Outstanding in White

During this period of unrest, King Boudoin of Belgium journeyed to Stanleyville for a firsthand view of the situation. Some Congolese thought he had come to release Lumumba from prison while others feared he would have Lumumba executed. In either case, a wild excitement seized the city. When the king’s motorcade drove slowly through the streets, unruly mobs attempted to attack the monarch’s car. The king apparently saw enough firsthand and shortened his visit. Within a few weeks, official word came from the Belgian government announcing the precise date of independence: June 30, 1960. Lumumba’s release from prison soon followed.

When the Congolese began speaking openly of independence after the first riots, they initially seemed to understand it in simple terms of freedom from white domination. Over the months since then, stories circulated clouding and confusing the issue. Rumor had it that independence would not only eliminated white control, it included many other benefits: everyone would have plenty of food to eat and unending supplies of beer; they would live in white peoples’ houses, and the men could take white women. With all this floating about, independence totally lost reality of meaning to the ordinary local people.

Sister Mary Rose assumed that the Congolese would receive the news of a date for independence with unrestrained joy. Because of the uncertainty of what independence meant, she found quite a different reaction among the people of Okutu; they were fearful.

Routine work at the hospital proceeded normally as the months marched on, the difference being the incessant talk of independence and Lumumba. His zealous MNC (National Congolese Movement) followers penetrated into the remotest villages and camps, influencing people to adopt their views by power of speech, and when that failed, by pressure of threats. Although the villagers overwhelmingly supported Lumumba, this was not enough for the MNC; they aimed to number everyone as adherents to their party. They had no respect for the individual right to believe and to vote according to conscience.

The men who followed Lumumba did so with undiluted militancy. The women, for the most part, continued to express fear and apprehension about independence. Sister Mary Rose knew of only one politically active woman, the wife of a graduate nurse working in the dispensary. They were Catholics, one of the two couples among the nurses married in the church. When this nurse embraced the MNC, he removed the gold cross and chain he wore around his neck, replacing it with a large medallion featuring Lumumba’s picture. His ample wife wore not only the Lumumba medallion dangling at her throat, but prominent earrings with Lumumba’s image.