The story of the Congo Free State

by Henry Wellington Wack

Fishermen, Uvvia.

The latest report of the Vice-Governor-General (July, 1904) indicates the great improvement to which the Public Force has attained since the date of Baron Van Eetvelde’s statement of the system which prevailed in 1897. Local experience in savage lands should be the foundation of the reforms imposed. In the case of the State’s Public Force, many local conditions, traits, and prejudices, and much inaptitude, were encountered to modify or extend those principles of police control which the State’s earlier administration had adopted with characteristic hopefulness. M. Fuchs sets forth the present position of the Force with considerable detail and suggestion:

The Government is aware that the military service of the black race must be the object of constant watchfulness, in order that it may be impossible for them to practise the cruelties to which their primitive instincts might impel them.

The officers and commanders of the troops have been often warned that they must show themselves inflexible guardians of the observance of those instructions, which have been issued for the protection of the natives against any possible abuse on the part of soldiers left in isolated positions or subject to insufficient control. Instructions have been given to this effect—and I am happy to be able to say that they have been almost everywhere faithfully carried out. Any contravention of the order forbidding the despatch of armed soldiers under the command of black officers is also severely punished, and may entail even the dismissal of the agent in fault. These measures have been completed by the formal prohibition of the employment of auxiliaries under no matter what circumstances.

It has also been laid down that direct relations are to be established between the natives and European agents. In order still further to strengthen the maintenance of discipline among the soldiers of the black race, the regulations on the subject have been completed by the penalty of dismissal from the Public Force. This is the most severe punishment in the eyes of the soldiers, for they highly esteem the profession of arms. Dismissal from the Public Force is inflicted on those soldiers who show themselves absolutely incorrigible or who are unworthy to remain in the ranks. In order to surround this rigorous measure with all the necessary guarantees, the soldiers whom it is wished to dismiss are brought before a Council of Discipline. The dismissal is pronounced, at Boma by the Commander of the Public Force; in the districts by the District Commissioner or by the head of the expedition, after examining the charge, the evidence, and the decision of the Council. Chiefs of zones cannot pronounce dismissal.

The Government have just finally decided that, for the future, the soldiers of the Public Force shall not take part in work at the stations, and that their time shall be exclusively given up to their instruction, education, and military service. The former arrangements which put soldiers, during some hours of the day, at the disposal of the territorial chiefs, chiefs of zones, and chiefs of posts, over and above the hours assigned for military duty, have been modified so as to maintain in a more continuous fashion the men under the control of their officers. In order to make this decision of the Government as fruitful as possible, the territorial chiefs have been ordered to reduce to the effective force strictly necessary for the assurance of security, the garrisons stationed at the posts in zones and districts, and to concentrate at the chief places in the territory garrisons as complete as possible. These measures are intended to produce the best results from the point of view of educating and instructing the troops, as well as from that of assuring military discipline, provided the territorial chiefs scrupulously carry out the new instructions mentioned above.

It has also been pointed out to them that it will be expressly recommended to the officials charged with the inspection—and the Government has decided to increase the inspections throughout the State territories—to ascertain if all these instructions, concerning the execution of the new table of daily work for the public force, have been carried out.

The other measures of organisation which have been passed, the formal prohibition to establish posts commanded by black officers, or to confide military operations to them, and finally forbidding the practice of taking sub-officers from their military duties to employ them as chiefs of stations, are of a nature to make us hope that very soon our public force will constitute a body in which we may have complete confidence.

Uelle Chief and his Wives, Van Kerckhovenville.