attempts at filming, a bull getting killed in the ring in Spain. His daughter asks him, "What were you feeling when you watched that bull get killed?" and he admits to his film audience that he didn't dare say he was just having a hard time keeping focus. Peck does not relate this to Lumumba specifically, but the connections are obvious. On a metaphorical level, Lumumba is that bull, and he was being dragged to death. But what did these journalists and politicians, Belgians and Africans alike, "feel" as they watched it happen? Peck tries to determine the answer but it seems clear from their responses that all they felt at the time was an inability to keep focus, that they still have that trouble. Perhaps, he suggests, that is the reason for Lumumba's death. Nobody could see well enough to prevent it. Nobody could focus on Lumumba long enough to understand his true message, unity and peace. Instead they feared his words, then allowed him to be trampled by their own misunderstandings.
