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Belgian Congo Quotes

Browse 77 quotes about Belgian Congo.

Belgian Congo Quotes

“My dear countrymen! In joy and in sorrow I will always be with you. It is together with you that I fought to free my country from foreign rule. Together with you I am fighting to strengthen our national independence. Together with you, I will fight to preserve the integrity and national unity of the Republic of the Congo.”

“I know that an overwhelming majority of the Belgian people are against the oppression of Africans. They disapprove of a colonial status for the Congo under which 14 million Congolese are exposed to the diktat of a tiny economic oligarchy. If the Belgian people were to have their say, the Congo would never have experienced the misfortunes which are affecting it now.”

“Our dearest wish perhaps, some may find it utopian is to found in the Congo a Nation in which differences of race and religion will melt away, a homogeneous society composed of Belgians and Congolese who with a single impulse will link their hearts to the destinies of the country.”

“As someone celebrated as an anti-colonial hero in the contemporary academy, it is often forgotten that Patrice Lumumba was an active “collaborator” in Belgian colonial rule by any measure: a postal clerk, the head of a local trade federation, and an insider in colonial society as head of Stanleyville’s Association des Évolués.”

“At the time, 43 countries out of 60 represented were always ready to vote any anti-colonialist resolution. Belgium did not accept this interference in its internal cuisine and bit off: Belgian Congo forms one and the same state with the motherland, which has one and the same nationality. The Congolese people live within the national borders of the Belgian state (Ryckmans in April 1953). No other country has the right to intervene in the way a sovereign state governs itself. To strengthen its argument, Belgium decided to stop transmitting information about its colony and to stop participating in the meetings of the Special Committee - and for that we do not need the approval of the General Assembly "!”

“The virus of independence-seeking is also spreading in Africa. The Cold War is raging in full force and both power blocs are trying to increase their influence by harnessing the black intelligentsia in the colonies to their respective chariots. Through foreign embassies, the most able students are tracked down and ideologically groomed to play a political role. The colonies must become independent in favour of the neo-colonial policies of Washington and Moscow!”

“It was only in 1926, long after Leopold II, that the whip was introduced in local courts with Congolese chieftains and dignitaries as judges. In 1959 the use had completely disappeared, but Laurent Kabila reintroduced it in 1997 and now the whip is a common torture of the police.”

“Only by proving that we are superior to the savages, not only through our power to kill them but through our entire way of life, can we control them as they are now, in their present stage; it is necessary for their own well-being, even more than ours. (Stanley writes this on his first expidition commissioned by King Leopold II of Belgium after describing with horror the horrible scenes of atrocities and cannibalism that take place in the Congo.)”

“Congo Free State had an annual 'Bulletin Officiel' from 1885 to 1908, it was a member of the Universal Postal Union and one Congolese franc was worth one Reichsmark. The Bulletin had 9,777 pages in 23 editions from 1885 to 1908. The Free State's income rose from 0.6 million Congolese francs in 1891 to 35 million in 1908. So by no means all the money went to Leopold II. These figures are hushed up by all critics.”

“In view of the rapid changes taking place in the world today, it seemed to me desirable to preserve in picture and sound some reflection of the surviving vestiges of the ancient life of the Congo, there is a communion between the man of the forrest and his natural surroundings which inspires us in a sense of respect a recognition of spiritual heritage, i thank all those who have helped me to achieve this task which combines beauty and scientific truth.”