A Season in the Congo

I did a double-take when I walked into the Young Vic auditorium last Tuesday. Girls in brightly-coloured Congolese wraps were laughing loud, with large, languid sweeps of their hands. Police in dark blue uniforms strutted around, guns under their arms, forcing our eyes downwards. Young men sat in the shadows, staring listlessly, waiting for something, anything, to happen. Jaunty, upbeat music stirred the irrepressible urge to dance, rhythmically, effortlessly, joyfully. It was Congo, 1960, the eve of Independence. I wished I’d worn my dazzling Golden Jubilee of Independence outfit with its slogans “Vive la RDC! Pour la paix, pour l’unité, pour le développement” splashed across it. It would have been a first : blending in in a Congolese dress in the UK.

We’d come to see “A Season in the Congo”, a 1966 play by Aimé Césaire, retold in a new English version by Joe Wright. It tells the brutal story of the brief rise and tragic fall of the first Congolese Prime Minister after Independence, Patrice Lumumba, an inspiring, idealistic and popular figure who was dramatically removed from power and assassinated just months after Independence. The circumstances surrounding his death are debated, but related to the secession struggle in the province of Katanga. Many claim that Western powers played a part in his demise. The UN was portrayed as weak, high minded but unwilling to take action to back the democratically elected government. What is indisputable is that fifty years on Congolese still mourn Lumumba as their greatest hero, the only truly democratically leader, the only one who was prepared to put the Congolese people before his own interests.

The play was a pulsating, colourful, creative explosion that captured the chaotic, vibrant, optimistic beauty of Congo and the crushed hopes of its people. The voice of traditional wisdom was represented by an elderly man, a traditional healer, perhaps, who commented on events in the cadences and proverbs of his mother tongue (Kikongo? Chiluba? I wasn’t sure, but it was certainly a Bantu language). There were moments when I couldn’t breathe for sadness, mesmerised by the intensity of Lumumba’s rhetoric of hope, transported back to Congo, feeling the heat, aware of the gathering storm clouds, knowing the march of history. Massacres in Katanga were brilliantly and appallingly portrayed by a writhing, slow motion dance to deafening, distorted drum beats and blood red lighting.

The play ended with a poignant echo of the Last Supper as Lumumba was passed by comrades, colleagues, countrymen, friends, down a long table before being shot dead in front of them, while those at the table washed their hands. Traditional wisdom was then shot, too, and died with him. With Lumumba lying crumpled on the floor, time suspended in silence, to me the play seemed to shout the message “Hope for Congo died with Lumumba”.

But that’s where I want to take issue with the play. Yes, the parallels between Independence Congo and current day DRC are depressingly obvious. It’s tempting to ask what has changed in 50 years. The ineffectiveness of UN intervention, interference from foreign powers, lust for Congo’s resources, corruption within the Congolese government, ethnic violence, an army that does not ensure the security of the country and the suffering of ordinary Congolese people, continue to bitter Congolese realities. And yet there is hope in Congo, and for Congo. I see it every day in the resilience and resourcefulness of its people, in their faith, in their laughter, in their compassion, in their ability to celebrate the good, in the millions who persevere with life despite the failure of almost every institution in the country.

 There is hope for Congo. It lies in the country’s people, in their vast, awakening potential. It lies in the God who created the Congolese and their country, the God of truth, justice and reconciliation, who brings good news to the poor and liberation to the oppressed.

more on Lumumba's assassination

review of the play