“‘Paternalism’ is the name generally given to the sort of phenomenon we had noticed among the missionaries. I am not sure that the word is not, in most cases, too favourable ; affection and a sense of kinship, two important elements in a really paternal attitude, were both lacking, as far as I could see, in Belgian feeling towards the Congolese. The people we saw on these excursions were ‘the best Belgians’, among the few who had come to the Congo for another motive than that of enriching themselves. These missionary priests and nuns had dedicated themselves to the good of the Congolese and they led, without complaint, a hard and dangerous life for the sake of these Africans. They would do anything for them, short of actually liking them. …

If the attitude of the Belgian administration and the industrialists and missionaries had been genuinely paternal – as some of the British administrators in some other parts of Africa had been – there would have been much to be said for it. A good parent, after all, wants his children to grow up. He does not want them to stunt their intellectual growth ; he encourages them to take on responsibilities progressively ; he steps aside, and stays aside, as soon as he reasonably can. There is little evidence that Belgians in the Congo generally were paternalist in this good sense. The priest who, in the presence of Congolese colleague, emphasized not only the gravity but also the ineradicable nature of Congolese defects, was ‘paternalist’ in the manner of a father who enjoys sneering at a son’s awkwardness, and keeps impressing on him that he is congenitally and incurably defective. I found this form to be, on the whole, the prevalent type of paternalism in Katanga.”

aus: Conor Cruise O’Brien: To Katanga and back. London: Four Square 1965 (1962): 172/173.

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