In the following years, colonial brutality and oppression, an ill-prepared independence, support for the subsequently corrupt regime of Mobutu Sese Seko and a perception that the Congolese were not quite civilised and should be grateful to colonialists have cast a shadow on relations.
When Belgium's King Boudewijn attended the Congo's independence celebrations in 1960, the nation's first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, decried his references to the benefits of colonial rule, reminding him that the Belgian regime had been one of "humiliating slavery".
Nearly 20 years later, foreign affairs minister, now EU trade commissioner, Karel de Gucht repeatedly clashed with current president Joseph Kabila, asking him tough questions on the lack of governance. Kabila slammed his “master-slave” approach.
At the same time, there is a Belgian fascination with the Congo – witness the tsunami of books, films and exhibitions to mark the anniversary of independence. Many had family there and deplore the poverty, war and endemic violence. There is also the question of responsibility towards the former colony and whether – and how much – colonisation has led to the current social and political upheavals.
"Every day, people get killed, raped or mutilated. How do we deal with that?" questions Guido Gryseels, director of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, just outside Brussels. "My view is that we have a shared history. We know the country and the Congolese and can really make a difference."
According to the UN, the Congo is one of the least developed countries in the world. The International Rescue Committee, an American non-governmental organisation (NGO), estimates that 45,000 Congolese die every day due to violence and disease.
For the Belgian government, the Congo remains a priority, even if economic interests are few. "This is the only place in the world where Belgium is a superpower. Washington, for example, will watch the Belgians on Central Africa," said Filip Reyntjens, Congo specialist at the University of Antwerp.
As Boudewijn’s brother and successor King Albert II heads to the Congo capital of Kinshasa for the anniversary celebrations, the question now is how Belgium can best contribute to the nation's development.
Bloody beginnings
In the Europeans' scramble for new territories, Leopold II's venture paid off big time. With the invention of tyres, the Congo’s rubber supplies alone made the king rich. To capitalise on this and other resources, the colonialists instituted a regime of forced labour.
There are no official figures, but estimates of the death toll of the Congolese at the hands of the Belgians during Leopold’s rule vary from five to 20 million. Add to that beatings and mutilations, including the famous severing of hands of natives who failed to meet their rubber farming quotas.
A growing band of human rights observers, notably British consul Roger Casement, lambasted the regime, called – and here's a contradiction in terms – the Congo Free State, for its abuses. Casement brought the situation to the attention of other European powers who pushed the Belgian state to take it over from Leopold and end the terror. Leopold lost the Congo to the Belgian state in 1908, which also marked the end of his reign as king. Congo became known as the Belgian Congo.
Over the next years, Congo saw rapid development, as industrialists, keen to make money out of the country's huge metals and mineral resources, built massive infrastructure. Meanwhile, missionaries brought Christianity, churches, and schools and universities were established.
After the Second World War, it became more and more difficult for colonial powers in Europe to dominate overseas territories were. With 16 other countries in Africa gaining independence in 1960, Belgium was unable to resist the trend.
Transition mistakes
For Belgium, a lack of preparation of the people, few of whom had been allowed to hold senior posts in the administration, and unwillingness after independence to stay out of Congolese affairs, proved to be two big mistakes.
Segregation in the post-Congo Free State and a lack of workers’ rights (and pay) held up the development of a civil society. "The view was that the Congolese must work because they are lazy," says Mathieu Zana Etambala, who was born in Congo and is a history professor at the Catholic University of Leuven.
After the election of Patrice Lumumba, western powers – Belgium included – feared African nations would fall to communism, which would put a stop to ongoing exploitation of resources. Belgians feared losing Congo's vast resources, in particular from the mining province of Katanga in the south.
After calling in the Soviets to help him eject Belgian diplomats and military, Lumumba was put under house arrest by the Congo state president. Just over a year after coming to power, Lumumba was murdered by a firing squad under the command of the Belgian military. A later Belgian inquiry found that even if Belgium had not directly ordered his murder, it had done nothing to prevent it.
Compounding this interference, western powers welcomed successor Mobutu (famed for grotesque abuses of human rights as well as his leopard-skin hat), turning a blind eye to rife corruption in his regime as he allied himself with them in the Cold War.
"To Belgium, the US and their European allies, the major goal was to keep the Congo on the Western side in the Cold War and keep profits flowing from mines and other European and American interests," says Adam Hochschild, the American author of the book King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa.
In 1991, with the Cold War over, the west no longer needed Mobutu. This, coupled with the 1990 attack on Lubumbashi University by Mobuto's security staff, killing several students who had demanded liberalisation, saw the western powers back away.
It took 10 years and the “Great War of Africa”, a humanitarian crisis that resulted in the deaths of more than five million, before the west, prompted by Belgium, picked up the gauntlet and pushed Congo to the top of the international political agenda.
"I personally believe that the last 10 years of Belgian diplomacy has done a lot for the Congo,” says Etambala. “If the Congo has survived, that was very much to do with these efforts. The Belgians said: 'We can't forget Congo'."
Redrawing relations
Today, the Congo is still much in need. Diseases such as sleeping sickness had been almost eradicated by the time of independence, but after years of corruption and neglect, medical services are inadequate, and millions are still dying from it, according to medical NGO Memisa.
And yet this is a nation with a huge wealth of natural resources, from cobalt (used in batteries and in alloy form to coat turbine blades for jet engines) to fertile soil for agriculture and a vast water resource for hydroelectric power. "You name it; they have it all," says the Africa Museum’s Gryseels.
Once again, foreign powers are eyeing Congo, with China already building huge swathes of infrastructure. "In colonial times, we woke up and looked towards the Atlantic Ocean. In 2035, we will be looking to the Indian Ocean," says Etambala.
This may be all the more reason why Belgium has a role to play. The Congo is already looking to Belgians to help them negotiate contracts. Eventually, the Chinese will also look to the Belgians, says Marti Waals, director of Mimesa. "The Chinese are realising how hard it is to do business there."
There are also fears that new investors are driven only by a lust for wealth at a time when the international community should speak with one voice on the Congo. "There are no conditions in terms of human rights or democracy; this is business with no strings attached," says the University of Antwerp’s Reyntjens.
Belgium nonetheless has a thin line to tread with the Congolese. That might be one reason (aside from the political crisis here) why the government, besides sending outgoing prime minister Yves Leterme to accompany the king, is doing little to mark the anniversary.
"I'm very disappointed not more is happening at the government level, although I understand why,” says Gryseels. “Relations are very fragile and can be put to the test at any time." He adds that he would like to see a roundtable with the Congolese for them to explain their priorities.
A roundtable, which would echo one held in Brussels in January 1960, culminating in the Congolese declaration of independence, would allow both sides to "evaluate the successes and failure and see what we can learn from them," he says.
Overcoming the diplomatic minefield would require perhaps another wave of soul-searching on the part of the Belgians (the first was promoted by Hochschild's 1998 book and a consequent national inquiry), who, according to Etambala, need to accept that colonialism was not a normal situation.
"The Belgians give a positive interpretation, saying we founded schools and churches. No white Belgian bore a stone to build them. That work was done by the Congolese, and they were not paid," he says.
Reyntjens agrees. "Still in the west there is an implicit superiority complex,” he says. “The feeling is that Africans are not grown up." When it comes to explaining genocide, "people say that's what Africans do, but it's also something we have done – and on a much larger scale."
Belgium calling
Nonetheless, Belgium is well-placed to keep the Congo on the international agenda, according to Kris Berwouts, director of Eurac, the European network of NGOs in Africa. Europe's work, for example, "requires deep knowledge of the social-linguistic environment".
Etambala identifies three key areas where Belgium can contribute towards development: medical supplies, education and the establishment of a civil society. "Civil society is not only about the intellectual and political elite. The Belgians should help us construct this."
Waals also sees an important role for Belgium in that area. "We have to put together benchmarks with civil society and government – decide what can they do from their side, what we have to bring and then examine and evaluate whether these objectives are achieved," she says.
For Berwouts, Belgium should, in essence, contribute to an international effort based on "a genuine will to contribute loyally to the country's development and put serious pressure in areas of concern such as human rights, good governance and democratic participation".
1885 King Leopold II, the second king of the Belgians, acquires Congo as his private property, naming it the Congo Free State
1908 Under pressure from the international community over reports of grotesque abuses of human rights, the Belgian government takes over Congo for the next 52 years, calling it the Belgian Congo
1960 Congo, along with 16 other African nations, wins independence and becomes the Republic of the Congo. Patrice Lumumba is elected prime minister. King Boudewijn of Belgium attends the celebrations. Lumumba is angered by references in the king's speech to the benefits brought by colonialism
1961 Lumumba is murdered. Speculation is rife that Belgium, keen to maintain economic interests in the rich mining region of Katanga, supported his killers
1965 Joseph-Désiré Mobutu takes over, and his regime maintains a stranglehold on the country for 32 years. He changes the country's name to Zaire and his own to Mobutu Sese Seke.
1974 Mobutu invites boxers George Foreman and Mohammad Ali for a match dubbed Rumble in the Jungle; a high point in relations with the outside world
1990 Lubumbashi University massacre. Several students are killed as the Zaire government suppresses pro-liberalisation students
1991 The Soviet Union collapses. Fears Africa would fall to communism subside. The Congo falls off the western powers' foreign policy agendas
1997 Mobutu's regime is overthrown. Laurent-Désiré Kabila becomes president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
2001 Kabila is assassinated. Joseph Kabila becomes DRC’s new president
2001 Belgian premier Guy Verhofstadt kick-starts relations with the DRC, bringing its people's plight to the attention of international forums
2007 Kabila slams Belgian foreign minister Karel de Gucht, maintaining Belgium persists with a master-slave view of their relationship
2010 De Gucht, now European Union trade commissioner, is barred from the Congo. King Albert II to attend the 30 June independence celebrations
The largest and possibly most comprehensive view on Congo independence and relations with Belgium is at the Royal Museum of Central Africa in the form of four new exhibitions, including one on Congolese views on independence and another on the history and biodiversity of the 4,700-kilometre long Congo River. After criticisms that it was stuck in colonial times, the museum's latest exhibitions are a refreshing take on African life and its beautiful natural environment. Tervuren
Check out the line-up for Bozar's Visionary Africa festival, a series of music, exhibitions and performances until 26 September. Highlights include Geo-Graphics: A Map of ART Practices in AFRICA, Past and Present, in which contemporary artists reinterpret old masterpieces, the 50 Years of Music from Congo concert and the documentary Kinshasa Symphony. Brussels
➟➟ www.bozar.be
Discover contemporary photographer Cedric Gerbehaye's work at his Congo in Limbo exhibition at Botanique. From 2007 to 2010, the Belgian snapper visited the Congo on several occasions to capture images of its diversity, paradoxes, tensions and vitality. Brussels
Moving back in time, the Royal Army Museum hosts the exhibition Lisolo Na Bisu: The Congolese Soldier in the Force Publique, which traces the Congolese armed forces from the beginning of colonisation all the way to independence. It illustrates the soldiers’ daily lives, from food to punishment, which gradually shaped a collective conscience, paving the way for a national identity. Brussels
Take a walking tour of colonial buildings in Brussels, including the former headquarters of the Congo Free State administration, a Norwegian chalet in Brederodestraat and Jubelpark. Tours are organised by La Fonderie (www. lafonderie.be) and Culturama (www.culturamavzw.be). Or visit the Bonjour Congo in België show organised by TV station Canvas in the Royal Museum for Central Africa. Journalists called for people across the country to send in photographs of colonial relics and buildings found in Belgium.
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