Latest / The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History / Panda Farnana: The Forgotten Congolese Intellectual at Brussels 1900
Transcript
- Lucas: So far in this series, we've covered the rubber terror, the Force Publique, the strikes — all the big structural cruelties of the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo. But I've been meaning to talk about one person who's almost always left out of those stories, and I think he might be the most interesting figure of the whole period. Luna: Who's that? Lucas: His name is Paul Panda Farnana. Born in 1888 in Nzobe, a village near what's now Boma in the Congo Free State. And he was brought to Belgium as a child — not as a curiosity, but to be educated. He ended up becoming the first Congolese person to get a university degree in Belgium, and he did it at a time when most Belgians still thought of Congolese people as barely human. Luna: Wait, how did a kid from the Congo end up studying in Belgium in the 1890s? Lucas: It's a strange story. His father was a village chief, and when he died, his mother sent young Paul to a Catholic mission school in Boma. That's where he caught the attention of a Belgian colonial official named Léonard Fievez, who offered to sponsor his education in Belgium. So in 1896, eight-year-old Panda Farnana sailed to Antwerp. He was one of a handful of Congolese children brought over in what was officially called a 'civilising mission'. Luna: And what happened to him there? Lucas: He was placed with a Belgian family in Antwerp and enrolled at the Royal Athenaeum, the top secondary school in the city. He clearly was brilliant — he graduated in 1905 with high marks, then went on to study tropical agriculture at the State Agricultural Institute in Gembloux. In 1909, he got his diploma. So by the time he was 21, he was a fully qualified agronomist — not just the first Congolese university graduate in Belgium, but one of the most educated people in the colony. Luna: And all of this is happening while back in the Congo, the Force Publique is chopping off hands. Lucas: Exactly. That contradiction is the heart of his story. Because Panda Farnana was also present at the 1900 Brussels International Exposition — the one with the 'human zoo'. He was only twelve, but he worked there as a translator and assistant in the botanical gardens section of the Congo Pavilion. Luna: So he was working at the very event where other Congolese were being put on display in a mock village. Lucas: Yes. And we actually have some of his writings from that period — letters and notes. He doesn't directly condemn the exposition — he was a kid, and he was clearly grateful for the opportunity — but he does make sharp observations about the racism he saw. In one letter, he talks about how Belgian visitors would stare at him and whisper, as if he couldn't understand them. He spoke perfect Dutch and French, by the way. Luna: That must have been infuriating — to be invisible in plain sight. Lucas: It shaped him. After he finished his studies, he returned to the Congo in 1910 as an agronomist for the colonial government. But he quickly ran into a glass ceiling. He was assigned to the botanical garden in Boma — a research station — but he was paid less than his Belgian colleagues and given no real authority. He was treated as a native assistant, not a fellow scientist. Luna: Even with a degree from Gembloux. Lucas: Even with that degree. He stayed for a few years, but by 1914 he was back in Belgium, and when the First World War broke out, he volunteered for the Belgian army. He served in the artillery on the Yser front — one of the few Congolese soldiers in the European theater. That's remarkable in itself. He was wounded twice, and he was decorated for bravery. Luna: He fought for a country that treated him as a second-class citizen. Lucas: And for a colony that did worse. After the war, he settled in Belgium and became a political activist. In 1919, he founded an organisation called the Union Congolaise — perhaps the first political association of Congolese in Belgium. It was an association of évolués — that's the Belgian term for educated Africans — and its goal was to advocate for equal rights, better education, and an end to racial discrimination in the colony. Luna: What did the Union Congolaise actually do? Lucas: They published a journal, they petitioned the colonial ministry, they organised meetings. Panda Farnana gave speeches in Brussels and Antwerp. He argued that the Belgian 'civilising mission' was a sham as long as educated Congolese were denied the same rights as Belgians. He demanded that Congolese soldiers who fought in the war be granted citizenship. He also wrote extensively about the Congo's agricultural potential, and he criticised the forced labour system. Luna: This is a decade before the first organised Congolese nationalist movements, right? Lucas: Yes. The ABAKO party didn't form until the 1950s. Panda Farnana was a pioneer. But he was also very isolated. The Belgian colonial establishment dismissed him as a 'troublemaker' and a 'snob' — because, you know, he thought he was as good as a white man. He died young, in 1930, at just 42. The cause is unclear — some say illness, others say he was poisoned. There was no investigation. Luna: And he's almost entirely forgotten today. Lucas: Almost entirely. There's a street named after him in Matonge, the Congolese neighbourhood in Brussels, and a small plaque at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. But he's not in the history textbooks. He doesn't fit the narrative: he wasn't a rebel leader like Lumumba, and he wasn't a victim of the rubber terror. He was a man who tried to work within the system, who believed in education and reason, and who was still crushed by the system's indifference. Luna: Speaking of keeping these stories alive — I know this show is ad-free and listener-supported. If people want to help us keep doing deep dives on figures like Panda Farnana, what's the easiest way? Lucas: Yeah, it really makes a difference. A couple of dollars a month — the price of a coffee — genuinely helps us research these topics properly. If you're enjoying the show, you can go to buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It keeps us independent and allows us to cover the stories that don't get told elsewhere. Luna: And every contribution adds up. We really appreciate it. Lucas: So back to Panda Farnana. One of the things I find most poignant about him is that in 1922, he wrote a letter to the Belgian colonial minister proposing a plan for agricultural cooperatives in the Congo — small-scale, farmer-owned, with technical support from the state. It was a visionary idea, essentially a form of economic empowerment for rural Congolese. The minister never even replied. Luna: He must have felt so frustrated. Lucas: I think he did. But he never stopped writing, never stopped organising. In 1929, a year before his death, he published a pamphlet called 'La situation des Congolais en Belgique' — The Situation of Congolese in Belgium — in which he laid out, with cold precision, the gap between Belgium's stated ideals and the reality of racial discrimination. It's a remarkable document. And it's a testament to someone who refused to be silenced. Luna: What happened to the Union Congolaise after he died? Lucas: It faded. Without his energy and his connections, the organisation couldn't sustain itself. But the torch was passed. Some of its younger members went on to become leaders in the independence movement. So in a way, Panda Farnana planted seeds that took decades to grow. He wasn't a revolutionary, but he was a bridge — between the Congo and Belgium, between the 19th century and the modern world. Luna: And between the silence and the eventual demand for justice. Lucas: Exactly. So that's Paul Panda Farnana. A man who saw the colonial system from the inside and spent his life trying to make it live up to its own promises. He failed, in the short term. But his story is essential to understanding why the Congo's struggle for dignity and equality is as old as colonisation itself.