7. Canadian Coups
“The Belgian administration and Christian missionaries never quite stamped out the belief among the isolated and primitive tribes that eating your enemy will strengthen you. … human flesh is again being eaten in secret tribal rituals — not as a delicacy or for nourishment but for the magic properties of a dead enemies limbs and organs. The heart brings courage, the brain intelligence and the leg speed, according to the witch doctors.”1
Toronto Star and Globe and Mail, 1960 — No evidence was presented that a missing Irish UN soldier in the Congo was eaten2
Most Canadians would probably be surprised to know that the Canadian military played a significant role in coups that overthrew African independence leaders.
Events in the early 1960s in the Congo (now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo or DRC) provide a stark case study in the fluid transition from formal colonialism to a new form of imperialism and provide a window into the nature of Canada’s role on the continent.
In the final days of a hastily organized independence, the Congolese people elected Patrice Lumumba, a stridently anti-colonial leader who had been imprisoned by the Belgian authorities. But he would only be prime minister for 81 days.3 The political forces Lumumba galvanized threatened Belgium’s plan to maintain control over the newly independent country’s resources and in particular the behemoth Union Minière. To undermine the elected prime minister the former colonial power backed a secessionist movement, a coup and Lumumba’s assassination. During this time Ottawa was a willing partner in Belgian/US policy.
The Belgians oversaw a particularly oppressive colonial regime. As noted earlier their colonial authority largely excluded Africans from higher education and professional positions while their corporations pillaged the Congo’s natural resources.4
While Washington and UN officials pressed Lumumba to request a UN force to quell social disturbances in Kinshasa, Lumumba ultimately asked for an international force to halt a rebellion in the east of the country.5 Twelve days after independence the resource rich eastern province of Katanga declared independence and immediately Union Minière began paying tax to the secessionist government rather than the proper legal authority in Kinshasa. That payment totalled 70% of Katanga’s entire budget.6
Nearly 2,000 Canadian troops served in the Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC) despite Congolese authorities’ reservations about their participation. Lumumba expressed a desire for “considerations of nationality and race” in the UN force, which was ignored by Canadian officials who were themselves ultimately quite race conscious.7 According to internal files unearthed by Wilfrid Laurier University’s Kevin Spooner, military officers were concerned about Canadian troops living with “the native troops serving under United Nations.” They did not, however, want to be “accused of refusing to quarter Canadian soldiers with coloured soldiers.”8 Army officials insisted that “it would not be a matter of a colour bar so much as not wishing to quarter our troops with foreign troops who speak a different language whose customs may be widely different from our own.”9
While Lumumba never openly argued that Canadian soldiers were undesirable, Soviet officials did. Prior to their deployment the Soviet Union’s ambassador to the UN, Vasily Kuznetzov, explained: “Canada is a member of the NATO military block which also includes Belgium which has committed an aggression against the independent Congo. In these conditions the dispatch of Canadian troops, or of troops of any other state belonging to a military bloc of which Belgium is a member, would constitute nothing but assistance to the aggressor from his military ally.”10
Canadian archives suggest Moscow’s criticism wasn’t far from the mark. In a private exchange, external minister Howard Green told the Belgian ambassador that Ottawa “would do all [it] could [through its role in ONUC] to avoid making the situation more difficult for the Belgian government.”11 In A role for Canada in an African Crisis Daniel Galvin explains how Ottawa “shaped policy in a manner that offered some support for Belgian actions. They were consistently concerned with the impact of Canadian policy on their [NATO] ally.”12
Ottawa promoted ONUC and UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold’s controversial anti-Lumumba position. Around 1,900 mostly Francophone Canadian troops participated in ONUC from 1960 to 1964, making this country’s military one of its most active members.13 For a time, Canadian Brigadier General Jacques Dextraze was Chief of Staff for the UN mission and there were nearly always more Canadian officers at ONUC headquarters then those of any other nationality.14 Canadian troops within the UN force were also concentrated in militarily important logistical positions, including chief operations officer and chief signals officer.15 Describing the mission, military historians David Bercuson and Jack Granatstein wrote: “At headquarters, which operated in both French and English when sufficient bilingual officers could be found, the Canadians handled everything from telephones to phones to dispatch riders. Indeed, to read Canadian messages to Ottawa, it often seemed as if Canadians were running everything.”16
Canada’s strategic role wasn’t simply by chance. Ottawa pushed to have Canada’s intelligence gathering signals detachments oversee UN intelligence and for Colonel Jean Berthiaume to remain at UN headquarters to “maintain both Canadian and Western influence.”17(A report from the Canadian Directorate of Military Intelligence noted that “Lumumba’s immediate advisers … have referred to Lt. Col. Berthiaume as an ‘imperialist tool’.”18)
To bolster the power of ONUC, Ottawa joined Washington in channelling its development assistance to the Congo through the UN.19 Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah complained that this was “applying a restriction to Congo which does not apply to any other African state.”20 Ottawa rejected Nkrumah’s request to channel Congolese aid through independent African countries and to send 20 French-speaking members of the Canadian Armed Forces to help train Congolese cadets.21 Either ignorant or aiming to offend, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker denied the extremely impoverished country’s request for assistance, arguing “Canada, in a stage of great development, needed capital itself.”22 In response, Lumumba told a crowd he went to Canada “to seek bilateral aid in belief that it was a truly democratic land but had been disappointed to find that although honest Canada was just another imperialist country.”23
Diefenbaker and Lumumba had a public dispute on another occasion. When Canadian troops, mistaken for Belgian forces, were beaten by government soldiers Diefenbaker drafted a letter of protest to Lumumba described as being “as strong as any employed by a Canadian head of government to a foreign leader.”24 To maximize the publicity, reporters were then called to Diefenbaker’s office and shown the letter.25
For his part, Lumumba accused the Canadian troops of provoking the incident by refusing to identify themselves. He complained that the “unimportant” affair had been “blown up out of all proportion … so that [Hammarskjold] could influence public opinion.”26
Unlike many ONUC participants, Canada aggressively backed Hammarskjold’s controversial anti-Lumumba position. External Affairs Minister Green told the House of Commons: “The Canadian government will continue its firm support for the United Nations effort in the Congo and for Mr. Hammarskjold, who in the face of the greatest difficulty has served the high principles and purposes of the charter with courage, determination and endless patience.”27
Ottawa supported Hammarskjold even as he sided with the Belgian-backed secessionists against the central government. On August 12 the UN Secretary General traveled to Katanga and telegraphed secessionist leader Moise Tchombe to discuss “deploying United Nations troops to Katanga.”28 Not even Belgium officially recognized Katanga’s independence, provoking Issaka Soure to note that, “[Hammarskjold’s visit] sent a very bad signal by implicitly implying that the rebellious province could somehow be regarded as sovereign to the point that the UN chief administrator could deal with it directly.”29
The UN head also worked to undermine Lumumba within the central government. When President Joseph Kasavubu dismissed Lumumba as prime minister — a move of debatable legality and opposed by the vast majority of the country’s parliament — Hammerskjold publicly endorsed the dismissal of a politician who a short time earlier had received the most votes in the country’s election.30
Lumumba attempted to respond to his dismissal with a nationwide broadcast, but UN forces blocked him from accessing the main radio station.31 ONUC also undermined Lumumba in other ways. Through their control of the airport ONUC prevented his forces from flying into the capital from other parts of the country and closed the airport to Soviet weapons and transportation equipment when Lumumba turned to Russia for assistance.32 In addition, according to The Cold War, “[the Secretary General’s special representative Andrew] Cordier provided $1 million — money supplied to the United Nations by the US government — to [General Joseph] Mobutu in early September to pay off restive and hungry Congolese soldiers and keep them loyal to Kasavubu during his attempt to oust Lumumba as prime minister.”33
To get a sense of Hammarskjold’s antipathy towards the Congolese leader, he privately told officials in Washington that Lumumba must be “broken” and only then would the Katanga problem “solve itself.”34 For his part, Cordier asserted “[Ghanaian president Kwame] Nkrumah is the Mussolini of Africa while Lumumba is its little Hitler.”35
(Echoing this thinking, in a conversation with External Affairs Minister Howard Green, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker called Lumumba a “major threat to Western interests” and said he was “coming around to the conclusion” that an independent and Western-oriented Katanga offered “the best solution to the current crisis”.36)
In response to Hammarskjold’s efforts to undermine his leadership, Lumumba broke off relations with the secretary general.37 He also called for the withdrawal of all white peacekeepers, which Hammerskjold rejected as a threat to UN authority.38 A number of ONUC nations ultimately took up Lumumba’s protests. When the Congolese prime minister was overthrown and ONUC helped consolidate the coup, the United Arab Republic (Egypt), Guinea, Morocco and Indonesia formally asked Hammerskjold to withdraw all of their troops.39
Canadian officials took a different position. They celebrated ONUC’s role in Lumumba’s overthrow. A week after Lumumba was pushed out prominent Canadian diplomat Escott Reid, then ambassador to Germany, noted in an internal letter, “already the United Nations has demonstrated in the Congo that it can in Africa act as the executive agent of the free world.”40 The “free world” was complicit in the murder of one of Africa’s most important independence leaders. In fact, the top Canadian in ONUC directly enabled his killing.
After Lumumba escaped house arrest and fled Leopoldville for his power base in the Eastern Orientale province, Colonel Jean Berthiaume assisted Lumumba’s political enemies by helping recapture him. The UN Chief of Staff, who was kept in place by Ottawa, tracked the deposed prime minister and informed Joseph Mobutu of Lumumba’s whereabouts.41 Three decades later the Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec, born Berthiaume told an interviewer: “I called Mobutu. I said, ‘Colonel, you have a problem, you were trying to retrieve your prisoner, Mr. Lumumba. I know where he is, and I know where he will be tomorrow. He said, what do I do? It’s simple, Colonel, with the help of the UN you have just created the core of your para commandos — we have just trained 30 of these guys — highly selected Moroccans trained as paratroopers. They all jumped — no one refused. To be on the safe side, I put our [Canadian] captain, Mario Coté, in the plane, to make sure there was no underhandedness. In any case, it’s simple, you take a Dakota [plane], send your paratroopers and arrest Lumumba in that small village — there is a runway and all that is needed. That’s all you’ll need to do, Colonel. He arrested him, like that, and I never regretted it.”42
Ghanaian peacekeepers near where Lumumba was captured took quite a different attitude towards the elected prime minister’s safety. After Mobutu’s forces captured Lumumba they requested permission to intervene and place Lumumba under UN protection.43 Unfortunately, the secretary-general denied their request. Not long thereafter Lumumba was executed by firing squad and his body was dissolved in acid.
After conspiring to eliminate Lumumba, the UN helped imprison Antoine Gizenga, formerly Lumumba’s deputy prime minister.44 Upon Lumumba’s death Gizenga established a government in Orientale province that was recognized by 20 African and Asian countries, but was crushed in 1962 by the UN and Congolese army. 45
With the country’s progressive forces weakened by Lumumba’s death and Gizenga’s imprisonment, Katanga’s secessionists were no longer useful to the Western powers, so the UN proceeded to violently suppress the same movement they tacitly supported while Lumumba was in power. At least 300 UN soldiers died fighting to maintain the Congo’s territorial integrity.46
Foreign resource companies and Western geopolitical interests were the main beneficiaries of UN operations in the Congo. The leading Congolese beneficiary of the UN mission was Joseph Mobutu who went on to run the country for over three decades.
Mobutu developed close ties to Canadian political and military officials. In a 1992 interview Canadian diplomat Michel Gauvin said, “During my time in Leopoldville as Chargé d’Affaires [from 1961 to 1963] I got to know Mobutu very well, I was one of the only whites invited to the baptism of one of his girls.”47In the Eye of the Storm: A History of Canadian Peacekeeping, Fred Gaffen explains: “Mobutu learned to trust the Canadian officers. This trust was of inestimable value in arranging ceasefires between Congolese and UN forces, negotiating the release of prisoners as well as liaising between UN and Congolese authorities. Mobutu, who became president of the Democratic Republic of Zaire, visited Canada in May of 1964. At that time, he thanked those Canadian officers who had contributed so much to the maintenance of the unity of the country.”48
Kwame Nkrumah, who Canada would help overthrow a few years later, described the UN’s complicity in Lumumba’s murder: “Somewhere in Katanga in the Congo … three of our brother freedom fighters have been done to death. … About their end many things are uncertain, but one fact is crystal clear. They have been killed because the United Nations whom Patrice Lumumba himself as Prime Minister had invited to the Congo to preserve law and order, not only failed to maintain that law and order, but also denied to the lawful government of the Congo all other means of self-protection. History records many occasions when rulers of states have been assassinated. The murder of Patrice Lumumba and of his two colleagues, however, is unique in that it is the first time in history that the legal ruler of a country has been done to death with the open connivance of a world organization in whom that ruler put his trust … instead of preserving law and order, the United Nations declared itself neutral between law and disorder and refused to lend any assistance whatsoever to the legal government in suppressing the mutineers who had set themselves up in power in Katanga and South Kasai. When, in order to move its troops against the rebels, the government of the Congo obtained some civilian aircraft and civilian motor vehicles from the Soviet Union, the colonialist powers at the United Nations raised a howl of rage while, at the same time maintaining a discreet silence over the build-up of Belgian arms and actual Belgian military forces in the service of the rebels … when Lumumba [after Kasavubu’s coup] wished to broadcast to the people explaining what happened, the United Nations in the so-called interest of law and order prevented him by force from speaking. They did not, however, use the same force to prevent the mutineers of the Congolese army from seizing power in Leopoldville and installing a completely illegal government … the United Nations sat by while the so-called Katanga government, which is entirely Belgian controlled, imported aircraft and arms from Belgium and other countries, such as [apartheid] South Africa, which have a vested interest in the suppression of African freedom. The United Nations connived at the setting up, in fact of an independent Katanga state, though this is contrary to the Security Council’s own resolutions. Finally, the United Nations, which could exert its authority to prevent Patrice Lumumba from broadcasting, was, so it pleaded, quite unable to prevent his arrest by mutineers or his transfer, through the use of airfields under United Nations control, into the hands of the Belgian-dominated government of Katanga.”49
The UN mission to the Congo, in which Canada participated actively, facilitated a major injustice and crime against the Congolese people. But it wasn’t the only time that a “Canadian coup” overthrew a popular African leader.
During a visit to Ghana in 2012 Canadian Governor General Michaëlle Jean laid a wreath on the tomb of former President Kwame Nkrumah. But, in commemorating this leading pan-Africanist, she failed to acknowledge the role her country played in his downfall. In February 1966 Ghana’s Canadian-trained army overthrew Nkrumah, a leader dubbed “Man of the Millennium” in a 2000 poll by BBC listeners in Africa.
Washington, together with London, backed the coup.50 Lester Pearson’s government also gave its blessing to Nkrumah’s ouster. In The Deceptive Ash: Bilingualism and Canadian Policy in Africa: 1957-1971, John P. Schlegel writes: “the Western orientation and the more liberal approach of the new military government was welcomed by Canada.”51
The day Nkrumah was overthrown the Canadian prime minister was asked in the House of Commons his opinion about this development. Pearson said nothing of substance on the matter. The next day External Affairs Minister Paul Martin Sr. responded to questions about Canada’s military training in Ghana, saying there was no change in instructions. In response to an MP’s question about recognizing the military government, Martin said: “In many cases recognition is accorded automatically. In respective cases such as that which occurred in Ghana yesterday, the practice is developing of carrying on with the government which has taken over, but according no formal act until some interval has elapsed. We shall carry on with the present arrangement for Ghana. Whether there will be any formal act will depend on information which is not now before us.”52
While Martin and Pearson were measured in public, the Canadian high commissioner in Accra, C.E. McGaughey, was not. In an internal memo to External Affairs just after Nkrumah was overthrown, McGaughey wrote “a wonderful thing has happened for the West in Ghana and Canada has played a worthy part.” Referring to the coup, the high commissioner added “all here welcome this development except party functionaries and communist diplomatic missions.” He then applauded the Ghanaian military for having “thrown the Russian and Chinese rascals out.”53
Less than two weeks after the coup, the Pearson government informed the military junta that Canada intended to carry on normal relations.54 In the immediate aftermath of Nkrumah’s overthrow, Canada sent $1.82 million ($15 million today) worth of flour to Ghana and offered the military regime a hundred CUSO volunteers.55 For its part, the International Monetary Fund, which had previously severed financial assistance to Nkrumah’s government, engaged immediately after the coup by restructuring Ghana’s debt. Canada’s contribution was an outright gift.56 During the three years between 1966 and 1969 the National Liberation Council military regime, received as much Canadian aid as during Nkrumah’s ten years in office with $22 million in grants and loans. Ottawa was the fourth major donor after the US, UK and UN.57
Two months after Nkrumah’s ouster the Canadian high commissioner in Ghana wrote to Montréal-based de Havilland Aircraft with a request to secure parts for Ghana’s Air Force. Worried Nkrumah might attempt a counter coup, the Air Force sought parts for non-operational aircraft in the event it needed to deploy its forces.58
Six months after overthrowing Nkrumah, the country’s new leader, General Joseph Ankrah, made an official visit to Ottawa as part of a trip that also took him through London and Washington.59
On top of diplomatic and economic support for Nkrumah’s ouster, Canada provided military training. Schlegel described the military government as a “product of this military training program.”60 A Canadian major who was a training advisor to the commander of a Ghanaian infantry brigade discovered preparations for the coup the day before its execution. Bob Edwards said nothing.61 After Nkrumah’s removal the Canadian high commissioner boasted about the effectiveness of Canada’s Junior Staff Officers training program at the Ghanaian Defence College. Writing to the Canadian under secretary of external affairs, McGaughey noted, “All the chief participants of the coup were graduates of this course.”62
After independence Ghana’s army remained British dominated. The colonial era British generals were still in place and the majority of Ghana’s officers continued to be trained in Britain. In response to a number of embarrassing incidents, Nkrumah released the British commanders in September 1961. It was at this point that Canada began training Ghana’s military.
While Canadians organized and oversaw the Junior Staff Officers course, a number of Canadians took up top positions in the Ghanaian Ministry of Defence. In the words of Canada’s military attaché to Ghana, Colonel Desmond Deane-Freeman, the Canadians in these positions imparted “our way of thinking”.63 Celebrating the influence of “our way of thinking”, in 1965 High Commissioner McGaughey wrote the under secretary of external affairs: “Since independence, it [Ghana’s military] has changed in outlook, perhaps less than any other institution. It is still equipped with Western arms and although essentially non-political, is Western oriented.”64
Not everyone was happy with the military’s attitude or Canada’s role therein. A year after Nkrumah’s ouster, McGaughey wrote Ottawa: “For some African and Asian diplomats stationed in Accra, I gather that there is a tendency to identify our aid policies particularly where military assistance is concerned with the aims of American and British policies. American and British objectives are unfortunately not regarded by such observers as being above criticism or suspicion.”65
Thomas Howell and Jeffrey Rajasooria echo the high commissioner’s assessment in their book Ghana and Nkrumah: “Members of the ruling CPP tended to identify Canadian aid policies, especially in defence areas, with the aims of the U.S. and Britain. Opponents of the Canadian military program went so far as to create a countervailing force in the form of the Soviet equipped, pro-communist President’s Own Guard Regiment [POGR]. The coup on 24 February 1966 which ousted Kwame Krumah and the CPP was partially rooted in this divergence of military loyalty.”66
The POGR became a “direct and potentially potent rival” to the Canadian-trained army, notes Christopher Kilford in The Other Cold War: Canada’s Military Assistance to the Developing World, 1945-1975.67 Even once Canadian officials in Ottawa “well understood” Canada’s significant role in the internal military battle developing in Ghana, writes Kilford, “there was never any serious discussion around withdrawing the Canadian training team.”68
As the 1960s wore on Nkrumah’s government became increasingly critical of London and Washington’s support for the white minority in southern Africa. Ottawa had little sympathy for Nkrumah’s pan-African ideals and so it made little sense to continue training the Ghanaian Army if it was, in Kilford’s words, to “be used to further Nkrumah’s political aims”. Kilford continued his thought, stating: “that is unless the Canadian government believed that in time a well-trained, professional Ghana Army might soon remove Nkrumah.”69
When it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck, or in the case of planning a coup ...
While many champions of “Canada as a good guy in international affairs” would be upset to learn that their country helped overthrow popular leaders, they would generally be less concerned about more subtle, but equally damaging, tools powerful governments use to get their way. And Canada proudly proclaims itself a leader in this modern form of imperialism.