“The Consul was here at the time, and the people were much excited and evidently thought themselves on top.... The people have got this idea (that the rubber work was finished) into their heads of themselves, consequent, I suppose, upon the Consul’s visit.”
In these circumstances, in view of the state of mind which they show to exist among the natives, in view of their impressionable character and of their natural desire to escape taxation, it could not be doubted but that the conclusions at which the Consul would arrive would not be other than those set forth in his Report.
To bring out this point, and to show how little value is to be attached to his investigations, it will be sufficient to examine one case, that on which Mr. Casement principally relies; we allude to the Epondo case. It is that of the child I I, mentioned on pp. 56, 58, and 78 of the Report.
It is indispensable to enter somewhat at length into the details of this case, which are significant.
On the 4th September, 1903, the Consul was at the Bonginda station of the Congo Bololo Mission, having returned from a journey on the Lopori, during the course of which he had not come across any of those acts of mutilation which it is the custom to attribute to officials in the Congo.
At Bonginda, the natives of a neighbouring village (Bossunguma) came to him and informed him, amongst other things, that a “sentry” of the La Lulonga Company, named Kelengo,[90] had, at Bossunguma, cut off the hand of a native called Epondo, whose wounds were still scarcely healed. The Consul proceeded to Bossunguma, accompanied by the Rev. W. D. Armstrong and the Rev. D. J. Danielson, and had the mutilated native brought before him, who, “in answer to Consul’s question, charges a sentry named ‘Kelengo’ (placed in the town by the local agent of the La Lulonga Society to see that the people work rubber)” with having done it. Such are the Consul’s own words: it was necessary to establish a relation of cause and effect between the collection of india-rubber and this alleged case of cruelty.
The Consul proceeded to question the Chief and some of the natives of the village. They replied by accusing Kelengo; most of them asserted that they were eye-witnesses of the deed. The Consul inquired through his interpreters if there were other witnesses who saw the crime committed, and accused Kelengo of it. “Nearly all those present, about forty persons, shouted out with one voice that it was ‘Kelengo’ who did it.”
In order to understand the violence with which the natives accused Kelengo, and the unanimous manner in which the denials of the accused were rejected by his accusers, it is necessary to read the whole of the report of this inquiry, as drawn up by the Consul himself in a kind of procès-verbaux, dated the 7th, 8th, and 9th September (Annex II). From all quarters accusers appeared, and the excited crowd gave vent to all sorts of accusations: he had cut off Epondo’s hand, chained up women, stolen ducks and a dog! The Consul did not allow his suspicions to be aroused by the passionate character of these accusations; without any further guarantee of their sincerity or further examination into their truth, he looked upon his inquiry as conclusive, and as he had taken upon himself the duties of the Public Prosecutor in making preliminary inquiries into the matter, so he anticipated the decision of the responsible authorities by declaring to the assembled people that “Kelengo deserved severe punishment for his illegal and cruel acts.” He proceeded to dramatize the incident by carrying off the pretended victim, and exhibiting him on the 10th September to the official in command of the station at Coquilhatville, to whom he handed a copy of the record of his inquiry, and on the 12th September he addressed a letter to the Governor-General which he marked as “personal and private,” and in which he makes the incident in question among others a text for an attack on “the system of general exploitation of an entire population which can only be rendered successful by the employment of arbitrary and illegal force.” His inquiry terminated, he immediately started on his return journey to the Lower Congo.
Even if the circumstances had been correctly reported, the disproportion would still have been striking between them and the conclusions which the Consul draws when emphasizing his general criticisms of the Congo State. But the facts themselves are incorrectly represented.
As a matter of fact, no sooner did the Consul’s denunciation reach the Public Prosecutor’s Department than M. Gennaro Bosco, Acting Public Prosecutor, proceeded to the spot and held a judicial inquiry under the usual conditions free from all outside influences. This inquiry showed that His Britannic Majesty’s Consul had been the object of a plot contrived by the natives, who, in the hope of no longer being obliged to work, had agreed among themselves to represent Epondo as the victim of the inhuman conduct of one of the capitas of a commercial Company. In reality, Epondo had been the victim of an accident while out hunting, and had been bitten in the hand by a wild boar; gangrene had set in and caused the loss of the member, and this fact had been cleverly turned to account by the natives when before the Consul. We annex (Annex No. 3) extracts from the inquiry conducted by the Acting Public Prosecutor into the Epondo case. The evidence is typical, uniform, and without discrepancies. It leaves no doubt as to the cause of the accident, makes it clear that the natives lied to the Consul, and reveals the object which actuated them, namely, the hope that the Consul’s intervention would relieve them from the necessity of paying taxes. The inquiry shows how Epondo, at last brought to account, retracted what he had in the first instance said to the Consul, and confessed that he had been influenced by the people of his village. He was questioned as follows:—