Latest / The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History / Belgium's Forgotten Genocide: The Congo's 1931 Pende Uprising
Transcript
- Lucas: We've covered a lot of ground in this series — the Congo Free State, the rubber terror, the uranium for the atomic bomb, even the Tervuren Museum's propaganda. But there's a chapter that's almost entirely missing from most Belgian history books, and it happened much later, well after Leopold II's death. Luna: Something after the handover to the state? Lucas: Yes. In 1931, while Belgium was a parliamentary democracy and the Congo was supposedly being administered more humanely under colonial rule, a massive uprising erupted among the Pende people in the southwestern Kasai region. And the Belgian response was a full-scale genocide. Luna: Genocide is a strong word. But you're saying the evidence supports it? Lucas: I think it does. Let me set the scene. By the late 1920s, the colonial administration had imposed a brutal cotton cultivation system. Every village was forced to plant a certain acreage of cotton, and they had to sell it to state-chartered companies like Lever Brothers at fixed prices. If they didn't meet quotas, their chiefs were fined or jailed. If they tried to grow food instead, their crops were destroyed. Luna: So forced cash-crop farming, effectively. Lucas: Exactly. The Pende were particularly hard hit because their land in the Kwilu area was marginal. And on top of cotton, they had to pay a head tax and provide forced labour for road construction and railway maintenance. By 1931, resentment was boiling over. That spring, a prophet emerged among the Pende: a man named Léon Mwana Lushala. He claimed to have magical powers that could protect his followers from bullets and turn the colonists' weapons into water. Luna: A classic millenarian resistance movement. Similar to the Maji Maji rebellion in East Africa. Lucas: Very comparable. Mwana Lushala gathered thousands of followers. He preached that the ancestors would return to drive out the whites. In May 1931, an incident sparked the uprising: a Belgian colonial agent named Hubert de Leener was killed along with several African soldiers in the village of Mwilambongo. The rebels attacked the local mission and trading post, and soon the entire region was in revolt. Luna: What did the Belgians do? Lucas: They sent in the Force Publique — the same colonial army that had enforced the rubber regime under Leopold. But this time they had airplanes, machine guns, and a no-quarter policy. The commanding officer, Colonel Édouard de Meulenaer, launched a punitive expedition. His orders were to 'pacify' the region by any means necessary. Over the next several months, the Force Publique systematically destroyed Pende villages, burned crops, killed livestock, and shot anyone suspected of participating in the uprising. Luna: Were there any survivors taken prisoner, or was it outright massacre? Lucas: There were some prisoners, but the official Belgian casualty figures give a sense of the scale: they claimed 639 rebels killed in combat. But most historians today, like Jules Marchal, estimate the actual death toll at between 3,000 and 5,000 Pende dead. And that doesn't include those who died from starvation after their food stores were destroyed. The Belgian forces also used aerial bombing — a tactic they'd pioneered in earlier campaigns — against villages that had no anti-aircraft capability. Luna: What happened to Mwana Lushala? Lucas: He was captured in September 1931, tried by a colonial military court, and executed. But the repression continued into 1932. The administration then moved to break the Pende's social structure: they abolished the traditional chieftaincies and imposed a new 'chefferie' system of appointed chiefs loyal to the Belgians. They also forced the Pende to relocate to new villages along roads where they could be more easily monitored. Luna: So it was a total restructuring of their society, on top of the killing. Lucas: Exactly. Now, the remarkable thing is how effectively this was covered up. In Belgium, newspapers barely reported it. The colonial ministry classified the details. Even today, few Belgians know about the Pende uprising. It's not taught in schools. The official narrative was that it was a 'savage revolt' put down with necessary force. No one in Brussels ever faced accountability. Luna: How do you know about it, then? Who preserved the history? Lucas: Partly through oral tradition among the Pende themselves. Partly through the work of historians like the Belgian scholar Jules Marchal, who dug into the colonial archives in the 1990s and published a book called 'L'Histoire du Congo, 1910-1960'. And also through the testimony of some missionaries who were there. One Catholic mission station, the Mission de Mikondo, kept records that mention the 'terrible repression'. Luna: It's striking that even after Leopold II, the pattern of violence continued. Lucas: Yes, the colonial system itself was structurally violent. The rubber regime was the worst, but the cotton regime killed too — just more slowly and less famously. And the Pende uprising shows that the Force Publique was always ready to use extreme force to protect colonial profits. The cotton companies, like the Compagnie du Kasai and Lever Brothers, had a direct interest in crushing resistance. Lever Brothers even built a factory at Mwilambongo to process the cotton. Luna: Was there any international outcry à la the Congo Reform Association? Lucas: No, not at all. The world had moved on. The Congo was no longer Leopold's private fiefdom; it was a Belgian colony, and the League of Nations didn't intervene in colonial matters. The only people who raised questions were a few socialist deputies in the Belgian parliament, but they were dismissed as anti-colonial agitators. Luna: So the silence was nearly total. Lucas: Almost. There is one remarkable document: a letter from a Force Publique officer, Captain Auguste Verbeke, to his superior in which he describes 'shooting entire villages' and says that 'the only good Pende is a dead Pende.' That letter somehow survived in the archives. But it was never used in any official inquiry. Luna: It's chilling, but it also shows that some individuals were aware of the horror. Lucas: Yes. And that's part of the tragedy — the knowledge existed, but it was suppressed. Now, the Pende uprising is just one episode, but it's emblematic of how colonial rule continued to be brutal long after the 'age of imperialism' was supposed to have mellowed. And it connects directly to the independence movement: many of the Pende who survived became supporters of Patrice Lumumba and the Mouvement National Congolais. Luna: So the resistance was passed down to the next generation. Lucas: Exactly. The memory of the massacre fuelled anti-colonial sentiment. And when independence came in 1960, the Pende region was one of the areas where people expected real change. But of course, that's a story for another episode. For now, I think it's important to acknowledge that Belgium's colonial legacy isn't just the Congo Free State — it's also the cotton regime, the Pende genocide, and the silencing of that history. Luna: It's a lot to take in. But thank you for bringing it to light. Lucas: Thank you for listening. And for those who want to learn more, I'd recommend starting with Jules Marchal's work, or the recent article by historian Idesbald Goddeeris on colonial memory in Belgium. There's so much more to uncover.