Edouard Bustin

The Organization of African Unity after thirty years

Preface and Acknowledgments Peace, Security, and International Law The OAU: Peace Keeping and Conflict Resolution :The OAU and International Law The OAU and Western Sahara: A Case Study Economic, Social, and Humanitarian Development The Role of SADCC in Subregional Development The OAU and Human Rights: Regional Promotion of Human Rights The OAU and African Refugees The OAU and Environmental Issues Relations with Other Organizations and Systems OAU-UN Relations in a Changing World OAU-UN Interaction over the Last Decade The OAU and Afro-Arab Cooperation The OAU and the Commonwealth The Future An OAU for the Future: An Assessment Appendix I: Map of Africa Appendix II: Member States of the OAU Selected Bibliography Index

Remembrance of sins past: unraveling the murder of Patrice Lumumba

The assassination of L.D. Kabila, forty years to the day after the1961 murder of Patrice Lumumba, revived memories of the fate of the Congos first (and only) democratically elected leader, but in Belgium, the case of Lumumbas assassination had already been re‐opened by a solidly documented exposé challenging what had for some time been the ‘official version’ of the murder. Written by Ludo DeWitte, this account identified those members of the Belgian establishment whom it saw as having deliberately engineered Lumumbas overthrow and ‘final elimination’. Its publication directly led to the creation of a parliamentary commission of enquiry whose final report was released in November 2001. Much of the investigation took the form of an examination of archival and testimonial evidence. Most witnesses were not seriously challenged, and cross‐examination was usually gentle and ineffective. Yet, considering the perceived need to achieve some form of national consensus, the enquiry cannot be dismissed as a whitewash. The report concludes that ‘certain members of the Belgian government and other Belgian participants were morally responsible for the circumstances leading to the death of Lumumba.’ The commission also identifies what it correctly views as dysfunctions in the decision‐making process that prevailed in 1960–1961. Reactions to the report suggest that, for many of those involved in those violent events, stereotypes and cold war clichés die a reluctant death.

The Foreign Policy of the Republic of Zaire

In many ways, dependency has been the keystone of Zairian foreign policy since independence. Domestic preoccupations—political or economic stability, legitimacy or sheet regime survival—as perceived and interpreted by an oligarchic elite, rather than any ideological premise or any projection of Zaires role in a global or regional context, have been the only consistent and predictable determinants of Zairian foreign policy. The successive regimes have seldom been able to fully control their domestic environment or even to insulate it from external manipulations. Within a narrowly circumscribed set of options, however, Zairian foreign policy—especially under Mobutu—has demonstrated considerable dexterity at playing off one patron against another, and thus at limiting some of the potentially adverse consequences of the countrys lack of a solid power base.

The Assassination of Lumumba

Patrice Lumumba, first prime minister of the Republic of Congo and a pioneer of African unity, was assassinated on 17 January 1961. His crime had been to defy the Belgian government which sought to maintain a covert imperialist hand over the country even after independence was won in June 1960. Ludo De Witte reveals the appalling mass of lies that have surrounded the murder. Making use of official sources and personal testimony. He uncovers a network of complicity spreading from the Belgian government to the United Nations and the CIA. This book, already translated into four languages, prompted the Belgian parliament to establish an official commission of inquiry into Lumumbas assassination. In his afterword to this new edition De Witte discusses its findings.