Latest / The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History / The 1894 Luluabourg Revolt: Congolese Soldiers vs Belgian Rule
Transcript
- Lucas: So, we've talked a lot about the Force Publique mutinies — the ones at Boma in 1901, the Tetela uprising in 1895. But there was actually an earlier revolt, in January 1894, right there at Luluabourg fort. It's not as well known, but it really set the pattern for what came later. Luna: Luluabourg again — that fort seems to have been a real flashpoint. Lucas: It absolutely was. Luluabourg was the main Belgian outpost in the Kasai region, deep in the interior. The garrison there was made up of Tetela and Songye soldiers, many of them recruited — or rather, conscripted — after the Congo-Arab War. They were supposed to be the backbone of Belgian control, but they were treated brutally. The chicotte was routine, rations were poor, and promotions were blocked. And there was a specific spark: in late 1893, the soldiers had been promised extra pay and a bonus for a campaign they'd just completed. It never came. Luna: So they were already angry, and then something pushed them over the edge? Lucas: Exactly. On January 23, 1894, a Tetela soldier named Mulumba Nsanda — he was a sergeant in the Force Publique — led a group of about 150 men in seizing the fort's armory. They killed two Belgian officers, Captain Peltzer and Sergeant Delattre, and took control of the entire post. For a few hours, the rebels were in charge. They freed prisoners, looted the stores, and sent word to nearby villages calling for support. Luna: Did they get any support from the local population? Lucas: Some, but not as much as they'd hoped. The local Luba and Kuba communities had their own grievances against the Belgians, but they were also wary of the Tetela soldiers — there was a long history of tension between the groups. So while a few villagers joined in, the revolt remained mostly a military mutiny. And the Belgians reacted fast. Commandant Henry, the senior officer in the region, was at Lusambo, about 150 miles away. He got word within days and marched with a column of loyal Force Publique troops, plus some armed auxiliaries. They reached Luluabourg on February 2. Luna: So the rebels held the fort for about ten days? Lucas: About that. When Henry's column appeared, the rebels tried to negotiate. They demanded amnesty and better conditions. Henry refused — he demanded unconditional surrender. The rebels opened fire, but they were outnumbered and outgunned. Henry had a Maxim gun, and the rebels' captured rifles were old. The fighting lasted maybe an hour. About forty rebels were killed, and the rest fled into the bush. Mulumba Nsanda was captured alive. Luna: What happened to him? Lucas: He was tried by a military court at Luluabourg — a quick trial, no real defence. He was found guilty of mutiny and murder, and sentenced to death. He was executed by firing squad on February 10, 1894. His body was left on display as a warning. But the revolt didn't end there. Small groups of Tetela soldiers continued to resist in the bush for months, raiding Belgian outposts and attacking supply caravans. It took until late 1894 for the last of them to be hunted down. Luna: It's striking how quickly these uprisings were crushed, but also how often they happened. Lucas: That's the thing — each mutiny was put down swiftly, but the conditions never changed. The same grievances — chicotte, poor pay, broken promises — kept fueling new revolts. The 1894 Luluabourg revolt directly foreshadowed the Tetela uprising of 1895, which we covered in episode 115. And both of them set the stage for the larger mutinies at Boma in 1901. The Force Publique was a powder keg, and the Belgians kept striking matches. Luna: It also shows how central the Kasai region was to the colonial system. Lucas: Absolutely. The Kasai was a major rubber and ivory zone, and the Compagnie du Kasai — a private concession company — had a tight grip on it. The fort at Luluabourg was there to protect their operations. So when the soldiers mutinied, they weren't just attacking Belgian authority — they were threatening the economic engine of the colony. That's why Commandant Henry moved so fast. If the revolt had spread to other garrisons, it could have crippled the whole Kasai operation. Luna: And the Belgians learned nothing from it. Lucas: They learned how to repress mutinies more efficiently, but not how to prevent them. The chicotte remained standard discipline. The pay system stayed broken. And the ethnic divisions among the soldiers — Tetela, Songye, Luba, Manyema — were deliberately exploited by the Belgian officers to keep the men from uniting. That divide and rule tactic worked in the short term, but it also sowed deep resentments that would explode again and again. Luna: It's a grim pattern, but an important one to understand. Lucas: And understanding it is exactly what keeps this show going. If you've been coming with us through these conversations — about Belgium's colonial past, the Force Publique, the Congo — you know that we dig into these details because they matter. And a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. It helps us stay ad-free and keep covering stories like Mulumba Nsanda's. Luna: Yeah, it really does make a difference. And there's so much more to uncover. Lucas: So, back to the revolt — one detail that's often overlooked is the role of the local chiefs. Some of them, like the Luba chief Kabongo, refused to support the rebels, even though they had their own disputes with the Belgians. That's a reminder that colonial resistance was never simple — it was shaped by local rivalries as much as by anti-colonial sentiment. Luna: So the revolt failed in part because the rebels couldn't build a broader coalition. Lucas: Exactly. And that's a lesson the later Tetela uprising of 1895 also learned the hard way. But even so, these revolts left a mark. They forced the Belgians to keep more troops in the Kasai, which cost money and reduced profits. And they showed that the Force Publique was not a reliable instrument of colonial rule — it was a force that could turn on its masters at any moment. That fear never really went away. Luna: It's a story that deserves to be remembered, even if it's not a victory. Lucas: Absolutely. These men — Mulumba Nsanda and the others — they were fighting for dignity in a system designed to strip them of it. And their resistance, however crushed, is part of the larger story of Congo's struggle against colonial rule.