You are seeing this because you have not yet updated your iBlog. Click on settings to edit...

Quick Discuss

Letter from King Leopold II of Belgium to Colonial Missionaries, 1883

The letter which follows is Courtesy of Dr. Vera Nobles and Dr. Chiedozie Okoro.

"Reverends, Fathers and Dear Compatriots: The task that is given to fulfill is very delicate and requires much tact.  You will go certainly to evangelize, but your  evangelization must inspire above all Belgium interests.  Your principal objective in our mission in the Congo is never to teach the niggers to know God, this they  know already.  They speak and submit to a Mungu, one Nzambi, one Nzakomba, and what else I don't know.  They know that to kill, to sleep with someone else's  wife, to lie and to insult is bad.  Have courage to admit it; you are not going to teach them what they know already.  Your essential role is to facilitate the task of  administrators and industrials, which means you will go to interpret the gospel in the way it will be the best to protect your interests in that part of the world.  For these  things, you have to keep watch on disinteresting our savages from the richness that is plenty [in their underground. To avoid that, they get interested in it, and make  you murderous] competition and dream one day to overthrow you.

Your knowledge of the gospel will allow you to find texts ordering, and encouraging your followers to love poverty, like "Happier are the poor because they will  inherit the heaven" and, "It's very difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of God."  You have to detach from them and make them disrespect everything which gives  courage to affront us.  I make reference to their Mystic System and their war fetish-warfare protection-which they pretend not to want to abandon, and you must do  everything in your power to make it disappear.

Your action will be directed essentially to the younger ones, for they won't revolt when the recommendation of the priest is contradictory to their parent's teachings.   The children have to learn to obey what the missionary recommends, who is the father of their soul.  You must singularly insist on their total submission and  obedience, avoid developing the spirit in the schools, teach students to read and not to reason.  There, dear patriots, are some of the principles that you must apply.   You will find many other books, which will be given to you at the end of this conference.  Evangelize the niggers so that they stay forever in submission to the white  colonialists, so they never revolt against the restraints they are undergoing.  Recite every day-"Happy are those who are weeping because the kingdom of God is for  them."

Convert always the blacks by using the whip.  Keep their women in nine months of submission to work freely for us.  Force them to pay you in sign of  recognition-goats, chicken or eggs-every time you visit their villages. And make sure that niggers never become rich.  Sing every day that it's impossible for the rich to  enter heaven.  Make them pay tax each week at Sunday mass. Use the money supposed for the poor, to build flourishing business centres.  Institute a confessional  system, which allows you to be good detectives denouncing any black that has a different consciousness contrary to that of the decision-maker.  Teach the niggers to  forget their heroes and to adore only ours.  Never present a chair to a black that comes to visit you.  Don't give him more than one cigarette.  Never invite him for  dinner even if he gives you a chicken every time you arrive at his house.

"The above speech which shows the real intention of the Christian missionary journey in Africa was exposed to the world by Mr. Moukouani Muikwani Bukoko,  born in the Congo in 1915, and who in 1935 while working in the Congo, bought a second hand Bible from a Belgian priest who forgot the speech in the Bible. —  Dr. Chiedozie Okoro

Comment as Anonymous Submit

Invite