CHAPTER IX

THE MALADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE

THE preoccupation of Leopold II with plans of aggrandizement prevented him from making use of his unparalleled opportunity to develop an effective civil administration for the new State, nor had he the good fortune at any time to have the services of a genius with powers of civil organization. The sole power in the territory rested in his hands and the temptation was inevitable, in the case of a sovereign of great energy and few other royal duties, to seek to maintain in his own control the supervision of the whole business of the State. The result was that for good or bad the government remained in his control, and the various officials who served under him were nothing but the more or less effective instruments of his personal will.1

The form of government was necessarily unique, as the head of the State was precluded from residence in his territory, and was not prepared to assign any real independence to the local authorities. The central government was situated at Brussels, organized in the departments of Foreign Affairs and Justice, the Interior, and Finance, each under an Administrator-General, the first holders of the offices being Van Eetvelde, Colonel Strauch, and Van Neuss.2 In September, 1891, the title of these officers was altered to the more accurate one of Secretaries of State, and on September 1, 1894, a further centralization of the régime was completed by the appointment of Van Eetvelde to be

1 F. Cattier, Droit et administration de l'État indépendant du Congo, pp. 134, 135.

2

Masoin, Histoire, i. 47. They were appointed on May 6, 1885. Legally the State treated itself as coming into being on July 1, 1885.

the sole Secretary of State, having under him the three heads of the administrative departments, now designated Secretaries-General, and a new officer, the TreasurerGeneral. This arrangement was modified in 1901, when Baron van Eetvelde resigned the office of Secretary of State: the power hitherto in his hands was transferred to the Secretaries-General acting together, and the King's acts continued to be countersealed in the name of the Secretary of State, a curious fiction, possibly affected because of its apparent concinnity with the acts of the King as constitutional monarch of the Belgians.

The King possessed supreme legislative and executive | authority, and, somewhat inconveniently, no distinction was observed between his mandates in these two aspects, his legislative acts being styled décrets equally with his administrative regulations (arrêtés). The power to issue regulations was freely delegated both to the Secretary of State and the Governor-General, but the right to issue laws was only permitted to the latter, and then for temporary and special purposes, such enactments being styled ordonnances. The King reserved to himself the power of pardon, but did not exercise any other judicial functions. The Conseil supérieur of the Congo, with its seat at Brussels, acted as a court of second appeal in important cases of a civil character, as a court of appeal in penal matters with regard to certain classes of offenders, and as a court of cassation. It did not pronounce penal sentences, as, being situated in a foreign state, it had no power to carry out its decrees in such cases.

The local administration was simple, and took definite shape in 1887, when a decree of April 16 conferred the title of Governor-General on the chief official, hitherto styled Administrator-General. To him appertained the exercise of the executive power in the Congo, with occasionally authority to legislate. In his labours he had the aid of a Vice-Governor-General, who was of value as representing him in the more distant parts of the territory while he stayed at the capital Boma, a State-Inspector, and four

Directors, the heads of the departments of the Government. A decree of August 1, 1888, divided the country into eleven districts, a number increased in 1890 to twelve and in 1895 to fifteen.2 At the head of each was a Commissioner representing the Governor-General, and from 1892 onwards the plan was adopted of placing at the capitals of the greater chiefs, whose relation to the State was rather one of alliance than subjection, officers styled Residents. This plan, however, was essentially temporary, disappearing with the progressive reduction of the power of the chiefs, and gradually the districts were divided up into zones, thence into secteurs, which again were subdivided into postes with a hierarchy of officers all dependent on the Commissioner, an arrangement ideally contrived to multiply correspondence and to paralyse effective action. The Governor-General was authorized by a decree of October 6, 1891, to accord investiture to native chiefs, but this preliminary to effective organization of the tribes remained without result for twenty-five years, and the native tribes were left at the mercy of a system which imposed upon them at the pleasure of the local officer any ex-soldier or other person who was deemed likely to be obedient to the orders of the State.

3

The judicial system was simple and imperfect. Until 1906 there was but one court in the whole territory competent to deal with civil and commercial cases in which a non-native was party, the Tribunal of First Instance at Boma, consisting of one judge only. In criminal matters until 1889 jurisdiction over non-natives was vested solely in the court situated at Banana, and later at Boma. In that year, however, its authority was confined to the Lower Congo, and jurisdiction in the Upper Congo was conferred on territorial tribunals consisting of one judge, a civilian, or beyond their sphere of activity to councils of war, also composed of a single judge selected by the Governor

1 A consultative Council existed (July 30, 1886), but rarely, if ever, met. 2 Later reduced to twelve.

General; two assessors were added if the charge was a capital one, and an appeal lay to the court at Boma. In 1894-5 the law was modified to abolish the requirement of assessors. The right of condemning a European to death was reserved to the court at Boma, and the institution of. territorial tribunals was made general, leaving, save in certain cases, councils of war capable only of dealing with soldiers. But the Government still maintained the rule of appointing administrative officers to judicial appointments, and in the absence of security of tenure it was impossible to regard these officers as sufficiently independent of the executive from whose ranks they were recruited and on whose goodwill their future might depend, while the paucity of courts was the cause of great hardship and inconvenience.

The position of the natives in regard to judicial matters was still worse than that of Europeans. In civil matters they were in theory free to carry their complaints to their own chief or to the European courts, but the absence of any local system of civil jurisdiction rendered the permission. to have resort to the latter jurisdiction a mere farce. In criminal matters the European tribunals were in theory the proper authorities to deal with native cases, but it was legitimate to leave the accused to be dealt with by his chief: in practice the native was subject to ill treatment by his chief, often an outsider imposed on the tribe, or was at the mercy of the officer in charge of the poste, who, though without legal right, assumed the power of imprisoning or flogging him at pleasure. Redress against the acts of the State or its officers acting within the bounds of the orders of the State could not be obtained from the law courts, and it was extremely difficult to secure punishment of criminal actions by State officials of any grade.

The military forces of the State were at first recruited from the surrounding colonies, and efforts were even made

1 Decrees of Jan. 11, 1891; June 3, 1906 (Articles 1 and 6); for the competence of the Native Courts see Ordinance of May 14, 1886, Article 4. 2 Penal Code, Article 84.

1

to induce Zulus to serve. In 1885 the first attempt to secure local recruits was made among the Bangalas, and by 1889 fully one hundred had been enrolled. The expense of voluntary service, however, proved too great, and a decree of July 30, 1891, created a system of compulsion for men ✓ between 15 and 30, the numbers required from each district being determined by the Governor-General and raised by the Commissioner in accord with the native chiefs. The army thus rapidly grew in numbers, reaching 16,000 men in the active force, the schools of instruction, and reserve, under 358 European officers. The term of service, originally fixed at five years, was extended in 1900 to seven with five in the reserve, and the pay of the active soldier was fixed at twenty-one centimes a day, a third being held back until . the period of discharge. Polygamy was discouraged, but the soldiers were encouraged to have their wives and children. with them. The recruits from the eastern provinces proved in the long run too dangerous for the safety of the State, and recruiting there was suspended in view of the revolts which troubled the period from 1895 onwards, but the soldiers on the whole showed excellent military qualities, while on their return to civil life many of them brought back to their villages higher standards of life and industry. The recruits were trained in the schools at Kinshasa, the Equator, and Zambe, while accountants received instruction at Boma, and technical training was given to a corps of armourers.3

2

The cost of this military force and of the incessant expeditions pressed with ever-increasing stringency on the resources of the State, and it was the need of fresh sources of income coupled with the helplessness of the natives that produced the evils which from 1891 disfigured the Congo régime. In its early years the State had acted in commercial matters in entire conformity with the spirit of the Berlin Act: it encouraged the presence of traders in the Upper Congo, and made no claim to a monopoly of ivory or rubber, the chief commercial exports. In its land policy, ✔ 1 Masoin, Histoire, i. 55 sq. 2 Cf. Johnston, George Grenfell, i. 494–6. Created by a circular of August 5, 1905.