Andrée Blouin was born to a French father and a Central African Republic mother [Eve Blouin]
“I know you can die twice. First comes physical death… second death is oblivion,” notes screenwriter Eve Blouin, in the epilogue at the end of her mother’s biography.
Eva understands this concept better than most.
In the 1950s and 60s, his mother, the late Andrée Blouin, dedicated herself to the fight for a free Africa, inspiring women in the Democratic Republic of Congo to fight against colonialism and rising to become an important adviser to Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the DR Congo as well. a respected hero of independence.
He exchanged ideas with famous revolutionaries such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sékou Touré of Guinea and Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria, yet his story is unknown.
In an attempt to correct this injustice, Blouin’s memoir, entitled My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Passionaria, is being re-released, having been out of print for decades.
In the book, Blouin explained that his longing for decolonization stemmed from a personal tragedy.
He grew up between the Central African Republic (CAR) and Congo-Brazzaville, then French colonies called Ubangi-Shari and French Congo respectively.
In the 1940s, his two-year-old son, René, was being treated for malaria at the CAR hospital.
René was of mixed race like her mother, and because she was one-quarter African, she was denied medicine. Weeks later, René was dead.
“My son’s death got me into politics like nothing else could,” Blouin wrote in his memoir.
He also added that colonialism “is no longer a matter of my abominable fate but a state of evil with tentacles reaching all levels of African life”.
Blouin was born in 1921, to a 40-year-old white French father and a 14-year-old black CAR mother.
The two met when Blouin’s father passed by his mother’s place to sell goods.
“Even today, the story of my father and mother, while it hurts me, still amazes me,” said Blouin.
When she was just three years old, Blouin’s father placed her in a convent for mixed-race girls, run by French nuns in neighboring Congo-Brazzaville.
This was a common practice in France and the African colonies of Belgium – it is thought that thousands of children born from the colonies and African women were sent to orphanages and separated from the rest of society.
Blouin wrote: “The orphanage was a kind of garbage can for this black and white society: children of mixed blood who didn’t belong anywhere.”
For 12 years, Andrée Blouin (second from bottom right) lived in the Order of Saint Joseph Cluny convent in Brazzaville. [Eve Blouin]
Blouin’s experience at the orphanage was not very good – he wrote that the children in the institution were beaten, poorly fed and abused.
But she was stubborn – she ran away from an orphanage at the age of 15 after nuns tried to force her to marry.
Blouin ended up marrying of his own free will, twice. After René’s death, she moved with her second husband to Guinea, a West African country that was also ruled by the French.
At the time, Guinea was in the middle of a “political storm”, he wrote. France had promised the country independence, but it also required Guineans to vote in a referendum on whether the country should maintain economic, diplomatic and military ties with France.
The Guinean branch of the African Union Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA) wanted the country to vote “No”, saying the country needs complete freedom. In 1958, Blouin joined the campaign, traveling the country to speak at rallies.
A year later, Guinea won independence by voting “No” and Sékou Touré, the leader of Guinea’s RDA, became the nation’s first president.
By this time, Blouin had begun to develop considerable influence in post-colonial, pan-African circles. He wrote that after Guinea became independent, he used this influence to advise the new President of CAR, Barthélemy Boganda, and persuaded him to stand up on the issue of communication with Congo-Brazzaville’s leader after independence, Fulbert Youlou.
But advice was not all Blouin had to offer in this rapidly changing Africa.
At a restaurant in Guinea’s capital, Conakry, he met a group of freedom activists from what would later become DR Congo. They urged her to help unite Congolese women in the fight against the Belgian colonial rule.
Blouin was pulled in two directions. On the other hand, he had three young children – including Eva – to raise. On the other hand, “he was restless as an ideologue who was angry at the world as it was”, Eve, now 67, told the BBC.
In 1960, with Nkrumah’s encouragement, Andrée Blouin flew alone to DR Congo. He joined prominent male freedom activists, such as Pierre Mulele and Antoine Gizenga, on the road, campaigning across the country’s 2.4 million sq km (906,000 square miles). She cut a bold figure, walking through the woods with her hair tied up, well-fitting clothes and chic, bright shades.
Andrée Blouin (left), her husband André (second left) and daughter Rita (third left) are pictured in Algiers with the first President of Algeria, Ahmed Ben Bella (far right), and the first President of Guinea, Sékou Touré . [Eve Blouin]
In Kahemba, near the Angolan border, Blouin and his team set up their mission to help build a base for Angolan freedom fighters who had fled the Portuguese colonial authorities.
He spoke to a large number of women, encouraging them to push for gender equality and the independence of the Congo. He was also good at planning and strategizing.
Soon, colonial powers and the international press caught wind of Blouin’s work. They accused her of being, among many things, Nkrumah’s wife, Sékou Touré’s agent and “the court of all African heads of state”.
He attracted even more attention when he met Lumumba.
In his book, Blouin describes him as a “good and beautiful” man “whose name was written in golden letters in the sky of the Congo”.
When the country gained independence in 1960, Lumumba became the first prime minister. He was only 34 years old.
Lumumba chose Blouin as his “master of protocol” and speechwriter. The two worked together so closely that the media called them “Lumum-Blouin”.
Blouin was described by the US magazine Time as “a handsome 41-year-old” whose “passion for steel and quick energy make him an invaluable political aide”.
But a series of disasters struck the Lumum-Blouin party – and the newly formed government – just days into office.
First, the soldiers rebelled against their white Belgian masters, and violence broke out across the country. Then, Belgium, the UK and the US supported secession in Katanga, a mineral-rich region in which the three Western countries were interested. Belgian paratroopers returned to the country, supposedly to restore security.
Blouin described the incidents as a “war of nerves”, with traitors “falling everywhere”.
Andrée Blouin had a talent for speaking [Herbert Weiss]
He wrote that Lumumba was “a true hero of modern times”, but also admitted that he thought he was naive and, at times, too soft.
“It is true that those who believe best are usually the ones who are cruelly deceived,” he said.
Seven months after Lumumba took power, army chief Joseph Mobutu took over.
On January 17, Lumumba was shot dead, with the support of Belgium. The UK may have been complicit, while the US had previously plotted to assassinate Lumumba – fearing he was sympathetic to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
In his book, Blouin said the shock and grief caused by Lumumba’s death left him speechless.
“I have never been left without things to say,” he wrote.
He was living in Paris at the time of his assassination, having been forced into exile after Mobutu’s overthrow.
To ensure that Blouin will not speak to the international press, the authorities made his family – who moved to Congo – remain in the country as “hostages”.
The breakup was painful for Blouin, who, as Eve explained, was “very protective” and “very motherly”.
Thinking about her mother’s personality, Eva adds: “One would not want to oppose her because although she had a big and generous heart, she could change.
During Blouin’s exile, soldiers ransacked his home and beat his mother severely with a gun, permanently damaging her spine.
Blouin’s family was finally able to join him after months of separation.
They spent a short time in Algeria – where they were given a place to live by the country’s first President after independence, Ahmed Ben Bella.
They then settled in Paris. Blouin remained involved in distant pan-Africanism “in the form of articles and daily meetings”, Eva wrote in the memoir’s epilogue.
Andrée Blouin helped independents like Pierre Mulele (centre) prepare speeches during the 1960 Congolese elections. [Herbert Weiss]
When Blouin began writing his autobiography in the 1970s, he still had great respect for the freedom movement to which he was devoted.
He admired Sékou Touré, who by then had established a one-party state and brutally suppressed freedom of expression.
Blouin however was very disappointed that Africa was not yet free, as he had hoped.
“It is not foreigners who have harmed Africa the most, but the mutilated will of the people and the selfishness of some of our leaders,” he wrote.
He was saddened by the death of his dream, so much so that he refused to take medication for the cancer that was eating away at his body.
“It was bad to watch. I was completely powerless,” said Eve.
Blouin died in Paris on 9 April 1986, aged 65. According to Eva, her mother’s death was met by the country with “great indifference”.
He is always inspiring in other corners, though. In the capital of DR Congo, Kinshasa, a cultural center named after Blouin offers the likes of educational programs, conferences, and film screenings – all based on universal African ethics.
And with My Country, Africa, Blouin’s extraordinary story is being released for the second time, this time in a world that is showing great interest in women’s historical contributions.
New students will learn about a girl who went from captivity by the colonial system, to fighting for the freedom of millions of black people in Africa.
My Country, Africa: The Autobiography of a Black Passionaria, published by Verso Books, goes on sale on 7 January in the UK.
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