8 november 1942: staking bij UMHK neergeslagen door soldaten

MARON ALPHONSE GOVERNOR OF KATANGA. WHEN HE MASSACRED THE PEOPLE OF THE UMHK, 5/2/1941.

1. There was a male nurse at the UMHK who had a good understanding with Bwana Maron Alphonse. He was a Kabinda. He had an understanding with Bwana Maron, and his name, too, was Alphonse. Then Maron got angry and shot him with a pistol. He died on the spot. That is when the soldiers began to fire [their] guns. It was a year during the war of 1940 to 1945.

2. Many, many people died. They died for higher monthly wages. That day there was much mourning among the people of E/ville because of this Bwana Governor, Bwana Alphonse Maron. And fate caught up with him in a French city which is where he arrived on November 11 in the year 1947. This is the story of the massacer of the people of UMHK.

Voetnoot: The events described here have been the subject of much historical inquiry which continues to bring forth new detail (see Perrings 1979:224ff, also for further references: Higginson 1988 and especially Vellut 1987 on the long history of resistance in Zaire). The 1941 general strike, although by no means the only outbreak of labor unrest in the history of Katanga, has assumed a kind of emblematic status (it became a subject in popular painting). This is reflected in the account given by the Vocabulaire. As in other cases, the latter draws the picture with a few strokes, emphasising what was important for the Africans who remember the strike. There are some matters of detail that remain obscure. One is the date. It is roughly correct as far as the beginning of the strike goes, but the fatal day of the massacer seems to have been November 8th. The other point regards the spokesman/leader of the strikers. The Vocabulaire insists on calling him as well as Governor Maron "Alphonse." This adds poignancy to the narrative because it hints at bumajina, a name relationship. The name relationship had developed in urban Katanga into a bond that was often considered stronger than kinship. Maron's crime was therefore all the more heinous. In eyewitness accounts cited by Perrings, however, the leader whom Maron shot with a pistol is identified as Mpoy Léon (1979:227). A point to be verified is the end of Maron in a foreign city on the symbolic date of November 11 (Armistice Day, a major Belgian holiday).

http://www.pscw.uva.nl/lpca/aps/vol4/vocabulaireshabaswahili.html#n_125